Luxury holidays to Sri Lanka

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Search for your luxury, bespoke holiday to Sri Lanka by region, special interest, theme or feature

Search here if you want a visit a particular region of Sri Lanka, perhaps Tea Country or Galle and the south coast or the Cultural Triangle.

Search here for a themed holiday such as a touring holiday, a suggested two centre holiday, family holidays, honeymoons and special occasions.

Search here if you are looking for, for example, a safari, a bird-watching holiday, a golf holiday, cookery or a Geoffrey Bawa architecture tour. Many more special interest holidays in Sri Lanka to be discovered here.

Search here for a special featured holiday that might be with a seasonal angle such as festivals, cricket and other sporting events. Combined early booking and special offer ideas will be found here too.

Then once you have had a look, speak to us and let us guide you using our knowledge and experience of the country.

Luxury holidays to Sri Lanka: luxury hotel holidays, touring holidays and special interest holidays

Our bespoke, luxury hotel holidays can be

● Single centre or multi-centre
● Long or short stays
● Combine a variety of different hotels in different regions
● Utilise a variety of transport arrangements including scheduled flights, local flights, transfers or chauffeur-guides

Included in all our holidays

● Concierge service
● Handcrafted helpful hints and local information provided with all our holidays
● Personal service by your sales consultant who looks after all aspects of your holiday
● Full financial protection with our ATOL (3076) for all holidays including a flight and our ABTOT for all non-air holidays

Call us on 01392 441245

Luxury holidays to Sri Lanka: luxury hotel holidays, touring holidays and special interest holidays

An Expressions holiday to Sri Lanka is tailor-made according to your requirements and can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Sri Lanka contains a kaleidoscope of experiences and provides so much more than just a tropical beach holiday – the wealth of culture and history, contrasting scenery, typical architecture, wildlife and varied pastimes promise an enriching holiday experience. We will link all these experiences together to create a tailor-made holiday to suit to your tastes, anything from a single beach stay to a chauffeur-driven tour. Young or old, family or couple, beach-bound or culture-vulture – whatever your holiday style, we’ll find the correct solution for you. Expressions Holidays has made a personal selection based on first-hand visits and experiences of what we consider to be the very best in its category throughout Sri Lanka. We will combine a comfortable hotel stay with truly fascinating cultural, sporting and wildlife experiences that reflect the beautiful facets of this tropical island. Expressions Holidays provides a framework for flexibility, personal requirements and individual arrangements. Everything we offer on this website and from our brochure can be booked as it is, or usually, customised at the request of clients. This might mean adding extra nights, reducing nights from suggestions, upgrading room types and including special arrangements. Ideally, once you have had a look at our holiday ideas, we speak to you about what you are looking for, so that we can then put together the ‘package’ for you, creating a tailor-made holiday and a price, along with upgrade and downgrade options. We find it most productive for us and our clients if we talk through the quotation, explain the day by day details and the pricing options. Then you have the full facts available in order to make your decision.

Places to stay

Accommodation is a vital part of the holiday experience and our selection of places to stay in Sri Lanka offers an exciting range of boutique hotels, tea-planters’ bungalows, grand hotels, eco-lodges, safari lodges and luxury resorts. Many are rich with cultural heritage and many others are renowned architectural masterpieces, often designed by Geoffrey Bawa. Almost all hotels offer a choice of room types, including luxurious suites and perhaps inter-connecting rooms for families.

Single centre holidays

Sri Lanka is the perfect place to relax and enjoy a luxurious holiday with tropical sun, sea and sand, spending your days walking along long stretches of sandy beach and perhaps making the odd excursion to explore further afield. Our range of hotels along the coast would be wonderful for a relaxing week or two by the beach. Hotels in Negombo, Bentota and Galle offer the better options for shopping and dining out nearby. For those who love to stay in one place and explore cultural sites and wildlife at a leisurely pace, you could easily stay for a week or more in the Cultural Triangle, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya or Galle. The Cultural Triangle promises an abundance of history and archaeology; Kandy allows you to fully appreciate the nature and culture of this amazing country and discover cultural sites around Sri Lanka’s ancient royal capital; Nuwara Eliya gives you the opportunity to explore tea plantations and enjoy leisurely pursuits; while Galle offers an historic town and lovely coastline.

Two-centre holidays

The obvious combination here is for a stay in the country and a stay on the coast. That way, depending on the areas you choose, you will experience a wide range of what Sri Lanka has to offer but without the constant travelling of a touring holiday. Almost any two centres would work together. The combination you choose will give you some subtle differences though in terms of scenery and cultural experiences. Or you can make the focus of one stay much more rural or wildlife associated.

Touring holidays

A touring holiday of Sri Lanka is at the heart of what many of our clients want to experience from this fascinating country and it is where we excel at using our personal knowledge and experience to tailor a holiday that is a perfect match for you. Stay in several different locations around Sri Lanka, allowing time to explore and relax in each. Combine a few nights on the beach with stays in the Kandy Hills, in the Cultural Triangle, on a high tea estate or in a national wildlife park, in Galle, Negombo or Colombo. It makes sense to factor in a night or two in Colombo, Negombo, Wadduwa or at the Wallawwa near the airport, at the beginning and/or end of your holiday to coincide with flight times.

Travel

The most popular and most efficient way to travel to Sri Lanka is from Heathrow to Colombo with Sri Lankan Airways. The flight time is about 11 hours and the timings are very convenient with the flight from London to Colombo leaving at about 21.00 hrs and arriving about 12.00 hrs the next day and on the return the flight leaves at about 13.00 hrs and arrives in London at about 20.00 hrs the same day. Sri Lankan offer economy and business class. If you want to travel from a UK regional airport, then Emirates offers a choice of flights, but we may have to amend the itinerary on the first and last days to accommodate the arrival and departure times.

Travel within Sri Lanka

We include private transfers with all our holidays to Sri Lanka, and a personal driver-guide with all our touring holidays. Your English-speaking driver-guide will meet you on arrival at Colombo airport, then accompany you on your touring holiday around the island, although the driver-guide is not automatically included when you are at beach stay for several nights. All our holidays are for individuals, so you travel as your own party and do not join a group. It is also possible to hire a car in Sri Lanka and can be arranged locally or in advance. A more popular option is to hire a car with driver for day trips or excursions, which again can be arranged by us in advance or by the hotel locally.

Our bespoke, luxury hotel holidays can be

● Single centre or multi-centre
● Long or short stays
● Combine a variety of different hotels in different regions
● Utilise a variety of transport arrangements including scheduled flights, local flights, transfers or chauffeur-guides

Included in all our holidays

● Concierge service
● Handcrafted helpful hints and local information provided with all our holidays
● Personal service by your sales consultant who looks after all aspects of your holiday
● Full financial protection with our ATOL (3076) for all holidays including a flight and our ABTOT for all non-air holidays

Call us on 01392 441245

Luxury holidays to Sri Lanka: luxury hotel holidays, touring holidays and special interest holidays

A holiday in Sri Lanka can encompass an amazing kaleidoscope of experiences, from lazing by palm-fringed beaches to gazing regally over stunning landscapes from the top of Sigiriya Rock Fortress and chancing upon a herd of elephants in the wild. This pearl drop island of Serendipity is a powerful assault on the senses...a dizzy world of aromatic fragrances, succulent tropical fruits, uplifting Ayurveda massage, sun-drenched villages and friendly island life.

Regions of Sri Lanka

Roughly only half the size of England yet packed with a whole continent’s worth of temples and ruins, wildlife reserves and luxury beach resorts, Sri Lanka is a beautiful, bite-sized slice of paradise offering a whole world of diverse escapes. Littered with elegant colonial hotels and enchanting boutique lodges, Sri Lanka also offers luxury at a relative snip. Young or old, family or couple, beach-bound or culture-vulture – a visit to Sri Lanka satisfies everyone. Formerly an Arab trading port, the commercial capital Colombo is a bustling, colourful town, with a fabulous bazaar, colonial churches and craft markets. To the north of Colombo lies Negombo and the beaches of the west coast, whilst to the south Wadduwa is the start of a string of fabulous beaches running all the way down and around Sri Lanka’s southwest coast, with a collection of intimate, exquisite beach resorts. Further southward lies historic Galle, a reminder of the Dutch presence on the island. Inviting as Sri Lanka’s coastline is, however, the island’s interior is worth the airfare alone, with forest parks sheltering leopards and wild Asian elephants, a verdant hill country carpeted in tea plantations with lovely boutique planter’s house hotels, and what no visitor to Sri Lanka should be allowed to miss, the Cultural Triangle, a small area boasting five UNESCO World Heritage Sites in an area no bigger than Kent. New to tourism is the north and north east of Sri Lanka, strewn with Hindu temples, colonial gems and long white beaches offering spectacular snorkelling.

Country facts

Capital

Colombo

Airports

Colombo Sri Jayawardenapura-Kotte

Currency

Sri Lankan Rupee

Size

430 km north to south, 225 km east to west

Population

21 million

Average temperature

The climate is tropical and with an average temperature of about 27C but with regional variations in terms of temperature and rainfall. The south-west has its monsoon season from May to July with intermittent rain and the north-east has its monsoon season from December to March. Seas are rougher in the area with the monsoon. In Tea Country, it is cooler but each valley can have a micro-climate

Unmissable holiday experiences in Sri Lanka

Cricket is a national sport, played on every dusty maidan and patch of grass from Jaffna to Galle; a real highlight of any trip to the south is Galle Fort, where you can wander round the ancient ramparts at sunset, watching cricket games below, or stroll the narrow streets in search of antiques in tiny, friendly shops; local festivals such as Vesak full moon in May and Poson full moon in July, as well as the famous Esala Festival in Kandy in July and August, when Buddha’s tooth is taken out from the temple and paraded through the streets; visiting national parks, sheltering an abundance of wildlife including leopards, elephants, bears and hundreds of species of birds; buying tea, gems, jewellery, spices; fantastic spicy local cuisine, specialising in fish dishes, and delicious ‘egg hoppers’; tea-tasting in the hill country; Sigirya Rock Fortress; the Cave temples of Dambulla; the medieval capital and ruins of Polonnaruwa; the sacred city of Anuradhapura; the west coast beaches flanked by palm trees, including Negombo, Beruwela, Bentota and Galle; the elephant orphanage at Pinnawela; the tea plantations near Nuwara Eliya, a region known locally as Little England; Ayurvedic massage; a warm welcome wherever you go.

Call us on 01392 441245