About this guide

Hiriketiya.com is a guide to Hiriketiya, the small bay by Dikwella on Sri Lanka’s south coast, and to the places people visit from it. Each guide and fact page lists the sources for its facts, with their dates. The guide can’t book rooms, lessons or trips, and it carries no adverts.

What it is not

• It isn’t the website of a hotel, café or surf school, and it can’t book anything.
• It isn’t run by the local council, Sri Lanka Tourism, the police or any other public body. Nobody owns or runs the bay.
• No place pays to be named, and there are no paid links.
• It isn’t the website at hiriketiya.com. That address belongs to someone else. This guide is at hiriketiyasurf.com.

How a fact gets onto a page

For example, the train fare from Colombo to Wewurukannala comes from the railway’s own fare table, and the page shows the month we read it. Three months later we read the table again. If the fare has changed, the page and its date change too.

Other facts work the same way, where they can:

• Each fact comes from whoever sets it, where possible: a fare from the fare table, a rule from the department that made it, an opening time from the place itself. When only the news, a blog or reviews say something, the page tells you so.
• The box at the foot of each guide and fact page lists where its facts came from, each with its date.
• Drive times are measured along OpenStreetMap’s roads with a routing tool, then rounded. Traffic and rain make them longer.
• When two sources disagree, the page gives both and says what to ask.
• We check online, not in person. A page says so when someone saw a thing for themselves.
• The person who runs the site looks over the new and changed pages, and says yes, before each version goes online. AI tools do most of the searching, comparing and drafting, and each fact is matched to a source in the box at the foot of its page.

How we choose the places we name

We name only a few cafés and surf schools, on the eat-and-drink and surf pages. We name no hotels, guesthouses, drivers or tour companies. A place is named only when all of this is true:

• it has been open for at least three years;
• recent reviews or posts show it is open now;
• many visitors like it, on more than one review site;
• for surf schools: the school itself says it teaches beginners on the sand, with soft boards, leashes and first aid, and a news search finds no serious accident linked to it;
• nobody behind this guide has a link with it: no money, deals, gifts or free meals or lessons.

We check the lists online every three months and show the month under each list. We never write anything bad about a place: a place that doesn’t meet the rules is simply not named. A place that asks to come off a list comes off.

Prices and times move

Bus fares are reviewed every July, cafés change their menus, and roads close after storms. If you see a price or a time that has moved, or anything else that is wrong, send it to hello@hiriketiyasurf.com: the page, what has changed and where you saw it. A photo of the price board helps. We check it at the source, then change the page and its date.

Drawings and photos

The cut-paper drawings, icons and maps were made for this site. The maps use data from OpenStreetMap. Photos belong to their photographers and are used under their licences; each is credited under the photo and on the picture credits page.