Sunshinestories

The camp

Sunshinestories lives in a hundred-year-old Dutch colonial villa in the middle of the village, in the Weliwatta neighbourhood. The rooms sit round a courtyard with a frangipani tree and a long pool. The dorms are single-sex: the women's has its own courtyard and a double shower, the men's, in the old wing, has kept its brick floors and an open-air bathroom. There is also a single room, a bungalow out in the garden, and bungalows with verandas onto the pool.

The beach and the centre of Ahangama are both five minutes' walk. That walk works in your favour: at night the rooftops and bars of the centre are at the end of the street, and Galle and Mirissa are twenty minutes away.

The house feeds you most of the day. Breakfast every morning, five lunches, four afternoon snacks and five dinners, cooked on site with what gets bought in the village. For the water there are five lessons with coaches who get in with you, five theory sessions, transport, a quiver of more than forty boards to match your level, and a video of your week to take home. Ten yoga classes in an open-air shala, mornings and late afternoons. Once a week the group cleans the beach and a sunset drink follows; another night, pizza gets eaten on the sand.

At €975 it is one of the dearest weeks in the village, and one of the fullest. Pick it if you are travelling alone, want a single-sex dorm, and never want to wonder where dinner is.