Rock fortresses, tea country and the south coast: eight days, nine beds.
Sri Lanka was the trip that showed me how much fits on one small island. In a little over a week I went from a fifth-century rock fortress to cool tea-country hills, a safari park and three different beaches, sleeping somewhere new almost every night.
I booked each stay as I went, usually a day ahead. That kept the route loose and the days unhurried.
Stories
Sigiriya is a 200-metre slab of rock rising out of flat jungle, with the ruins of King Kashyapa's fifth-century palace on top. You climb past the old water gardens, a mirror wall polished…
Stayed at Mango Tree Home Stay and One More Night Hostel Stop 2 · 1 – 2 AprKandy sits around a lake in the hills, with the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic on its shore. It's the cultural capital of the island and feels it: drums at puja time, white-clothed…
Stayed at The Bliss at Kandy Stop 3 · 2 – 3 AprUp in tea country the air turns cool. Nuwara Eliya, close to 1,900 metres up, still has the colonial cottages and racecourse the British left behind, and every slope around it is planted in…
Stayed at Tiki Bar Hostel Ella Stop 4 · 3 AprUdawalawe National Park is one of the best places in Asia to see wild elephants, and it was the one night on this trip spent next to a park instead of a town. The plains around the…
Stayed at Greenwood Udawalawa Safari Resort Stop 5 · 3 – 4 AprThe south coast starts here. Mirissa is a curved bay of palms and surf shacks, and Weligama next door has the long, gentle break where half the island learns to surf. A surf lodge was the…
Stayed at Yasis Surf Lodge Stop 6 · 4 – 5 AprUnawatuna is a sheltered bay a few minutes from Galle, where a 17th-century Dutch fort still wraps the old town in stone walls. Inside the fort the streets are lined with colonial houses…
Stayed at Sixth Sense Hostel Stop 7 · 5 – 6 AprHikkaduwa has a reef close to shore and turtles that feed in the shallows. Up the coast at Kosgoda, turtle hatcheries buy eggs from fishermen, hatch them safely and release the babies to…
Stayed at Tipsy Ceylon Stop 8 · 7 AprThe last night was in Colombo, the capital, close to the airport and loud after a week of quiet. Galle Face Green, the seafront lawn, is where the whole city comes out at dusk.
Stayed at Drop Inn HostelsWhat it taught me
Nine beds in nine days, and every host lived differently. Sri Lanka was the first time I noticed how many ways there are to live a good life.