Karainagar Island (Karaitivu)

Karainagar — Karaitivu in Tamil — is the westernmost of the inhabited Jaffna islands and the second-largest after Velanai. It sits beyond Velanai across a short causeway, about an hour's drive from Jaffna town along the chain. The island is quiet, flat, fringed with palmyra, and ends at a long northern beach that has become the most consistently visited stretch of coast in the entire peninsula.

That beach is Casuarina, on the western tip of the island. It is named for the casuarina pines that line the dunes and provide unbroken shade along the back of the sand. The water is shallow for a long way out, calm on most days, and warm year-round; it is the swimming beach of choice for Jaffna families on weekend afternoons and for many visitors during the dry months. A separate detail entry covers it more fully.

At the northern end of Karainagar lies the Sri Lanka Navy base — an active facility, off-limits to visitors, but the gateway to one of the more curious accommodation options in the country. Hammenhiel Fort, a small Portuguese-then-Dutch coral-stone fort on a rock just offshore, has been converted by the navy into a small heritage hotel and restaurant. Day visitors are taken across by a navy boat from Karainagar's northern jetty for lunch and a tour, by prior arrangement; the crossing is short and the building is one of the only intact small forts in the region.

For most visitors, Karainagar is a day-trip — Casuarina Beach, lunch at one of the village shacks, and a quick visit to Hammenhiel for those who book ahead. The drive across the island in the late afternoon, with the lagoon water on both sides catching the low sun, is one of the more atmospheric road journeys on the peninsula.