LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL ITINERARY INFORMATION
Itinerary: Capital, Coast & Hills
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THREE TO FOUR WEEKS
This 547km route takes you through Sri Lanka’s highlights in under a month. Lie on palm-fringed beaches, check out colonial architecture and stare at stunning Hill Country views. Just watch out for the traffic on the Colombo–Galle road.
Start with a few days in
Colombo, sampling some of Sri Lanka’s finest cuisine and becoming acquainted with the city’s vibrant Buddhist temples. Then hug the coast south, stopping off in
Bentota and
Hikkaduwa to relax on palm-lined stretches of sand. Next comes
Galle, with its 17th-century Dutch city-within-a-fort.
From here head inland to
Horton Plains National Park. Make a side trip to 240m-high
Bambarakanda Falls, Sri Lanka’s tallest waterfall, and spend a night or two in the misty ex–colonial hill station of
Nuwara Eliya, which earns another superlative as the island’s highest city.
Continue north to Kandy, stopping off for a tour and tea tasting at
Labookellie Tea Factory and, if you haven’t had enough waterfall action,
Ramboda Falls.
Kandy, Sri Lanka’s main cultural centre, will delight you with its mild climate, colonial architecture, frequent festivals and sumptuous Buddhist temples. From Kandy it’s a relatively easy ride back to Colombo.
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