Sri Lanka · 7.9570°N 80.7603°E
Arab traders called it Serendib. Three centuries ago the word became serendipity. We build unhurried, private journeys across the island that earned it.
The premise
Sri Lanka is 65,000 km² — smaller than Ireland. Inside it: eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a 2,500-year written history, rainforest, high tea country, and 1,340 km of coast. You can watch blue whales at dawn and stand in a fifth-century palace by afternoon.
No two travellers want the same island, so we do not sell a fixed one. Tell us how many of you there are, what brings you here — a honeymoon, a family holiday, photography, pilgrimage, a shore day from your ship — and how many nights you have. We build the route around that: the pace, the hotels, the guide, the hours we set out. Every journey on this page is a starting point, and every one of them can be redrawn for you.
The register
Not a checklist. These are the fixed points — chosen for what they are at a particular hour, in a particular season. Coordinates are exact; go and stand there.
A royal citadel built on a 200-metre granite plug in the 5th century, abandoned within two decades, and never bettered. The frescoes on the western face survive because the overhang has sheltered them for 1,500 years.
Ask us how to see it at its best
The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. The relic has not left Kandy since 1592, and whoever held it held the right to rule the island. The building is the last royal architecture of an independent Sri Lanka.
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Built in 1921 without a single piece of steel — the story goes that the wartime supply was requisitioned, so it was finished entirely in brick and cement. It has carried trains ever since.
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1,900 metres up, where the British planted after the coffee blight of 1869 and the temperature never passes 20°C. The estates still work on the same two-leaves-and-a-bud pluck.
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Sri Lanka has more than four hundred named waterfalls, almost all of them in the central highlands where the monsoon meets the escarpment. Laxapana drops 126 metres in a single column and has powered the island's oldest hydro station since 1950. Within an hour of it are Aberdeen, St Clair's — the widest in the country — and Devon, which the planters called the Veil of the Valley. They are at their fullest from May to July, and again in the north-east monsoon.
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Portuguese foundations, Dutch walls, British lighthouse — a working town inside 36 hectares of 17th-century rampart, still lived in. The sea wall held during the 2004 tsunami and the old town behind it survived.
Ask us to work it into your route
It began during wartime food shortages in the 1940s, when men took to poles over the reef where the shoals run. We'll be honest: much of what you see roadside is now staged for cameras. We'll take you where it isn't.
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The continental shelf drops away sharply off Mirissa, which is why blue whales — the largest animal that has ever lived — pass within a few nautical miles of the harbour between November and April.
Reach out and we'll take it from here
The island has no tigers and never has — its big cat is the Sri Lankan leopard, Panthera pardus kotiya, found nowhere else on earth, and Block I of Yala holds one of the densest populations of any big cat anywhere. Add to that some six thousand wild elephants, thirty-four bird species that exist only here, and blue whales offshore, and you have a country where the wildlife is genuinely the reason to come rather than a bolt-on.
Ask us which park suits your dates
Alongside the Buddhist temples stand the Hindu kovils of the Tamil community, and nothing on the island looks remotely like them. Every tier of the gopuram — the gateway tower — is packed with sculpted gods, guardians and animals, repainted in full colour each time the temple is reconsecrated. They are working places of worship, loudest and most alive during festival season.
Tell us if this is your kind of thingThe heritage
Eight sites on the island carry UNESCO World Heritage status. Sigiriya, Kandy and Galle appear above. These are the four you have not met yet — and the ones most often left off a ten-day itinerary.
The island's capital for over a thousand years, and still a living pilgrimage city. The Sri Maha Bodhi here grew from a cutting of the tree the Buddha sat beneath, planted in 236 BC — the oldest human-planted tree on earth with a recorded date.
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The second capital, and the better preserved. Its irrigation tank, the Parakrama Samudra, was built in the 12th century and still waters the surrounding paddy. The four figures at Gal Vihara are cut from one continuous wall of granite.
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Five caves under an overhanging rock, painted and repainted continuously for twenty-two centuries. Some 2,100 square metres of murals follow the contour of the ceiling, and 157 statues stand beneath them. It is the largest cave temple complex in the country.
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The last significant stand of primary lowland rainforest in Sri Lanka. More than half the trees here grow nowhere else, and nor do 95% of the endemic birds. Mixed-species feeding flocks move through the canopy — one of the most studied phenomena of their kind anywhere.
Contact us to arrange it around youThe journeys
Every journey is private — your own guide, your own vehicle, your own pace. We collect you wherever you are staying and bring you back there. Each one below is a starting point rather than a fixed package: tell us your dates and your party, and we reshape it around you.
Out in the morning, back the same evening — from wherever you are based.
1 day
Sigiriya Rock · Dambulla Cave Temple · spice garden
The rock fortress early, before the heat, then the five painted caves at Dambulla and a working spice garden on the way back.
1 day
Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic · Peradeniya · Kandyan dance
The last royal capital: the tooth relic at the evening ceremony, the botanical garden at Peradeniya, and the drummers at the cultural show.
1 day
Galle Dutch Fort · stilt fishermen · turtle hatchery · tsunami memorial
Ramparts, lighthouse and the lived-in town inside the walls, with the coast road, the turtles at Kosgoda and Coconut Tree Hill along the way.
1 day
National Museum · Gangaramaya · Galle Face Green · Lotus Tower
Colonial arcades and a working Buddhist temple in the morning, the sea green at sunset, and the city laid out below from the tower.
1 day
Millennium Elephant Foundation · Minneriya or Kaudulla jeep safari
A morning with the rescued elephants at Kegalle, then a jeep into the park in the afternoon, when the herds come down to the tank to drink.
1 day
Madu River boat safari · cinnamon island · Kosgoda turtle hatchery
Mangrove channels by boat, a cinnamon island where the bark is still peeled by hand, and the hatchery at Kosgoda.
Enough to reach one region properly and sleep there, rather than driving all day.
3 days
Sigiriya · Dambulla · Polonnaruwa
Two nights in Sigiriya. The rock at first light, the cave temples, and a full morning among the ruins of Polonnaruwa.
3 days
Kandy · tea country · Nuwara Eliya · the Ella train
Up through the tea estates, a night at altitude, and the observation car on the stretch everyone comes for.
3 days
Galle Fort · Mirissa · Unawatuna
Two nights inside the fort walls, whales off Mirissa in season, and the quiet end of the bay at Unawatuna.
3 days
Ella · Nine Arch Bridge · Yala or Udawalawe safari
Little Adam's Peak at dawn, the viaduct as the train crosses, and two jeep drives in the park at the hours the animals actually move.
3 days
Anuradhapura · Mihintale · Polonnaruwa
The two World Heritage capitals at the pace they deserve, with the climb at Mihintale before the sun is up. Most itineraries give these a single rushed afternoon.
Our full itineraries. Open any one to read it day by day.
5 days
Sigiriya · Kandy · Ella · Yala · Galle
The short version of the classic route: the rock, the tooth relic, the hill-country train, a safari and the fort, without a wasted day.
7 days
Sigiriya · Kandy · Nuwara Eliya · Ella · Yala · Galle
The same spine as the five-day, with room to breathe: two rocks instead of one, two nights in Kandy, and the hill country taken slowly.
9 days
Colombo · Sigiriya · Kandy · Adam's Peak · Ella · Yala · Mirissa · Unawatuna
Coast to coast with a pilgrimage climb in the middle, ending with two unhurried days on the southern beaches.
14 days
Dambulla · Anuradhapura · Polonnaruwa · Sigiriya · Kandy · Nuwara Eliya · Ella · Yala · Mirissa · Galle · Colombo
Two weeks, one guide throughout: both ancient capitals, the temple loop, Horton Plains, the whales at Mirissa and the whole southern coast road.
Tailor-made
Most of what we run is bespoke. Send us your dates, how many of you are travelling and what you want out of the trip, and you will hear back from someone on the island — not a call centre — within one working day.
Why us
Cold king coconut on a hot road, fruit cut on the boat, water always in the van. The small things are looked after so you never have to ask.
Couples, families and full shore-excursion groups from the cruise lines. Two guests or twenty, everyone is back on time and nobody is left behind.
Our own air-conditioned vehicles, maintained by us and driven by our own guides. One vehicle and one guide from your first morning to your last.
We travel with you, not ahead of you. Children, grandparents, early risers, late starters — the day is built around the people actually in the vehicle.
Our own vehicles, our own guides, our own safari jeeps. Nothing is subcontracted and nobody takes a cut in between, which is why a private tour with us costs what a shared one costs elsewhere.
Rain on the day you were going up the rock, a child who needs an afternoon off, a place you would rather stay longer. The plan bends; you are not held to a printed schedule.
The famous sites are famous for good reason and we take you to all of them. But the mornings people talk about afterwards tend to be the boulder nobody else climbed and the viewpoint with no coach park — and for those you have to be shown.
Someone answers from half past midnight to half past eleven at night, island time. Before you book, and just as importantly while you are here.
Contact
Tell us when you would travel, who is coming and what you would like out of it. We reply within one working day with a first sketch of a route — not a brochure.
