We don't sell fixed packages. Everything below is inspiration. Your trip gets built around your dates, your pace and the things you actually want to see.
Most guests land somewhere between the first two, and plenty of trips are one week of each. The third one is for people who are not counting days.
Style A
Beach week in Bentota or Aluthgama, 5–10 days
No travelling at all, if you don't want to. A quiet guesthouse near the beach, days in the sun, fresh food, a boat ride on the river when you feel like it. Everything arranged, minimal stress. For guests who want a beach holiday, not a road trip.
Optional add-ons
Style B
Sample: 12 days, beach plus the grand loop
Days 1–3
Arrival, airport pickup, and unwinding in Bentota or Aluthgama. Nobody starts a road trip jet-lagged.
Days 4–8
Inland and up: tea country, mountains, temples, waterfalls with lagoons where you often meet only a handful of other visitors.
Days 9–12
A safari morning, the cultural triangle, elephants, and back down to the coast for the last nights by the sea.
The rule of thumb on the road is never more than two nights in one place, so you keep moving without living in the car. Want it longer or slower? Tell Kumar how many days you have and he shapes the route around them.
Know what you are signing up for. This is the demanding option. You sleep in a different place almost every night, several days include four or five hours in the car, and the good light means early starts. It exists because two weeks is what most people get, and this is how you fit the island into them. If that sounds more like work than a holiday, take Style A with a few day trips, or give the island the 19 days below.
Style C
Sample: 19 days, the full circle
For guests who want to see all of it and are not limited by time. It keeps everything from Style B and adds the parts a two-week route has to cut: the east coast, a second safari park, the ancient capitals and the northern peninsula. Two nights in most places instead of one, which means an afternoon can be spent doing nothing at all.
Days 1–2
West coast
Airport pickup and two nights in Bentota or Aluthgama, so the flight is behind you before the driving starts.
Days 3–4
South coast
Galle fort and its ramparts, the coves around Mirissa, the stilt fishermen, and a whale-watching boat if you come between December and April.
Days 5–6
Yala and Udawalawe
Two safaris in two different parks instead of one: Udawalawe for elephants at close range, Yala for the chance of a leopard.
Days 7–9
East coast
Round the bottom of the island and up the far side. Arugam Bay for the surf, and the bays north of it, where the beach is often close to empty.
Days 10–11
Trincomalee
The long beaches at Nilaveli and Uppuveli, snorkelling over the reef at Pigeon Island, and Koneswaram temple on the cliff above the harbour.
Days 12–13
The northern peninsula
Jaffna, a Tamil city with its own language, its own food and the Nallur Kandaswamy temple, plus the flat palmyra country and the islands off its western edge.
Days 14–15
The ancient cities
Anuradhapura, a royal capital for over a thousand years, and Polonnaruwa, which is best seen from a bicycle. Wilpattu is close by if you want a third safari.
Days 16–17
Cultural triangle and Kandy
Sigiriya rock and the Dambulla cave temple, then down to Kandy for the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and the evening drumming.
Days 18–19
Hill country, then out
Tea country around Nuwara Eliya, Ella, a stretch of the hill-country train, and then either the coast again or straight to the airport.
One thing about the weather. The two halves of the island have opposite seasons. The east and north are at their best from roughly April to September, the west and south from November to April. A circle like this works all year, but which coast gets the better weather depends on when you come, so Kumar turns the route around to suit your dates.
The places guests ask for, and the ones Kumar suggests once he knows what you like. Pick a handful, not all of them.
The home base. A long sandy beach on the west coast, the Bentota river running right behind it, and Kumar's own town a few minutes away. Most trips start and end here.
A Dutch colonial fort town on the south coast. You walk the ramparts past the lighthouse, then in and out of the small shops and cafés inside the walls.
A south-coast beach town of small coves and palm-covered headlands. Also the harbour the whale-watching boats leave from before sunrise.
Close to the airport, which makes it the easy first or last night of a trip. St Sebastian's church, a wide beach, and a fish market that is busiest well before breakfast.
Also called Thambadola Ella, about 25 km inland from Aluthgama. Close enough to be a half-day trip from the beach base, without packing a bag. There is a pool at the bottom, and a rock ledge above it for anyone who wants to jump.
Hill country at around 1000 m, so the air is cooler. Two short walks that most guests do: the Nine Arch Bridge, where the train crosses a stone viaduct in the jungle, and Little Adam's Peak early in the morning.
Tea country. Plantations on every slope, a colonial-era town centre with the old red-brick post office and Victoria Park, and evenings cool enough for a jacket.
A high plateau you cross on foot, a loop of about 9 km past Baker's Falls to World's End, where the escarpment simply drops away. Worth walking early, before the cloud comes up the valley.
The second-highest waterfall in Sri Lanka, about 220 m in one thin drop, visible from the road below and reachable from above if you feel like the climb.
The last royal capital, wrapped around a lake in the hills. The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is the country's most important Buddhist site, and the evening drumming ceremony is worth timing your visit for.
Just outside Kandy, on a loop of the Mahaweli river: about 60 hectares of palm avenues, giant bamboo, an orchid house, and a lot of shade when the day gets hot.
A rock rising some 180 m straight out of flat jungle, with the ruins of a fifth-century palace on top. Around 1200 steps, the frescoes and the lion's paws on the way up, and a very wide view from the summit.
Five caves in a rock hillside, painted from ceiling to floor and filled with Buddha statues, some of them carved out of the rock itself. Shoes come off at the entrance.
The biggest name in Sri Lankan safari, and the island's best-known leopard population. A leopard is always luck and never a promise, but the park is worth the early start anyway: elephants, sloth bear, crocodiles, buffalo and open plains dotted with waterholes.
The dependable one for elephants, often close enough to the track that the driver switches the engine off and waits. There is plenty besides: buffalo half sunk in the mud pools, crocodiles, and some of the best birdwatching on the island. Jeep safari, early morning or late afternoon.
Two separate things in one place. There is the elephant sanctuary itself, and there is the herd being walked down to the river to bathe, which you can watch from the bank above. Kumar books rooms there, so it happens below your window.
The famous spots, with fewer people around.
Some places you'll want to see no matter what, and we'll take you there at the right hour, when the visitor numbers are lowest. For others, Kumar knows an alternative that most agencies don't offer: similar beauty, far smaller crowds. Which ones they are, you'll find out when you ask him. Guests who prefer quieter travel are exactly why this service exists.
Things you do, wherever you happen to be that day. Nothing here is compulsory, and you can decide most of it the evening before.
You end up in the river on the elephant's back, it fills its trunk, and then you are very suddenly awake, completely wet.
In the river, with a piece of coconut husk for a brush. Works just as well with children as without them.
Upriver into the mangrove tunnels, with monitor lizards, kingfishers and crocodiles that are usually easier to spot than you would like.
A short stop near the beach base, where hatchlings are kept until they are strong enough to be released.
Some of them have a pool at the bottom you can swim in. At the quieter ones you often share it with only a handful of other people.
A boat trip out of Mirissa, best between December and April. Blue whales and dolphins are what people come for, and sightings depend on the day, so nobody can guarantee them.
Rock caves in the hills, including the painted cave temples where the ceiling is as interesting as the statues.
You sit down with a local family and do the work: grinding, grating, mixing, then cooking it over a wood fire in clay pots and eating what you made. Often the part guests remember longest.
Some are the famous ones, some are the village temple down the road from where you sleep, and those are often the calmer visit. Shoes come off, shoulders and knees stay covered, and your guide explains what you are actually looking at.
Drummers, dancers in full costume and carved masks, and at the end someone walks across hot coals while you sit close enough to feel it.
The standing Buddha at Peraliya, built beside the lagoon after the 2004 tsunami, on the stretch of coast where the wave hit a passenger train.
On the south coast, fishermen still work sitting on a single pole planted in the shallows. Ask before you photograph, and expect to be asked for something in return.
The picking on the slopes, then the factory: withering troughs full of green leaf, rolling, sorting, and a cup at the end to compare the grades.
Cinnamon, cardamom, pepper and vanilla growing next to each other, with someone explaining which part of the plant actually ends up in your kitchen.
How one tree supplies the drink, the food, the oil, the rope and the roof. It ends with a coconut opened in front of you.
Terraces and paddies at every stage at once, from flooded and empty to almost ready to cut, depending on where you are and when.
A diagonal cut in the bark, a coconut shell underneath, and latex dripping into it. A two-minute stop that explains a whole plantation.
Masks and figures carved and painted on site, from the small souvenir ones to the full dance masks you saw on stage.
It is exactly what it sounds like, it does not smell, and the workshop will show you every step from the pulp beater to the finished sheet.
The small places you would be unlikely to find on your own, and a good restaurant when you feel like being looked after instead.
Off Bentota, reef and wreck dives, with schools of fish thick enough to lose sight of the bottom. Beginners get a guided first dive, certified divers get the better sites.
On the Bentota river rather than the open sea, which makes it a lot easier on families: towed rings, jet skis, banana boats.
Tickets to the attractions on this page are paid on the spot, by you, so you stay free to decide that morning what you actually want to enter. Some of them are not cheap, which is why we list indicative prices instead of hiding them in a package.
See indicative entrance fees in the FAQ →Send Kumar your dates and a wish-list. He answers every message himself.