Standard excursions cost roughly the same with different guides, whether hotel guides or not. We took a 2-day excursion with the hotel guide for $120 per person — very beautiful and informative, but if they had cut out the shops, it could have been cheaper and done in 1 day, or at least we wouldn’t have had to rush at the great locations where we hurried because of visits to gem shops and other nonsense.
About the excursion:
- 2-day trip departing at 6:00 from Unawatuna in a comfortable air-conditioned minivan.
- The southernmost point of the island, with a lighthouse
- A beautiful viewpoint on the coast
- Looking for wild elephants (the chance of seeing one is now small) (but 95% of the time you won’t see a wild elephant, or you’ll just glimpse one in the distance as you drive past)
- Ravana Falls
- The town of Ella
- Little Adam’s Peak
- A walk around the town (if there’s time) and an overnight stay at a hotel
- The Nine Arches Bridge
- A train ride on one of the most scenic railway lines in the world
- Nuwara Eliya (an old English town)
- A beautiful 19th-century English post office
- A tea factory (we taste tea, see how it’s made and buy it)
- We swim in a very impressive waterfall at the top of a mountain
- A viewpoint
- Climbing the Ambuluwawa Tower
- An elephant farm and elephant rides (I don’t remember exactly — I think the ride was already included in the price).
- And loads of workshops (throughout the whole excursion) — gems, clothes and so on — from which the guides usually get a percentage of your purchases.
The order may be reversed. We really liked this excursion, except that we were taken to the promised hotel, where we were told someone had mixed something up, and were moved to a hotel of a much lower class than promised.
( Important ☝️. Don’t book excursions with the hotel guide right away on the first day; check prices with others and ask people who have been holidaying there for a while. You can always go back to the hotel guide later and buy from them if you don’t find better prices… And this rule applies in absolutely any country.)
We also rented a bike to ride to Galle and see the sights of Galle on our own.
For renting the scooter we paid 1,200 rupees and left a paper copy of our driving licence (the paper booklet — ordinary plastic licences don’t count, and if the police stop you, you’ll have to pay bribes).
On the road, whoever’s vehicle is bigger is considered the boss and right about everything — which is exactly why the local buses are called “crazy buses”. On all our trips and excursions we passed an accident at least once an hour. Our guide also told us that, according to statistics, there’s a fatal road accident in Sri Lanka every 3 hours. If you have no experience, or little experience, on two wheels, better not rent one — use a tuk-tuk.
Slowly but surely, we did manage to get to Galle on the bike and see the wonderful fort, stroll through the streets of the fort, and look at beautiful paintings in the local shops. We stopped at a big supermarket (big compared to others near Unawatuna) and rode back. The same trip by tuk-tuk at normal prices would have cost us 1,600 rupees — just to Galle, walking around there, and back from Galle. So overall the price, including petrol, is almost the same, but the stress of the chaotic traffic on a narrow road isn’t worth it… Organised sightseeing tours of Galle cost much more than doing it yourself.
We took the rest of our excursions with a local tuk-tuk driver, Lalantha. My colleague and friend Dima, with whom we came to Sri Lanka, got to know him and got chatting. We’re very glad to have met Lalantha, who gave us prices that were, if not local prices, then very close to them. We went with him on these excursions: watching dolphins and whales; to a turtle farm; a boat trip along the lagoon (river) with various birds, lizards and crocodiles, including a stop at a cinnamon island, where they showed us how and what they make from it and, of course, offered to sell us some. And of course we went to the liquor shop for a fair price of 400 rupees for the round trip (normally 600–700 for the round trip, and if you don’t ask the price before getting in, on arrival they’ll demand 600–800 each way…). All in all, the excursions were cheap and informative.
At the beach you can snorkel: there are fish, corals and lots of sea urchins. You can take bread with you and feed the fish — then they swim up very close, and there are lots of them… On other beaches you can rent a board and learn to surf (or just ride the waves if you already can). There are boats you can also hire with a driver. You can walk right from the hotel along the beach to the Buddhist temple, but don’t forget to cover your knees, shoulders and upper arms; you must walk around the temple grounds barefoot, and you mustn’t turn your back on the Buddha or take selfies with your back to him.
IMPORTANT ☝️ from 11:00 to 15:00 it’s better to stay out of the sun — the sun there at that time is simply infernal — and be sure to use sunscreen.
Now you know everything about excursions in Sri Lanka. If you want to learn more about Sri Lanka, read our other articles about Sri Lanka.
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