The best two weeks including the Maldives

The reason is simple. Five nights on an island is exactly the right length when you arrive tired, sunburnt from somewhere else, with a camera full of temples and a rhythm of early starts to unwind. The same five nights at the start of a holiday feel like a waste of long-haul flying, and seven or eight nights as the whole of a trip is more single-island time than most people want.

So the honest answer to what to do with two weeks is: spend eight or nine days somewhere with a route in it, then stop moving. And the somewhere, ninety minutes away by air, is Sri Lanka.

The route, argued

Two weeks, Colombo in and Malé out, with the flight between them at the join. This is Sri Lanka and the Maldives in 14 days, which is the single itinerary we build more often than any other in this destination.

Eight nights in Sri Lanka, five in the Maldives, one long-haul flight at each end. That is the shape.

Why this pairing and not another

The flight is short and it is frequent. Colombo to Malé is about 470 miles (760 km) and takes an hour and a half. There are several flights a day and they are cheap by long-haul standards. Compare that to reaching the Maldives from anywhere else worth a fortnight and the case makes itself.

The two halves are genuinely opposite. Sri Lanka is a driving country: temples, tea estates, national parks, hill towns, a coastline, and a new bed every second or third night. The Maldives is one room and one reef for five days. Two weeks of either alone is unbalanced. Together they are the most complete fortnight we sell.

The seasons line up better than people assume. Sri Lanka has two monsoons hitting opposite coasts, so there is a good half of the island in almost any month. The Maldives dry season, December to April, sits neatly over the south-west Sri Lankan season. From May to September the pairing still works: you use Sri Lanka’s east coast and take the Maldives at green season prices. We work both around your dates rather than telling you the country is closed.

The food connection is real. Southern Indian Ocean cooking runs continuously across this water: coconut milk, curry leaf, pandan, chilli. You eat the parent version for a week and then the island version. See what to eat in the Maldives.

The eight days in Sri Lanka, in more detail

Negombo, one night. The unglamorous and correct first stop. Landing at Colombo after a long flight and immediately driving four or five hours into the interior is how people spend day two asleep. Negombo is twenty minutes from the terminal, has a beach and a fishing harbour, and lets the trip start properly the next morning. See Sri Lanka for the full picture.

The Cultural Triangle, three nights, one base. Sigiriya, the rock fortress with the frescoes and the water gardens, climbed at seven in the morning before the heat and the crowds. Dambulla’s cave temples. Polonnaruwa, the medieval capital, best seen by bicycle. Anuradhapura if you have the appetite for a fourth site. We use a single base near Sigiriya and drive out each morning rather than moving hotels three times, and that decision alone buys back most of a day.

Kandy, one night. The Temple of the Tooth at the evening puja, the lake, and a city in a bowl of hills that feels completely unlike the dry plains you have just left. One night is enough for most people and we say so.

The hill country, two nights. The train from Kandy or Nanu Oya to Ella runs through tea estates, cloud forest and small stations for around six hours and it is, in our view, the best train journey in Asia. Nuwara Eliya sits at about 6,100 feet (1,860 m) and is genuinely cold at night, which after four days at 90F (32C) is a novelty rather than a hardship. A tea factory visit here is worth doing once and once only.

Yala or the south coast, one night. A choice. Yala National Park gives you the best chance of a leopard sighting in the world and an early morning in a jeep. The south coast around Tangalle or Mirissa gives you a beach and a slow evening. Which is right depends on whether you want the Maldives to be your only sea.

Where we would change it

If you have sixteen or seventeen days, add two nights to the Maldives rather than to Sri Lanka. Seven nights on an island is the length at which the transfer stops dominating the arithmetic and the far atolls become worth reaching. See how many days do you need in the Maldives.

If you would rather see fewer places properly, cut Kandy and give the hill country three nights. Sri Lanka rewards slowing down more than it rewards adding sites, and the eight-day version above is already close to the maximum sensible pace.

If the diving is the point, invert the balance: five days in Sri Lanka and eight or nine in the Maldives, and consider a liveaboard rather than a resort. That is a different trip and we build it separately.

If you want a different first half entirely, southern India does the same job with more time. Kerala’s backwaters and hills, or Tamil Nadu’s temple towns, then the sea. It needs three weeks rather than two to be worth the flying. See Southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in 21 days and India.

What we would not do

We would not put the Maldives first. Arriving from a long-haul flight straight onto an island and then leaving it to go and drive around Sri Lanka for a week is the wrong order, and everyone who has done it says so afterwards. The stillness is the reward. Put it at the end.

We would not split the Maldives half across two islands on a fourteen day trip. Five nights is not enough to justify a second transfer. On a longer trip, yes.

We would not add a third country. Two weeks with Sri Lanka and the Maldives already contains one internal flight and eight hundred miles of driving. Adding a Gulf stopover on the way out is fine and adds days rather than removing them. Adding a third destination inside the fortnight is how a good trip becomes a tiring one.

We would not book a seaplane island on this shape without checking the Colombo flight time. Seaplanes fly in daylight only. A Colombo to Malé flight landing in the late afternoon cannot connect to one, which means a night in Hulhumalé you had not budgeted for. On a five night Maldives leg, that is a fifth of it. We check this before we choose the island, every time.

Choosing the island for the second half

The Maldives half of this trip has a specific brief that is different from a standalone Maldives holiday. You want a short transfer, because you have already flown twice that day. You want a good house reef, because five days is not long enough to be organising boat trips for every snorkel. And you want half board at least, because after eight days of Sri Lankan food at $8 a meal, resort à la carte prices are a shock.

That points, more often than not, to a well-chosen island in North or South Malé Atoll or the nearer part of Ari, reachable by speedboat, with reef you can swim to from the beach. It is not the most photographed choice and it is usually the right one. See classic Maldives in 7 days for how we build that half, or boutique Maldives in 7 days if the room is where you want the money.

Related

• Sri Lanka and the Maldives in 14 days
• Southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in 21 days
• The Maldives: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The Maldives month by month
• All our Maldives trips

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