Our story starts with our grandfather who used to be a great fisherman that went deep fishing in the ocean with a wooden catamaran as it was the only source of living at the time, using the stars to guide him. Our father and uncles followed our grandfathers footsteps and started fishing since their childhood.
We only had a few visitors and surfers exploring Arugam bay at the time, that's when our uncle (Choti) got into surfing and became one of the best surfers in Sri Lanka. He taught my brother and me how to surf, which was a life-changing experience for us, and gave us a sport to escape the civil war whenever we had the chance to surf.
During the civil war, we had to study away from Arugam bay, however, after coming back and learning how to surf from our uncle, our connection to the ocean and our surrounding nature was super strong, and as the years passed, the living conditions started becoming harsher and harsher. Our grandfather passed away, and we lost our uncle in an accident and lot of families left which pushed us to sell our beach land and be one of the only families who stayed in Arugam bay during the war.
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, our vision started by providing visitors and surfers with whatever we have. That's when surfnsun started forming to become three cabanas and a simple restaurant using our mother’s kitchen. From there we began providing facilities such as surf guiding and showing our visitors a few secret points and teaching them about the area.
In 2004, Tsunami destroyed most of our place, but we believe in karma and that it will give us a lesson to survive the future, so we stood on our feet with whatever survived the tsunami and helped the local community in the village.
In late 2005 we started rebuilding surfnsun until the war finally ended in 2009, which made us more alive and gave us hope for the future after going through the tsunami and civil war. More and more people started visiting Arugam Bay which kept us going and allowed us to implement our vision for the future and expand organically.
we have completed about 70% of our vision for surfnsun, which until today is our home and place of business, which translates to our guest experience being local and authentic through mindfulness.
