One of the many popular activities to do on the seas off Sri Lanka is Whale Watching. Many of the boats that go out are fully booked even occasionally on off-season days. Sri Lanka has a few cities popular for Whale Watching and the closest to Colombo (Sri Lanka's capital) is the city of Mirissa. The city is about 150km (93 miles) from the Capital and along the Southern Highway, it will take about 1 and 1/2 hours to 2 hours to get there.
All whale watching trips (all the good ones at least) start from one place and one place only in Mirissa and that is the Mirissa Harbor.Whale watching tours only operate in the morning. The boats all leave the harbor around 6:30 AM and will be out for about 4 - 5 hours. Keep this in mind if you want to make a day trip out of whale watching so that you leave, keeping enough time to get to the Mirissa harbor in time. It's best to get to the harbor at around 6:00 AM so you can buy your tickets and get a good seat on the boats.
The ideal time to visit Mirissa is from December to late January. However, the season goes on up until August. After August until October or November, the West coast of Sri Lanka experiences the South-Western monsoon season. During this time it is extremely windy and the seas get very rough. So much so that even swimming on the beaches is prohibited with red flags all along the coast to signal the dangerous seas.
It is possible to get a few calm days and the operators will take you out even with choppy waters but it very possible that you won't see much. There are times when the navy orders all boats to refrain from going out. So best bet is to come when it is in season. Of course, offseason on the west coast means peak season on the East coast so don't worry you can still come to Sri Lanka and enjoy the beaches and seas (Whale watching happened in the East too).
