Sri Lanka

Not a place I knew much about for many years, but I came across it in a travel brochure and said, why not? It is a small country off the coast of southern India and has many varied sights to see, from temples, mountains, safaris, and surf beaches. For this trip, I booked through a website called Tourradar and the name of the tour was ‘Family Adventure By Rail, Road, and Raft‘ offered by the specific touring company, Rove Travel.

Here’s my video of the 2-week vacation over the 2017 year-end holiday.

We chose this tour because we wanted an active tour to see the highlights of Sri Lanka where hotels and transportation were organized. There are some countries where you just don’t want to mess with driving yourself. This was one of them. I have to admit we had a lot of driving time with very winding roads, but the car was comfortable and the guide was a good driver with all the traffic, tuk-tuks, big trucks, motorcycles and people walking on the street. The good part about our tour was that it was a small group, with only one other family (2 parents and 2 teenagers) from Canada.

Our itinerary included Sigiriya Rock, Kandy, a cooking class, lots of temples, a train trip from Ella to Nuwara Eliya, white water rafting, two different safaris in Minneriya National Park and Udawalawe National Park, Galle Fort, and Mirissa beach. We enjoyed all the colorful, interesting sights that we saw. We even had some unplanned activities such as an early morning hike up to Little Adam’s Peak and a whale watch tour in Mirissa.

After the 10-day organized tour, we booked ourselves an additional 3 days at Weligama Bay to relax at the beach and let Mike practice his surfing. I found a fantastic guest house right on the beach with a total of only 4 rooms. I really liked this place as it was beautifully designed and had such friendly people running it. The name of this boutique hotel was Elephant Stables at Weligama Bay.

If you’ve read my blog post about my top 5 destinations, you’ll know that this one made it to the list.

Feel free to check out all my photos of this trip here.

You can also read about Sri Lanka in my below blog posts!