Sri Lanka: Culture, Nature & Wild Beaches

We were told the best way to visit Sri Lanka is having your own driver. It is true that driving a car in Asia isn’t always very easy. Because we didn’t have lots of days available to explore the country we decided to trust this infirmation and booked Shana for 10 days. We waited for us, at Colombo’s airport, on Christmas Day, with his smile. The adventure can start!

Our first stop in Sri Lanka was Sigiriya. Right after landing in Colombo airport our driver directly drove us to the beautiful nature hotel named The Elephant Corridor.

This hotel takes his name to an historical fact, in the past this place was the corridor where the elephants walked through
Nowadays, there are still many wild elephants there and thoughtrouh Sri Lanka (20 000 wild elephants are wandering on the lands)If you are lucky, as we were on our first day, you can meet them on the road!
After our 5h drive from Colombo to Sigiriya we went straight to bed to be ready for the next day.

On 25th December we started out Christmas day by climbing the Pidurangala Rock! (Unusual for Christmas day right?!)

It was very foggy when we woke up. The climb was no so difficult but the rocks are very slippery and some of them too big for my small legs haha.
We reached the too 45min later. We couldn’t see anything around us. And suddenly the sun came out, and the beautiful lion rock appeared!

The view from up there was amazing with all these greens (rice fields, jungle) and the fortress is dominating the landscape. Can you believe that a king used to live up there? That’s crazy!

After going down we came back to The Elephant Corridor to enjoy a good breakfast.

The elephant corridor has huge gardens with villas, surrended by trees, flowers…

They offer you bicycles to explore the place, go to the spa and the pool. It is a peaceful place to relax in the nature!

We enjoyed every corner of the hotel until the nightfall, a beautiful sunset ended our first day in Sri Lanka.

The best breakfast partner: the peacock! We had our second day breakfast in the garden of our villa. A curious peacock decided to join. He was definitely more interested by what was on the table than sharing it with me! But we took some pictures of this unusual occasion.

During the afternoon, we went at Polonnâruvâ. This place really reminds me of Thailand!
Polonnâruvâ is an ancient city where you can see ruins of ancestral temples. And monkeys are always there!

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Back to our hotel, we drove across Minerya lake national park and met some wild elephants on the road to Sigiriya.

We just had some time to catch the sunset and enjoy our Christmas dinner.

The last morning The Elephant Corridor organized us an amazing breakfast at our villa again .It was so peaceful to be there, we just the sounds of the nature and this open view.

After that, we went to learn more about Sri Lankan spices and learnt how to make curry powder.

We drove to Kandy and it was raining a lot so we decided to see a cultural show before spending our evening at the Manor House. A beautiful colonial house with wonderful gardens. We didn’t find something very interesting in Kandy, it’s the second largest town in Sri Lanka, but we didn’t find the small places as we usually like so we decided to rest a bit before heading to Nuwara Eliya.

In the morning we had our breakfast in the tropical gardens with a cute kitty. I really love this location, so full of history!
Then we drove to a waterfall on our way and stopped to visit a tea factory! For a tea addict it was an awesome experience to discover the process from a tea leaf in the plantations to our cup of tea !

We spent our day around Nuwara Eliya to enjoy the beauty of these tea plantations fields. Landscapes are stunning!

28th December, after a very cold night (approx 9° in Nuwara Eliya) we drove to the famous city of Ella. We directly climbed the little Adam’s peak from where we had a spectacular view.

Then we continue to the famous 9 arches bridge. This place really deserves it’s famous! This wonderful bridge is surrounded by the jungle and tea plantations. A few minutes after we came the train arrived! It’s an old train, we felt like in a movie!

We were there at 12oclock, but I highly recommend you to go there for sunrise if you can! We weren’t able to do it so we decided to go back at sunset. But it was still very crowded.

The 29th we woke up at 5.30am to arrive early at Diyaluma falls.
I am always exigent towards waterfalls. I have seen many around the world and I often got disappointed when I arrived at the place. But this one is really impressive!!!
Firstly from the road down, but also when we arrived up!

To climb up to the waterfall is an experience!! Nobody told us how to reach go place so we left our car with flip flops!!
Our driver told us that we have to get a tuk tuk, it costs you 10€.
After a shot chaotic road by tuk tuk we had to climb 30-40 minutes (still in flip flops…) That was a bit dangerous, especially to go down)
We finally arrived at the top of the waterfall where we discovered many small waterfalls and natural pools. The water was cold but of course we went in! It was really cool, a great experience: the view was beautiful and we were alone there!

We directly drove to udawalawe national park to make a safari after this walk.

It was a very intensive and beautiful day! On 30th it was time for us to head to the south. We stopped at the famous Mirissa beach and coconut hill.

We ended our trip at Le Grand Galle.

The hotel is overlooking the Galle Fort, an iconic UNESCO World Heritage Site, welcomes you after a day of wandering the quaint streets of this historic destination.

Every details of a 5 stars resort were found there from the hotel decoration, services, the beautiful pool and delicious food!

We were given a lovely suite with a bathtub, a resort & ocean with.

We were lucky to spend there our last day of 2018 and celebrate NYE! It was a magical experience to end our Sri Lankan trip and this beautiful year 2018.

On January 1st we experienced the “floating breakfast” on a private pool villa! This is a must!

Thank you to all of the people we met on our road and a huge thank you to The Elephant Corridor, Le grand Gallé and our super driver Shana!!! If you plan to visit this beautiful country, here is Shana’s number (whatsApp him!!!): +94771843232
You can reach him on WhatsApp anytime!!! Book him, trust him and enjoy your ride!