Romantic Sri Lanka: 11 days for two
A honeymoon here fails for one reason: too many hotels. The island tempts you into seven stops in eleven nights, and you spend the trip packing. This route has five properties in eleven days, nothing that starts before nine except the two mornings genuinely worth an alarm, and a beach at the end rat
- Duration
- 11 days
- Pace
- Slow
- Hotel changes
- 4
- Best months
- Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr
- From
- $3,300 per person
It is built for December to April, when the south and west coasts are dry and the sea is calm. Between May and September we would build you a different route ending on the east coast, and it would be just as good.
Who it suits: couples and honeymooners who would rather have four exceptional rooms than seven adequate ones.
Your specialist: your named Sri Lanka specialist, with our Delhi office arranging the private touches on the ground.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive, night near the coast at Negombo. A small hotel twenty minutes from the airport rather than a three hour drive after a long flight. Dinner if you are awake, and no plans if you are not.
Day 2: To Sigiriya. Three and a half hours north through the coconut country. Afternoon at the Dambulla cave temples in the last of the light, when the coach groups have gone and the painted ceilings are lit from the doorways. Two nights in a small property looking at the rock.
Day 3: Sigiriya at opening, and an evening in a paddy field. At the gate before the heat: around 1,200 steps, exposed metal staircases, and a bottleneck near the top which is exactly why we go first. Back by ten for a long breakfast. The afternoon is empty. In the evening, dinner for two in a paddy field near the village, cooked over firewood, lit by oil lamps, with nobody else there. It is the single thing couples on this route mention most.
Day 4: Sigiriya to Kandy. Three hours, with a stop at Nalanda Gedige, a small eighth century shrine that almost nobody bothers with. Two nights in a planter’s house above the Kandy valley. Evening puja at the Temple of the Tooth, which is drums, oil lamps and a queue of people carrying lotus flowers.
Day 5: Kandy, unhurried. The Peradeniya gardens early while they are cool, then nothing. An in-room spa treatment or a walk on the hills behind the house. Dinner on the terrace.
Day 6: The train to the tea country. The hill line from Kandy or Peradeniya up to Nanu Oya, roughly four hours, in reserved seats with the windows open. Your driver meets the train with the luggage. Two nights in a tea estate bungalow with a fire, a butler, six rooms and a lawn at 6,000 feet.
Day 7: The estate. A morning walk through the tea with a plucker who explains what two leaves and a bud actually means, then a private picnic laid out on the estate somewhere with a view and nobody in it. Afternoon by the fire. If you want the Horton Plains dawn we will arrange it and warn you it means a half past five departure.
Day 8: Down to the south coast. The longest drive of the trip, roughly four and a half hours out of the hills to the coast near Tangalle, broken at Buduruwagala, where seven enormous figures are carved into a rock face in the middle of nowhere and there is usually nobody else there. Three nights at the sea.
Day 9: The coast. Nothing scheduled. In season, roughly December to April, an early boat out of Mirissa for blue whales, which are a genuine possibility on a good morning and never a promise, on an operator that keeps its distance rather than chasing. Otherwise a lagoon, a spa, a long lunch.
Day 10: Galle, and the last evening. An hour and a half west. The fort on foot in the late afternoon: the ramparts, the lighthouse, the Dutch houses, and the hour before sunset when the walls fill up. Dinner inside the fort. Back to the coast, or a final night in a fort house if you would rather wake up in Galle.
Day 11: Departure. Two and a half hours to the airport on the expressway.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast in five carefully chosen small properties including a tea estate bungalow and a planter’s house, a private air-conditioned car with a licensed English-speaking chauffeur guide throughout, reserved train seats on the hill country leg with luggage moved by road, the private paddy field dinner, the estate picnic, site guides at Sigiriya, Kandy and Galle, a private whale boat in season, all entries, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our local representatives.
Honest notes
Sigiriya is not a romantic climb. It is hot, steep and crowded, and it is still worth doing. We put you there at opening so that it is over by ten and the rest of the day belongs to you. If neither of you wants it, we swap it for Pidurangala at sunrise, which is a shorter scramble and has the better view because Sigiriya is in it.
Whales are not a certainty. Blue whales pass Mirissa roughly December to April and the sightings in that window are good, not guaranteed. The sea decides. We book the calmer early boat and we will not put you on a cheap one, because the cheap ones chase the animals.
One long drive. Day 8 is four and a half hours and there is no honest way around it: the hills and the south coast are simply that far apart. We break it properly. If you would rather not, we can shorten the tea country to one night and add it to the beach.
The train seats. Reservations open 30 days before departure and the good classes often go the same day. We buy on the release morning, and if they have gone we use a private carriage rather than putting you in an unreserved carriage for four hours.
Christmas and New Year. The small properties on this route are the first to sell out and they carry real supplements over those two weeks. If those are your dates, book six to nine months out.
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