Sri Lanka with children: 12 days that work for everyone
Sri Lanka is one of the easiest countries in Asia to travel with children. The food is mild if you want it to be, people are genuinely warm towards small children, the sea is warm, and the distances are short by regional standards.
- Duration
- 12 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 5
- Best months
- Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar
- From
- $2,100 per person
The thing that ruins family trips here is not the country, it is the itinerary. A standard twelve day route has seven or eight hotel changes and several four hour drives, and a seven year old will make you pay for every one of them. This version has five changes, no drive over three hours, a pool at every stop and at least one thing each day that exists for the children rather than for you.
Who it suits: families with children roughly 5 to 16. We adjust it upward and downward, and for under-threes we would push you towards a shorter route with two bases.
Your specialist: your named Sri Lanka specialist, with our Delhi office and our representatives on the ground.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive, night at Negombo. Twenty minutes from the airport rather than three hours to the interior. Family rooms, a pool, no plans. Most flights land at unsociable hours and the first day is for sleeping and swimming.
Day 2: Negombo to Sigiriya. Three and a half hours with a proper stop, arriving for lunch. Afternoon in the pool, then the Dambulla cave temples in the late light, which are dark, painted and full of Buddha statues, and take under an hour, which is the right length.
Day 3: Sigiriya, early. At the gate for opening. The climb is around 1,200 steps on open staircases and most children over about seven love it, partly because of the lion’s paws and the spiral stair to the frescoes. Be honest with yourself about heights: the metal stairways are exposed and there is a section near the top where you cannot turn back easily. If that is not for your family, Pidurangala across the valley is a shorter scramble with the better view. Back by ten, pool for the rest of the day.
Day 4: Village day. A morning at a village near the tank: a catamaran across the water, a bullock cart, and lunch cooked over firewood by a family who let the children grind the coconut and pound the chillies. This is the day children describe when they get home. Afternoon free.
Day 5: Sigiriya to Kandy. Under three hours. We skip the tourist spice gardens on the Matale road. Late afternoon at the Temple of the Tooth for the evening puja, which is drums, crowds and incense and holds children’s attention far better than a daytime visit. Two nights in Kandy.
Day 6: Kandy. The botanical gardens at Peradeniya in the morning, which are enormous and made for running, including the avenue of giant bamboo and a fig tree the size of a house. Afternoon swim, then a short introduction to Kandyan drumming and dance, or the market if your children prefer buying things to watching things.
Day 7: The train to the tea country. The good bit, deliberately shortened. We board at Kandy or Peradeniya for the climb, roughly four hours to Nanu Oya with the windows open and the hills going past. Your driver takes the luggage and meets the train, so nobody is wrestling suitcases. Two nights in a tea estate bungalow with a garden and a fireplace, at around 6,000 feet. Bring warm clothes, because the nights here drop to about 50°F (10°C) and children who have been at the beach do not expect it.
Day 8: Tea country, gently. A short estate walk with a plucker, a factory visit where they see the leaf turn into what is in the pot, and an afternoon by the fire with a strawberry farm stop for the ones who need bribing. We do not attempt Horton Plains on this itinerary: the half past five departure and a three hour moorland walk is a bad trade with children in the car.
Day 9: Down to Udawalawe. Around three hours out of the hills. An afternoon game drive in a private jeep. Udawalawe is the elephant park, and wild elephants here are close to certain on any drive, year round, which is exactly what you want when you have promised a child elephants. Before the drive, the feeding at the Elephant Transit Home, which is a rehabilitation centre releasing orphans back into the wild, watched from a platform. One night in a small lodge at the park edge.
Day 10: To the south coast. Two hours to a beach near Tangalle or Dickwella. Two nights in one place with no packing in between, which is the point of the whole last third. Afternoon in the sea, on a bay we have chosen because it is swimmable rather than because it is famous.
Day 11: The coast. Nothing scheduled. Options if you want them: a stilt walk in the mangroves, a cooking session in the hotel kitchen making hoppers, a surf lesson at Weligama for teenagers. In season, roughly November to March, the community turtle watch at Rekawa after dark, where you wait on a dark beach for a green turtle to come ashore and lay. It is a real conservation project, it is not a certainty on any given night, and we say so before you go.
Day 12: Galle, then departure. An hour and a half up the coast, an hour walking the fort ramparts and the lighthouse if the flight allows, then two and a half hours to the airport on the expressway.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast in family rooms or two-room configurations throughout, a private air-conditioned car with a licensed English-speaking chauffeur guide, child seats on request, reserved train seats on the hill country leg with luggage transferred by road, the village day with lunch, site guides at Sigiriya, Kandy and Galle, a private jeep with tracker at Udawalawe, the Elephant Transit Home viewing, all entries, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our local representatives.
Honest notes
We do not include the elephant orphanage on the Kandy road. It appears on nearly every family itinerary sold for this country. Chained animals, a bathing spectacle staged for coaches, and a crowd. Udawalawe and the Transit Home give your children wild elephants and a rehabilitation story instead. If you still want it after reading that, we will book it.
Turtle hatcheries on the south coast. Same answer. Most of them keep hatchlings in tanks far longer than is good for them so that visitors can hold one. Rekawa in season is the real version.
The train. Reserved seats open 30 days ahead and go quickly in high season. We buy on the release morning. With children we will not put you in unreserved carriages for four hours, so if the seats have gone we book a private carriage or drive that leg and keep the shorter, prettier Nanu Oya to Ella section for another day.
Sigiriya and heights. The staircases are open metal and the rock face is right there. Plenty of children run up it. Some adults find it harder than their children do. Pidurangala is not a consolation prize.
Heat. The lowlands sit around 86°F (30°C) with high humidity, and the middle of the day is not for sightseeing at any age. Everything on this route is scheduled early or late for that reason.
Sea safety. The south coast is calm and swimmable from roughly December to March and can be dangerous outside that window. We pick the bay, and if the sea is wrong on your days our people on the ground move you along the coast rather than shrugging.
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