Shower under a Khomba tree, lounge on the terrace or stroll down the hill to the beach. Shela House is serene, relaxed and intimate. Overlooking beautiful gardens down to a half moon shaped beach, the house offers two en-suite bedrooms and in a separate house – called Nuba House – a beautiful suite with a four-poster kingsize bed. The design blends a simple tropical aesthetic with modern luxury. Amaresiri is the caretaker and helps you during the day and stays at night in the guard house on the plot. The houses are built 12 meters above sea level and are located about 70 meters from the ocean and just outside the fishing village of Tangalle and close to nature reserves and temples. Find a new conception of the Good Life in architecture: simple and visionary in its clarity. Designed to be integrated into its environment, it contains nothing superfluous, built from only necessary forms. Walk through the rooms: without knowing it, you move from inside to outside, from outside to inside.

Walk down to the white-sand beach and boogie board the waves or help a group of fishermen pull in a net of shining silver fish; afterwards relax on one of the terraces framed by palm trees filled with parrots and monkeys. If you are dreaming of adventures further afield, pilot an outrigger canoe through a bird sanctuary in a mangrove lagoon; visit a preserve home to herds of elephants; or bathe in a nearby river and enjoy a picnic lunch wrapped in a banana leaf. When you return, fishermen have brought just-caught lobsters to the doorstep. Be silent, drink the milk from a King Coconut and listen to the peacocks’ melancholy cry. And then, at sunset, the landscape dissolves into pure form, and you dissolve with it.