Island of Serendipity
Hill country by train, leopards at first light and a coastline that never quite ends. Close enough for a long weekend.
Sri Lanka is the shortest flight abroad from South India and one of the most varied countries for its size. You can be in tea country by lunch and on a beach by evening.
The train from Kandy to Ella is worth building the trip around. Everything else — the fort at Galle, the leopards at Yala, the whales off Mirissa — arranges itself neatly around that line.
Getting there
Indicative map, not to scale. It shows which cities fly direct — not exact positions or distances.
10 Indian cities fly direct to Sri Lanka.
Where to go
Decide first
Decide second
taller bar means more rain
Pick a month to read it in full.
Northeast monsoon
Dry on the west, the south and in the hills; wet on the east. The classic route — Colombo, the cultural triangle, the hill country, the south coast — works perfectly now, which is precisely why it costs the most it will all year.
Peak dry season
The driest and most reliable month for the standard itinerary. Whale watching off Mirissa is at its best and the hill country is at its clearest. Book two to three months out or take what is left.
End of the dry season
Still dry, getting hot at sea level, and the crowds thin noticeably after the first week. The hills stay comfortable throughout, which makes this the best weather-to-price trade of the year.
First inter-monsoon
Thundery afternoons across the island and the hottest lowland temperatures of the year. Sinhala and Tamil New Year falls in mid-April: much of the country shuts for two days, every train is full, and the roads out of Colombo are worse than usual.
Southwest monsoon breaks
The west and south get properly wet and the sea turns rough. The east, meanwhile, turns dry. Move the itinerary to Trincomalee and Arugam Bay and the same trip costs about a third less than it did in February.
Southwest monsoon
Daily rain and rough seas on the west and south. The east coast is at its best and close to empty, and the elephant gathering at Minneriya is beginning to build.
East coast season
The east is dry and warm, the hills are windy, the south is unpredictable. Esala Perahera in Kandy — ten nights of elephants, drummers and fire dancers — falls in July or August and is worth building a trip around.
East coast season
As July. The best month of the year for surf at Arugam Bay, the peak of the elephant gathering, and the busiest fortnight the hill country sees because of the Perahera.
Between monsoons
The quietest month on the island. The east is still good, the west is drying out, and occupancy is at its lowest outside May. If you want the country to yourself and can take a wet afternoon, this is the month.
Second inter-monsoon
The one month with no dry side. Heavy, sudden thunderstorms everywhere, the lowest prices of the year, and the fewest visitors. Storms are short rather than all-day, but they are not avoidable.
Monsoon retreating
Wet on the east, clearing on the west. The last week of November is often excellent on the south coast and still priced as low season, which makes it the most underrated fortnight in the calendar.
Dry season returns
The west and south turn dry in the first week and the island fills up behind it. The final fortnight is the most expensive of the year — book it in September, or accept whatever is still available.
Background
The history is older than most people expect. Buddhism arrived in the third century BC, carried across by Mahinda, son of the emperor Ashoka, which is why so much of the island feels half familiar to an Indian traveller and half not. Anuradhapura was the capital for over a thousand years. Sigiriya, the rock fortress with the frescoes near the top, went up in the fifth century for a king who had murdered his father and did not expect to be forgiven.
Then came the coast. The Portuguese landed in 1505, the Dutch took over in the 1650s and rebuilt Galle into the fort you walk around today, and the British arrived in 1796, taking Kandy in 1815 — the last kingdom on the island to fall. Independence came in 1948, and Ceylon became Sri Lanka in 1972, though the tea still ships under the old name.
That tea is the reason the train exists. When blight destroyed the coffee plantations in the 1870s the planters replanted with tea, and a railway was pushed up into the hills to bring it back down. The line from Kandy to Ella was built to move cargo. The view was an accident.
Practical
Indian passports need an ETA — an electronic travel authorisation — arranged online before you fly rather than on arrival.
Sri Lanka has changed both the fee and the application portal more than once in recent years, and has run stretches where the fee was waived for Indian travellers altogether. Rather than print a number here that may already have moved, we confirm the current position in writing when we quote your trip.
The Sri Lankan rupee. Awkwardly, it is also written Rs, so read menus carefully — the numbers look alarming until you divide. Roughly one Indian rupee buys about three and a half Sri Lankan rupees, which puts 1,000 LKR somewhere near ₹285. Treat that as indicative and check the rate the week you travel.
Cards are fine in hotels and city restaurants. Everywhere else, carry cash. ATMs are easy to find in Colombo, Kandy and Galle, and thin on the ground in between.
Two worth carrying. Sri Lanka elected the world’s first woman prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in 1960 — before any other country anywhere. And Adam’s Peak is climbed through the night by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians alike, each for a different reason, which tells you most of what you need to know about the place.
Here is the useful part: the sockets take three plug types, and two of them are the round-pin plugs India already uses. Most of what is in your bag will simply fit. Pack one universal adapter for the British-style sockets and you are covered.
230 volts, 50 hertz — the same as home, so nothing needs a converter.
Sinhala and Tamil are both official languages, which surprises people. If you are travelling from Tamil Nadu you will find Tamil on the road signs, on the banknotes and in daily use across the north, the east and much of the hill country.
English is the link language between the two, and is spoken well anywhere visitors go.
Sri Lankan food is not Indian food, and it is usually hotter. Rice and curry means a plate of rice ringed by five or six small dishes, mostly vegetables, with coconut in nearly all of them.
Look for hoppers, the bowl-shaped fermented pancake eaten at breakfast with an egg cracked into the middle; string hoppers, which are idiyappam under another name; and kottu, roti chopped on a hot griddle with such a racket that you hear the shop before you see it. Lamprais — rice, meat and sambol baked inside a banana leaf — came from the Dutch Burghers, and is one of the last edible pieces of the colonial century.
Vegetarians eat very well here. Jain requirements need a day of notice and we arrange them.
About 22 million people. Sinhalese are the majority, with Sri Lankan Tamils, Moors and Indian-origin Tamils making up most of the rest. Theravada Buddhism is the largest faith, alongside substantial Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities — in parts of Colombo you will pass all four within a few streets.
At temples: shoes and hats off, shoulders and knees covered. It is worth doing properly rather than minimally.
A democratic republic with an executive president elected directly by the country, and a single-chamber parliament of 225 members.
A quiz answer worth carrying: Colombo is not the capital. Parliament sits at Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, a few kilometres inland, while Colombo stays the commercial centre and the city everyone means when they say they have landed.
Two things are taken far more seriously than most visitors expect. Do not turn your back on a Buddha statue to pose for a photograph, and do not travel with a visible Buddha tattoo — people have been refused entry and deported over it. It is not a technicality, and it is not negotiable at the airport.
Beyond that: drink bottled water, use repellent because dengue is present year round, and take local advice on which beaches are safe to swim. The currents on the south coast change with the monsoon, and the safe beach in January is not always the safe beach in July.
Ready to book
4N / 5D
Kandy 1N → Nuwara Eliya 2N → Colombo 1N
from ₹32,000 per person
5N / 6D
Kandy 2N → Bentota 2N → Colombo 1N
from ₹40,000 per person
5N / 6D
Sigiriya 2N → Nuwara Eliya 2N → Colombo 1N
from ₹36,500 per person
6N / 7D
Kandy 2N → Nuwara Eliya 1N → Bentota 2N → Colombo 1N
from ₹47,500 per person
Talk to someone who has been. We will tell you honestly whether Sri Lanka suits the trip you have in mind.
