Coryn & Charles
England, January/February 2024
Here is a bit of feedback on our holiday in Sri Lanka.
Two outstanding professional guides:
- Jagath Rathnayake was wonderful – a safe driver, he spoke good English, was thoroughly professional, knowledgeable, nice and found us great lunch spots. (You would be crazy not to employ him more often!)
- Darshana Kaludewage – absolutely superb wildlife guide and jeep driver in Yala and Bundala.
Hotels
The Maniumpathy hotel [Colombo], our favourite, was lovely and peaceful with great staff, very good food and a friendly atmosphere. We noticed one evening that the owner's wife was dining there with some friends so I expect that helps to keep the standards up.
The W15 Lake Gregory hotel [Nuwara Eliya] was also very good and we loved the Villa Hundira [Negombo].
The huge negativity was the Forest Rock Garden [Anuradhapura], which we referred to as the Temple of Doom. It was oppressive, dark, depressing, spooky and appeared to be on its last legs with a skeleton staff who could barely keep the place functioning. On our arrival after a 5-hour non-stop drive with Tharindu from Colombo, we were hungry and all they could come up with was a raw onion sandwich between two slices of white bread! The food was awful. I gather that it is being sold and so many of the staff have left. It has a neglected air of disintegration and decay and we hated it! [We apologise for suggesting Forest Rock Garden as an alternative to The Sanctuary at Tissawewa, which closed for emergency maintenance with little notice, leaving us to find a replacement at the last-minute in an area with a dearth of quality accommodation. We will not be promoting Forest Rock Garden in the future.]
Top favourites
Interesting visit to Geoffrey Bawa's house [No.11, 33rd Lane, Colombo], the temples of Anuradhapura, the [Peradeniya] botanical gardens in Kandy and the bird watching in Bundala.
Top unfavourites
Yala. Had I known that there are so many jeeps – about 50 at any one time in the park – I would never have gone there to try to see leopard or indeed anything. There were huge polluting traffic jams of jeeps, made worse because it had rained heavily (no leopards out) and the roads had caved away in many places. I would not recommend a visit to Yala to anyone. I also feel that you should update your blurb about Yala which is a bit optimistic and misleading. According to the driver guide, there are almost no sloth bears or black bears to be seen, he has only seen a porcupine 2 or 3 times in his life. We saw 3 elephants, 2 mongoose, deer, water buffalo, wild boar, monkeys and several birds. I also discovered by talking to friends that there are leopards in Wilpattu, which would have been a better option. However our guide tried his best and we had a lovely morning in Bundala.
In general of course the Sri Lankans are charming, but since our visit 20 years ago there is so much sprawling ribbon development, so many tuk tuks that places like Ella have been spoilt. This is the price of 'progress' of course, but having been lucky enough to enjoy a beautiful Sri Lanka in the past, we feel we have seen the best and are unlikely to go back.
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