I would recommend a visit to Sri Lanka to anyone and everyone! It really doesn’t have to be a destination reserved for only those with surplus cash either (something I had always thought when booking a 2 week holiday) we did it in a fortnight on a budget and can’t say it hampered our experience at all. In fact by making use of homestays and public transport rather than booking a driver for the duration and package tours/hotels, I think we got to see the real Sri Lanka (and utterly fall in love).
Our time in Sri Lanka started at the airport and as normal for us we hadn’t really researched how to get anywhere or booked a place to stay. We knew the circuit we wanted to do but as the weather was still a little undecided we wanted to see what it was like on arrival before we either headed south to the beaches or east inland to kandy. It wasn’t looking that great so kandy it was!
First tip in Sri Lanka: DO NOT take a taxi or tuk tuk straight outside the airport. The people in Sri Lanka were incredible but they will try to over charge at first chance if you appear naive. We were told in the airport that you had to book a taxi in the airport as no other transport was available. This was to be a common theme in Sri Lanka. We kindly declined until we were out of the airport grounds and onto the main road. Here we flagged down a taxi that quoted us less than half the cost of those directly outside the airport! Know where you’re going and the distance it is away so you have a good idea of what the price should be and if someone says there are no buses or trains, just ask someone else who doesn’t have a brother that owns a taxi or tuk tuk!
So we headed to the nearest train station which is only about 3km away if you fancied walking, and paid next to nothing to Fort Colombo train station where we could catch a train to Kandy. It was all very straight forward and in fact all train and bus journeys were easy and very cheap. If you don’t book the train the day before then you can still get a ticket just before departure but it will be for unreserved travel which meant for us sitting on the floor or hanging out the doorway which turned out to be an incredible experience and gave the best views of the stunning landscape we were travelling through but at peak times meant a pretty scary crush too.
Our planned route around Sri Lanka was to spend a couple nights each in Kandy (city), Ella (tea plantation), Tissa (the gateway to Kala national park), Matara and Bentota (beaches).
Kandy: We were arriving in kandy late so I booked a city centre home stay next to the landmarks close to the train station for ease only to find that the advert was misleading in its location and facilities so unfortunately for us after dinner we spent the most part of the night walking around with our backpacks trying to find a place with availability. We found that we were able to barter the prices pretty low. We did get a whatsapp message the following day from a very young boy whose profile picture was him and his equally young friends sat smoking in a low rider looking very dubious. We decided not to take him up on his offer of a lift to his place after breakfast and opted instead to stay in our backup pad which was very nice just at a slightly increased cost.
Kandy itself is very quaint and trendy with its hanging baskets of flowers and old municipal style buildings. The street markets were easy going and good value. Everywhere you look there are great restaurants and bars. Some are pretty expensive but you can spot them easily enough if you are on a budget and we actually had the best food at the street vendors and tiny cafes. There are lots of sight seeing opportunities in kandy too such as the huge Buddha at the top of the hill that looks down on the city and a very pretty, cooling lake hosting lots of wildlife and a floating garden island that is well worth a stroll around.
From Kandy we took the 6 hour express train to Ella. The journey is listed as one of the worlds best train rides due to the incredible views of Sri Lanka’s lush jungle and tea plantations as well the death defying drop at the side of the track as the train marches through the hillside.
Ella struck us as a little, trendy, tourist town offering a good mix of local and western cuisine. We chose to visit Ella for the tea plantations which I now think we may have been better at Nuwara Eliya as the landscape at Ella wasn’t quite what I expected it to be.
There were fields of tea plants, though they did not look as lush or as vast as those we had passed through on the train.
We did enjoy our time hiking up small Adams point as the view from the top was awesome with the added bonus that it was a pretty easy going hike!
We were also very lucky to have stumbled across a rather lively guy who allows people to view the incredible 9 arches bridge from his garden with refreshing drinks and tea available too!
We scrambled down to the track from his place after seeing the train cross and took the rail track back to our home stay by Ella railway station. I would still recommend anyone to visit Ella as we enjoyed it, just don’t bypass Nuwara Eliya Like we did!
Tissa: Tissa is the gateway to Yala national park. It’s about 20km away but your safari jeep will collect you from your hotel and take you there included in the cost.We were told that buses are pretty much hourly toward Tissa from Ella but those between 7-8 am were direct to Tissa and others stopped close by requiring a Tuk tuk journey. We attempted to catch a direct bus at about 7.15am asking the driver if it stopped at Tissa. We were told it did but ended up having to get off in a village about 4km away as it didn’t at all so my advice would be if you’re anything like us and find it hard to roll out of bed then not to bother making an effort to get up early. The tuk tuk cost us 50p and again we hadn’t booked anywhere so the driver just took us to his brothers place. It was great value for money when we arrived so opted to stay there. The hotel had its own safari jeep too and we were quoted a price I was expecting so booked the half day early morning safari with them. There are jeeps parked all the way up Tissa lake which is well worth a walk around if you struggle to arrange a safari though the jeeps themselves did look a little worse for wear. There is a Buddhist temple just past the lake and if you keep walking along the same road it will bring you into Tissa town. We didn’t see many places to eat so opted to stay at the hotel during our stay. The food was delicious and fresh and cheap so we didn’t feel too bad having not left.
Yala National Park: A jeep should cost between 4000-6000 rupees and the park entrance fees are around 2500 rupees each (check out Yala national park website for up to date costs). Do not let anyone charge you any more than this. The experience will be no different. You will get breakfast with all, you will visit the same part of the park even if they talk about different zones and you will go on the same route visiting the river and beach etc. The jeeps are all different makes and ages but our observation in the park was that everyone pretty much got the same experience.
The safari starts at either 6am or 2pm and lasts around 6-7hours. This was the first safari we have been on so we were pretty excited though as we approached the park our hopes did turn to dismay. There must have been around 50 jeeps parked up ready to enter with many more coming behind us. We were told around 500 jeeps enter the park daily! Once in the park it was manic! All the jeeps raced to the leopard rock to make sure they were in the best position to see one which of course there wasnt any there. The whole experience at first was very disheartening and I remember saying to G I just want to go back now. Everywhere we went for the first hour was in a traffic jam with jeeps blocking every angle. I felt pretty claustrophobic. Why any animals would be around all the noise of the rusty 4x4s and their loud revving engines was beyond me!
However, if you can keep you’re cool for that first hour things do improve. The jeeps slowly but surely disappear their own ways and you begin to feel less of the 8am commute into the city stress. I also felt better hearing that the jeeps only enter a quarter of the park meaning the animals are free to roam in the other 75% should they feel stressed too.
After the initial angst we did actually have a fab time. We saw all the main players at Yala, the leopard, bear, crocs, buffalo, mongoose, deer, many birds and the most incredible of all, the elephant (my first ever!!!). There is also a pretty beach at Yala with big crashing waves perfect for cooling off in.
Matara: We were able to easily flag down and hop on a bus to matara outside the hotel. We found an amazing home stay on the main coastal road with an isolated beach just across the road but we could flag down a bus to take us to any of the other beaches just further along.
Our favourite beach had to be Mirissa. This beautiful stretch of white sand and palm trees was perfect for relaxing, surfing, playing in the choppy sea or having a bite to eat with a beer.
You can also take a boat out from mirissa harbour to see many different species of whales and dolphins too. Matara town was bustling with plenty of shops and restaurants.
Top tip: Use home stays as much as possible and take up the offer for home cooked meals and pots of tea. Not only is it great value for money but the food is delicious and pretty much all you can eat and you really get a feel for the culture of the place and get to find out where the best places are often with provided transport which are experiences you can miss when you’re in the comfort of an all inclusive resort.
Galle: There are direct buses to Galle running along the coastal road but are less frequent so we flagged down a bus to Matara bus station and the jumped on one to Galle. Galle is another big city with lots to shop and eat. There is also a lovely coastal walkway and small beach. Galle fort is worth a visit too. The best part for me though was the nearby beaches of katugoda and urnawala.
Katugoda was closest to our home stay and perfect for surfing. They offer surfing lessons here too which looked like loads of fun and something I intend on doing at some point along our world trip!
Urnawala beach was vast and definitely more for the tourists. It is lined with bars and restaurants catering for people across the globe. It was busier than any of the others we visited in Sri Lanka but far from overcrowded and the liveliness was welcome to us after relaxing in solitude for so long!
Bentota: The family at our home stay advised we take the train to Bentota rather than the bus as was much quicker. The train no longer stops at Bentota but the next station which is only 1km away so don’t panic as I did when you see Bentota railway station come and go!
I loved Bentota beach. It is a long stretch of sand that is broken up into smaller coves by rocks and palm trees so easy to find your own little private piece of beach. The south part has much more choppy seas which were fun but I was aware of the riot idea pulling me back so for a swim I would suggest the calmer north part infront of the luxury hotels.
There isn’t really any bars or restaurants along the beach but there are restaurants set a little further back along the train tracks. The seafood was to die for! We found Bentota quite expensive for our budget to eat out but back in Aluthgarma where the train station is seemed a little cheaper. From Bentota it was a train back to Colombo Fort then another back to the airport.
Note: There are only a handful of morning trains to Colombo and then 2 in the afternoon at 1540 and 1630.
We really did have an incredible time in beautiful Sri Lanka. There is so much more to see and do that we really only just scratched the surface in the 2 weeks we had allocated so will be definitely returning again after our world trip to max out our visa and explore the north and east coast too.
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