Surfing in Sri Lanka in January

January sits in the middle of the south coast season. The north-east monsoon crosses the island and arrives at Weligama, Midigama and Ahangama as an offshore, so the reefs and the beach hold their shape through the morning and often all day. In a week, count on five days out of seven worth paddling out for at The Rock, off Kabalana beach, and the same at Plantations in Midigama. Weligama bay, sand rather than reef, gives four. What takes the other days is wind rather than a flat ocean, about one morning in seven.

Here is what that is worth against everywhere else. Five coasts in the world are at their own peak in January, and Sri Lanka is the warmest of them by nine degrees: 28°C here against 19 in the Canaries and 18 in Morocco. It is also, of the four that publish a water temperature, the only one a beginner is unreservedly welcome on. Spain in January is a thirteen-degree coast for experienced surfers, and both the Canaries and Morocco are harder places to learn this month than this is. A warm ocean at its best, in a week you can also learn in, is a rarer combination than the flight time suggests.

The day is the other half of it, and it comes from the latitude rather than the season. Six degrees north of the equator, the length of daylight barely moves across the year, so January gives you the same two sessions a day that July does. You do not lose an afternoon to the dark in December here the way you do in Portugal.

Where you sleep decides more than the forecast, because all of this fits in twenty minutes of coast road. Weligama is the shortest transfer from Colombo at two hours and the only sand, so it is where a first week goes. Midigama has four reefs across two kilometres and room on all of them. Ahangama has one wave and the best of it, and it has the evenings. That last one matters in January, which is the busiest month of the southern year: European winter, full camps, and a lot of boards in the bay.

For an experienced surfer, Midigama in January is peak conditions and peak company, in that order. Plantations, in Midigama, runs clean five days out of seven in January, which is the best figure recorded anywhere on this island, and it still has room on it. The reason is geography rather than luck: four reefs share two kilometres of coast, almost everybody stops at the first one they reach, and the fourth is a walk. What takes the other two days is wind, about one morning in seven coming up ragged, and almost never an absent swell.

Midigama is the address for the month. Lazy Left is where you start if you have never surfed over reef, the softest of the four and the one that forgives a late take-off. Rams Right is short, hollow and shallow, filed as the only expert wave in Sri Lanka, with rocks and shallow reef both listed. Coconuts closes the run at the eastern end and is the first of the four to go ragged when the wind turns, which makes it worth a look before you commit. All four break on the same south-south-west swell and the same north-easterly offshore, so you are not choosing between conditions, you are choosing between shapes. The coast road runs behind the lot and the train from Colombo stops here, running beside the water on the last stretch for a fraction of what a transfer costs.

The step above is the reef at Kabalana, off Ahangama, twenty minutes west. It breaks both ways several hundred metres out, which means what you judged from the sand is not the wave you meet at the peak, and it works at any tide with urchins on the bottom. The east coast is shut and stays shut until May, so the whole island in January is this one stretch of road. Midigama is dark by nine and its regulars come back for exactly that; if you want a January with evenings in it, sleep at Ahangama and drive.