It happens just after Upul Manimendra, Tekanda Lodge’s affable manager, leaves me in my cabana. A low, mournful call pierces the humid afternoon air.
This one sounds close. I edge to the window beside the front door. Less than a few metres away, standing sentry on the path that snakes into the estate, is a male peacock. Tail feathers quiver, shimmer, then unfurl into a glorious, iridescent fan. He curls his neck back, head plumage dancing, and lets out another unearthly squawk. When I open the door, he turns slowly and regally towards me in all his glory.
It’s a uniquely Tekanda welcome. Set just outside the coastal village of Kathaluwa, right on the southern tip of Sri Lanka – and 10 minutes’ inland by tuk tuk from Ahangama’s surf-y, scene-y tangle – Tekanda Lodge is a world unto itself. Picture a private patch of Sri Lanka where jungle, paddy field and kitchen garden converge in a four-hectare buffer of deliberate isolation.
This one sounds close. I edge to the window beside the front door. Less than a few metres away, standing sentry on the path that snakes into the estate, is a male peacock. Tail feathers quiver, shimmer, then unfurl into a glorious, iridescent fan. He curls his neck back, head plumage dancing, and lets out another unearthly squawk. When I open the door, he turns slowly and regally towards me in all his glory.
It’s a uniquely Tekanda welcome. Set just outside the coastal village of Kathaluwa, right on the southern tip of Sri Lanka – and 10 minutes’ inland by tuk tuk from Ahangama’s surf-y, scene-y tangle – Tekanda Lodge is a world unto itself. Picture a private patch of Sri Lanka where jungle, paddy field and kitchen garden converge in a four-hectare buffer of deliberate isolation.
Inside a cabana, left, and a bathroom views | Credit: Lucy Kehoe, Siriwan Champorn
“A ridiculously large estate,” laughs Richard Pembroke, who, with his wife Charlie, opened Tekanda as a boutique hotel in 2023 (The property had previously been used on an exclusive basis by a surfing and yoga retreat). But it’s the right kind of ridiculous: wild, rooted and alive in unexpected ways.
The lodge was never meant to be a hotel. Charlie, once a geography teacher and housemistress at a UK school, and Richard, who has dabbled in everything from journalism to tech, initially envisioned it as a family retreat. After buying the property in 2016, the British couple spent two years working the land, finding an architect and building slowly and deliberately. Nothing was rushed. The result is a place that feels considered in every detail, but never precious.
The design, led by the Colombo-based John Balmond (son of the renowned British-Sri Lankan architect Cecil Balmond, who was behind London’s Serpentine Pavilion) is elemental. Built from wood, stone and iluk (the Sinhala name for cogon grass), the buildings rise gently from the surrounding landscape. Their forms follow the hill, the infinity pool mimicking the curves of the steep terraces that fall away from the lodge down to the rice paddies. Much of the construction was carried out by a crew of 30 highly skilled craftsmen-builders from Sri Lanka’s east coast, who lived on-site for two years, building their own temple for the duration. Nearly everything – from windows to wardrobes – was made in situ.
“A ridiculously large estate,” laughs Richard Pembroke, who, with his wife Charlie, opened Tekanda as a boutique hotel in 2023 (The property had previously been used on an exclusive basis by a surfing and yoga retreat). But it’s the right kind of ridiculous: wild, rooted and alive in unexpected ways.
The lodge was never meant to be a hotel. Charlie, once a geography teacher and housemistress at a UK school, and Richard, who has dabbled in everything from journalism to tech, initially envisioned it as a family retreat. After buying the property in 2016, the British couple spent two years working the land, finding an architect and building slowly and deliberately. Nothing was rushed. The result is a place that feels considered in every detail, but never precious.
The design, led by the Colombo-based John Balmond (son of the renowned British-Sri Lankan architect Cecil Balmond, who was behind London’s Serpentine Pavilion) is elemental. Built from wood, stone and iluk (the Sinhala name for cogon grass), the buildings rise gently from the surrounding landscape. Their forms follow the hill, the infinity pool mimicking the curves of the steep terraces that fall away from the lodge down to the rice paddies. Much of the construction was carried out by a crew of 30 highly skilled craftsmen-builders from Sri Lanka’s east coast, who lived on-site for two years, building their own temple for the duration. Nearly everything – from windows to wardrobes – was made in situ.
The main lodge entrance | Credit: Siriwan Champorn
The lodge’s four guest rooms wrap around a frangipani-filled courtyard, open to the breeze. First and foremost a family residence, there’s a homely practicality to interiors. Charlie designed them herself, picking up artwork from Nelum Pokuna Street in Colombo and batik prints from a stall set up on nearby Weligama beach.
There are nods to African lodges, too. The Pembrokes spent time in Cape Town, and the thatch-roofed silhouettes of the two cabanas, which sit slightly apart from the main lodge, carry a whisper of the bush. But Tekanda remains unmistakably Sri Lankan – in its materiality, in its relationship to the land, and in the way life unfolds here.
Inside the cabanas, the roof alone is a kind of sculpture – a timber and iluk tapestry that rises as a cone at the centre, hanging low at the circumference. Every view from the windows is fringed with thatch.
The lodge’s four guest rooms wrap around a frangipani-filled courtyard, open to the breeze. First and foremost a family residence, there’s a homely practicality to interiors. Charlie designed them herself, picking up artwork from Nelum Pokuna Street in Colombo and batik prints from a stall set up on nearby Weligama beach.
There are nods to African lodges, too. The Pembrokes spent time in Cape Town, and the thatch-roofed silhouettes of the two cabanas, which sit slightly apart from the main lodge, carry a whisper of the bush. But Tekanda remains unmistakably Sri Lankan – in its materiality, in its relationship to the land, and in the way life unfolds here.
Inside the cabanas, the roof alone is a kind of sculpture – a timber and iluk tapestry that rises as a cone at the centre, hanging low at the circumference. Every view from the windows is fringed with thatch.
A day room between two bedrooms | Credit: Siriwan Champorn
My cabana, located down a flight of stone steps, overlooks two lush paddy fields. Inside, a vast, mosquito-netted bamboo bed lies beneath the majestic roof. There are cool, polished-concrete floors, whitewashed walls and, in a bathroom tucked behind a curving wall, a rock-hewn sink and vast shower space. The elemental feel is softened by curved wooden and rattan chairs; a batik cushion here, fresh-cut bird of paradise flower there. Surf annuals and books on Sri Lankan birdlife line low shelves.
The bed looks out through double doors to a veranda and beyond, across two valley-like rice paddies. It's not a pristine scene. There are red roofs; the shock-white walls of a cinnamon processing plant; the odd power line. It’s a lived-in landscape. Cattle egrets drift over the paddies like scraps of lace. Buses honk on a distant road. Peacocks caw from the trees. It’s an uncurated sliver of Sri Lankan rural life that evolves at every glance.
There’s luxury, certainly, but it’s quietly expressed. Dinner is a communal affair at a long table in the open-sided lodge. On my first night, over soy-marinated chicken and grilled pineapple with cinnamon sorbet, conversation flows – from Sri Lankan politics to Maharaja squash courts. Around the table sits a Le Corbusier-spectacled former producer, whose work has taken him the world over, and his wife, a set designer. Then, there’s a Swedish retiree, the father of a man running a successful Ahangama café; a family of three from Bangalore; and a young couple volunteering with The Tekanda Foundation (more on which later).
My cabana, located down a flight of stone steps, overlooks two lush paddy fields. Inside, a vast, mosquito-netted bamboo bed lies beneath the majestic roof. There are cool, polished-concrete floors, whitewashed walls and, in a bathroom tucked behind a curving wall, a rock-hewn sink and vast shower space. The elemental feel is softened by curved wooden and rattan chairs; a batik cushion here, fresh-cut bird of paradise flower there. Surf annuals and books on Sri Lankan birdlife line low shelves.
The bed looks out through double doors to a veranda and beyond, across two valley-like rice paddies. It's not a pristine scene. There are red roofs; the shock-white walls of a cinnamon processing plant; the odd power line. It’s a lived-in landscape. Cattle egrets drift over the paddies like scraps of lace. Buses honk on a distant road. Peacocks caw from the trees. It’s an uncurated sliver of Sri Lankan rural life that evolves at every glance.
There’s luxury, certainly, but it’s quietly expressed. Dinner is a communal affair at a long table in the open-sided lodge. On my first night, over soy-marinated chicken and grilled pineapple with cinnamon sorbet, conversation flows – from Sri Lankan politics to Maharaja squash courts. Around the table sits a Le Corbusier-spectacled former producer, whose work has taken him the world over, and his wife, a set designer. Then, there’s a Swedish retiree, the father of a man running a successful Ahangama café; a family of three from Bangalore; and a young couple volunteering with The Tekanda Foundation (more on which later).
A feathered estate inhabitant, and sunlight in a cabana | Credit: Siriwan Champorn, Lucy Kehoe
Mornings begin the same way, but with buffalo curd and palm honey, or Sri Lankan pancakes filled with sweet coconut. Each day, a blackboard – inked in Charlie’s looping hand – offers weather notes, dinner times and menus, and gentle itinerary suggestions. A swim? A surf? An estate tour? A stroll around the local village?
Tiny wildlife encounters feel charged. One morning, a gecko – no bigger than a paperclip – tumbles from my glasses case. I saw it the night before, darting along the cabana wall. Now, it’s determined to burrow into my suitcase, eventually veering under a sandal, before finally giving up and vanishing up the wall.
These moments of nature – quiet, intimate – echo throughout the estate. Tekanda is home to porcupines, monkeys, wild boar and civets, and,”everything wants to eat what we grow,” says Richard. When the couple arrived, the former tea and coconut estate was derelict, overgrown with jungle. Richard, who is in charge of the estate, has left a third of the land wild, a deliberate decision in contrast to neighbouring properties, which have razed their jungle to plant cash crops like cinnamon.
Mornings begin the same way, but with buffalo curd and palm honey, or Sri Lankan pancakes filled with sweet coconut. Each day, a blackboard – inked in Charlie’s looping hand – offers weather notes, dinner times and menus, and gentle itinerary suggestions. A swim? A surf? An estate tour? A stroll around the local village?
Tiny wildlife encounters feel charged. One morning, a gecko – no bigger than a paperclip – tumbles from my glasses case. I saw it the night before, darting along the cabana wall. Now, it’s determined to burrow into my suitcase, eventually veering under a sandal, before finally giving up and vanishing up the wall.
These moments of nature – quiet, intimate – echo throughout the estate. Tekanda is home to porcupines, monkeys, wild boar and civets, and,”everything wants to eat what we grow,” says Richard. When the couple arrived, the former tea and coconut estate was derelict, overgrown with jungle. Richard, who is in charge of the estate, has left a third of the land wild, a deliberate decision in contrast to neighbouring properties, which have razed their jungle to plant cash crops like cinnamon.
One of the lodge rooms | Credit: Siriwan Champorn
The Pembroke’s vision is more layered: a third jungle, a third traditional agriculture (tea, coconut, cinnamon), and a third experimental botanical garden. “We’ve planted about 80 fruit trees,” Richard tells me, listing mango, guava, lime, jackfruit, avocado, as we tour the estate. “Basically, everything that we serve in the lodge, we’re going to start growing here.” They’ve inherited 400 coconut trees, producing around 10,000 coconuts a year, while the cinnamon trees are new but thriving.
The kitchen garden is a study in sustainable agriculture: aubergine, spinach, beans, lemongrass, tomatoes. Living fences – “boar-proof” – are made from Gliricidia sepium. The legume bushes are nitrogen-rich and normally used to shield tea plants from rain and sun. Compost comes from barrels of fish guts and buffalo manure. Everything’s rooted in tradition, but there’s a willingness to experiment.
We scramble up a steep hill towards Richard’s “botanical garden”, pausing at a gap running under the fence, which he labels the “wild boar autobahn”, and a burrow. “Porcupine,” he adds, proudly. Endangered, purple-faced langurs, long-tailed and studious, watch us from distant trees. Their curved tails, hanging beneath branches, make it look like umbrellas have caught in the branches.
The Pembroke’s vision is more layered: a third jungle, a third traditional agriculture (tea, coconut, cinnamon), and a third experimental botanical garden. “We’ve planted about 80 fruit trees,” Richard tells me, listing mango, guava, lime, jackfruit, avocado, as we tour the estate. “Basically, everything that we serve in the lodge, we’re going to start growing here.” They’ve inherited 400 coconut trees, producing around 10,000 coconuts a year, while the cinnamon trees are new but thriving.
The kitchen garden is a study in sustainable agriculture: aubergine, spinach, beans, lemongrass, tomatoes. Living fences – “boar-proof” – are made from Gliricidia sepium. The legume bushes are nitrogen-rich and normally used to shield tea plants from rain and sun. Compost comes from barrels of fish guts and buffalo manure. Everything’s rooted in tradition, but there’s a willingness to experiment.
We scramble up a steep hill towards Richard’s “botanical garden”, pausing at a gap running under the fence, which he labels the “wild boar autobahn”, and a burrow. “Porcupine,” he adds, proudly. Endangered, purple-faced langurs, long-tailed and studious, watch us from distant trees. Their curved tails, hanging beneath branches, make it look like umbrellas have caught in the branches.
Three of Tekanda’s estate hands – Thaksila, Demayante and Chitrani – and handmade island ceramics | Credit: Siriwan Champorn
At one point, we stop beside a mango tree. Richard grabs a long stick, pointing at a strange hanging growth – an elongated ball of leaves stuck together. “That one has a big scar because it’s the one I poke every time I do tours,” Richard says, with a grin. Sure enough, after a gleeful poke, an eruption of orange pours from the freshly created hole. Fire ants. “In Sri Lankan playgrounds,” he adds, “flirting apparently involves chasing girls with ant-covered sticks.”
At the base of the estate, a rice paddy is reverting to wetland – yields are low, and labour too scarce for the village that owns it to keep on top of maintenance. Painted storks and egrets wade in it. Richard has cleared some of the overgrown flora to allow a natural waterway to trickle into the paddies, creating a small pond. “I suspect everyone comes and drinks here,” he says. “I’m convinced there must be [endangered] fishing cats.”
The human community, too, is woven into Tekanda’s fabric. In 2023, the Pembrokes opened Gamata Athak – meaning “a hand to the village” in Sinhala – a rural empowerment centre providing education and skills training to women and young people from 23 surrounding villages, many of which are effectively cut off from tourism’s economic reach.
At one point, we stop beside a mango tree. Richard grabs a long stick, pointing at a strange hanging growth – an elongated ball of leaves stuck together. “That one has a big scar because it’s the one I poke every time I do tours,” Richard says, with a grin. Sure enough, after a gleeful poke, an eruption of orange pours from the freshly created hole. Fire ants. “In Sri Lankan playgrounds,” he adds, “flirting apparently involves chasing girls with ant-covered sticks.”
At the base of the estate, a rice paddy is reverting to wetland – yields are low, and labour too scarce for the village that owns it to keep on top of maintenance. Painted storks and egrets wade in it. Richard has cleared some of the overgrown flora to allow a natural waterway to trickle into the paddies, creating a small pond. “I suspect everyone comes and drinks here,” he says. “I’m convinced there must be [endangered] fishing cats.”
The human community, too, is woven into Tekanda’s fabric. In 2023, the Pembrokes opened Gamata Athak – meaning “a hand to the village” in Sinhala – a rural empowerment centre providing education and skills training to women and young people from 23 surrounding villages, many of which are effectively cut off from tourism’s economic reach.
Picking tea on the estate | Credit: Siriwan Champorn
“We are acutely aware that we have no real knowledge of Sri Lanka, not in any meaningful way. We have no knowledge of what a village requires, or how to even understand what a village requires, because each centre needs to be constructed in a different way to suit what’s there,” Richard says. He and Charlie asked for help from the Sri Lanka-based Foundation of Goodness, which has been running 17 similar centres across Sri Lanka for more than 20 years.
Financed by the Pembrokes and three founding donors through the Tekanda Foundation, and operated in partnership with the Foundation of Goodness, Gamata Athak is a quiet expression of the duo’s commitment to Sri Lanka.
The centre offers English, Tamil, business, IT, commercial cooking, and dressmaking classes to about 150 adults on courses that run for six months. In the afternoons, children arrive for tutoring: 250 children take classes every week. “I’ve seen the teachers take maths outside,” Richard says. The idea is for the teaching to be fun, to help disadvantaged children without adding any academic burden. There are clubs, too – dance, chess, badminton, and the wildly popular girls’ cricket club.
When the Pembrokes’ daughter struggled to play cricket in the UK after returning from South Africa, Richard made it his mission to grow the sport for girls. In Sri Lanka, boys’ cricket is everywhere – but girls? Invisible. “On day one, 50 girls turned up from just two villages,” Richard recalls. “We had to beg for space at the local school.”
“We are acutely aware that we have no real knowledge of Sri Lanka, not in any meaningful way. We have no knowledge of what a village requires, or how to even understand what a village requires, because each centre needs to be constructed in a different way to suit what’s there,” Richard says. He and Charlie asked for help from the Sri Lanka-based Foundation of Goodness, which has been running 17 similar centres across Sri Lanka for more than 20 years.
Financed by the Pembrokes and three founding donors through the Tekanda Foundation, and operated in partnership with the Foundation of Goodness, Gamata Athak is a quiet expression of the duo’s commitment to Sri Lanka.
The centre offers English, Tamil, business, IT, commercial cooking, and dressmaking classes to about 150 adults on courses that run for six months. In the afternoons, children arrive for tutoring: 250 children take classes every week. “I’ve seen the teachers take maths outside,” Richard says. The idea is for the teaching to be fun, to help disadvantaged children without adding any academic burden. There are clubs, too – dance, chess, badminton, and the wildly popular girls’ cricket club.
When the Pembrokes’ daughter struggled to play cricket in the UK after returning from South Africa, Richard made it his mission to grow the sport for girls. In Sri Lanka, boys’ cricket is everywhere – but girls? Invisible. “On day one, 50 girls turned up from just two villages,” Richard recalls. “We had to beg for space at the local school.”
Gamata Athak cookery course, and the foundation building | Credit: Lucy Kehoe
Now, five coaches run programmes in six secondary schools and 40 of the most promising players also train at the Tekanda Girls Cricket Academy, under a covered net, during the week. Some of them travel over an hour by bus for practice. Five now train with the Galle district team – one step closer to the national squad.
The foundation feeds back into the lodge, too. During my stay, the Pembrokes say a standout cookery student was being interviewed for a junior chef position at the hotel. They got the job.
Tekanda doesn’t separate its stories: not the wild from the human, the luxurious from the practical, the lodge from the land. Everything overlaps, grows through and curls together like the iluk grass on the roof, or the Gliricidia living fences.
On the morning of my departure, the light is milky. I sit on the veranda outside my cabana and watch the birds. Red-mohawked flame bills play in a coconut palm. A peacock keens (as always) from a branch beside the paddy. An inky bird with white racing stripes streaks past, while buses on the distant road beep cheerfully before rounding corners. Flocks of koka lift and drift on breezes I can’t feel, before delicately distributing themselves across the paddies. Water channels glint. The air is full of sound: constant chirps, krrrks, whistles and chatter.
There’s a pile of scat on the deck, left sometime in the night – neat little half-cylinders. At breakfast, when I show a photo of this unexpected present, the Pembrokes apologise for my midnight visitor. It was a palm civet – a wide-eyed, long-tailed nocturnal sculker they’ve been trying to keep out of the thatch. They needn’t have apologised. If I’d stayed another night, the civet would have found me waiting, quiet on the deck, hoping for a glimpse.
Now, five coaches run programmes in six secondary schools and 40 of the most promising players also train at the Tekanda Girls Cricket Academy, under a covered net, during the week. Some of them travel over an hour by bus for practice. Five now train with the Galle district team – one step closer to the national squad.
The foundation feeds back into the lodge, too. During my stay, the Pembrokes say a standout cookery student was being interviewed for a junior chef position at the hotel. They got the job.
Tekanda doesn’t separate its stories: not the wild from the human, the luxurious from the practical, the lodge from the land. Everything overlaps, grows through and curls together like the iluk grass on the roof, or the Gliricidia living fences.
On the morning of my departure, the light is milky. I sit on the veranda outside my cabana and watch the birds. Red-mohawked flame bills play in a coconut palm. A peacock keens (as always) from a branch beside the paddy. An inky bird with white racing stripes streaks past, while buses on the distant road beep cheerfully before rounding corners. Flocks of koka lift and drift on breezes I can’t feel, before delicately distributing themselves across the paddies. Water channels glint. The air is full of sound: constant chirps, krrrks, whistles and chatter.
There’s a pile of scat on the deck, left sometime in the night – neat little half-cylinders. At breakfast, when I show a photo of this unexpected present, the Pembrokes apologise for my midnight visitor. It was a palm civet – a wide-eyed, long-tailed nocturnal sculker they’ve been trying to keep out of the thatch. They needn’t have apologised. If I’d stayed another night, the civet would have found me waiting, quiet on the deck, hoping for a glimpse.