The Best Hotels Near Uga Ulagalla, by the Record
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Peacocks roam a 58-acre estate outside Anuradhapura while the guests try to keep up. This eco-resort takes the low-footprint brief seriously, running a solar farm and lending bicycles for getting around the grounds. The twenty chalets have plunge pools and sleek, high-ceilinged interiors that lean modernist rather than Buddhist-souvenir. A sunken spa operates out of an underground chamber, and the restaurant sits inside the old colonial mansion.
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The name isn't poetry, it's a floor plan: the grounds of this luxury villa resort are literally threaded with pools, lakes, and streams, all arranged to frame Sigiriya's ancient rock fortress in the middle distance. Architect Channa Daswatte's modernist buildings sit easily in the Sri Lankan landscape. Some villas feel like private islands; others have their own plunge pools. The spa floats above a pond on stilts, which sets a certain tone for everything that follows.
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Geoffrey Bawa designed this resort to disappear into a Sri Lankan cliffside, stretching a full kilometer along the shore of Kandalama Lake so that the building barely registers until you're inside looking out. Rooms are quietly contemporary, organized around those lake views, and the grounds include three pools and three restaurants. The ancient Buddhist cave temples at Dambulla are a short drive, which is the actual reason to stay this far inland.