From Lifeguard to Lagoon Guide: Rohan’s kayaking nature tours

Jetwing Lagoon Wellness has developed one of the island’s most holistic experiences. This stunning Bawa Resort’s success is based on five health pillars and a “green prescription” designed to reconnect guests with nature through activities like sunrise kayaking with Rohan Peiris. Waking at dawn to silently cross the bay is like a meditation, listening only to nature’s early morning calls. It is also good for fitness, slicing a watery pathway to the mangroves as the golden sun rises over Negombo Lagoon. A time-locked treasure where traditional catamaran fishermen steer their wooden vessels close enough to sell you their latest catch. Rohan, Jetwing Lagoon’s boatman and biodiversity guide, will buy a few live mud crabs from them for you to see and release back into the water as an early morning blessing—an act he explains allows them to be reborn. As the crabs realise they are free, they quickly scuttle off and vanish into the mudflats, while tiny silver fish jump for joy across the bow of the kayak.

The formation displays of birds overhead are unforgettable, along with playing hide-and-seek with the island’s four varieties of kingfishers, which can be found in the seven different types of mangrove islands and islets. Monkey Island is our first stop to see the adorable troop of Toque macaques. Then it’s off to the next place, breaking only for a few minutes to admire the fish traps made from mangrove branches, where cormorants sit atop drying their feathers after hunting for fish underwater. Our next stop is a sandy bank to watch the Asian open bills catching oysters, cracking cockles with their razor-sharp beaks, and breaking marine mollusks on rocks. Explaining as we alight and tie up the kayak that this will be our breakfast stop, Rohan serves sliced fruits while we watch a fisherman casting a net and listen to stories about his childhood adventures growing up in Negombo. His love of working at Jetwing—previously as a lifeguard for Jetwing Blue and Jetwing Beach, where he saved over forty people, and now leads mindful adventure boat trips—is so infectious that we head off the next morning at dawn to Muthurajawela Marsh and wetlands. Here we encounter an array of different bird species and comical monitor lizards using their huge claws to clamber in and out of the Lagoon. We return to the Jetwing Lagoon boat house, cooling down by putting our feet in the water. Our welcoming committee are mischievous squirrels eating fruits from the incredibly rare Mara Yellow Flame tree and butterflies swirling around. Rohan rightly feels incredibly lucky to work here and not to be sitting in front of a computer every day, enjoying not only nature, but also the morning breeze where, as he jokes, vitamin D is always free.