Sri Lanka Complete Journey

Upon arrival at Colombo Airport, our representative will welcome you and assist with your transfer to the hotel in Negombo. Once settled in your room, you can enjoy the remainder of the day at your leisure. Overnight stay in Negombo.

After breakfast, you head from Negombo to Hendala to visit the Leprosy Museum. Set in a hospital first built during the Dutch period, the site is now 304 years old and is believed to be the first hospital established in the country by Western rulers, with some claiming it to be the oldest still in operation anywhere in the world.

Opened in 1708, its grounds hold a Dutch-style church and other original buildings, along with old medical equipment and accessories, including a very old washing machine that still works.

Returning to Negombo, you visit the local fish market before rounding off the day with a lagoon excursion in the evening.

After breakfast, you travel from Negombo to Peradeniya, just four miles from Kandy, to explore its Royal Botanical Gardens. First laid out as a royal pleasure garden and later reshaped under the British, the 147-acre grounds spread across well-tended lawns dotted with pavilions and an octagon conservatory. A cafeteria sits near the northern end of the entrance, while the real draws are the orchid house and a giant Javan fig tree.

From here you continue to Kandy, the last royal capital of the Sri Lankan kings and now a World Heritage Site. The town was ruled by King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe until it came under British rule in 1815, and its history still centres on its crown jewel, the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha.

A lakeside town set among misty hills, Kandy rewards a wander. The Kandy City Centre brings together the latest international brands, a bazaar, an arts and crafts centre, and a gem museum with a lapidary, while the market is piled high with fresh fruit and vegetables.

In the evening, a cultural show of traditional music and drumming is a lively way to round off the day.

After breakfast at your accommodation, you set off from Kandy for the Knuckles Range, a mist-laden run of peaks named for their likeness to the knuckles of a clenched fist. Straddling the Matale and Kandy districts, it shelters a wealth of flora and fauna, much of it found nowhere else in Sri Lanka, and has long been a favourite with hikers.

Find a spot on a cliff edge and the reward is a sweeping outlook over dense forest, tea plantations, terraced paddy fields and waterfalls. Later, you transfer back to Kandy.

After breakfast, you make your way to Nuwara Eliya along misty, steep roads that twist through blankets of tea bushes in a noticeably cooler climate. Known as a British colonial retreat and nicknamed the city of light, the town was once run by English and Scottish planters and still keeps its English-countryside feel, with colonial bungalows, hedgerows and one of the finest 18-hole golf courses in the world.

A hike between the green lawns and red-brick walls opens up views over the surrounding hill-country hamlet, and the drive itself passes green valleys, waterfalls and tea pluckers at work in brightly coloured saris.

There is plenty to fill the day if you wish. You might rent a bike for a gentle ride along the shore of Lake Gregory, or head to a tea plantation and factory to see how the celebrated Ceylon Tea is processed, watching the machines at work amid the scent of drying leaves before settling in with a freshly brewed cup.

After breakfast, you travel up to Horton Plains, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the finest stretches of wet montane evergreen forest in Sri Lanka. Sitting above 7,000 feet and covering some 3,169 hectares, this high plateau is prime walking country, with open green pastures and cool, clean air.

A 9km trail leads across frost-covered grass to World's End, a sheer drop of around 3,700 feet at the southern edge of the plains, and on to Bakers Falls, where a tributary of the Belihul Oya tumbles over the rocks. Along the way you may spot herds of sambar deer and plenty of birdlife, and if you are lucky, a wild boar, a fishing cat, otters or even the elusive Sri Lankan leopard, known locally as the spotted ghost that haunts the plains.

Afterwards, you return to Nuwara Eliya.

After breakfast, you leave the hills behind and head south to Udawalawe National Park, one of the best places in the country to see elephants in the wild. Climb aboard a safari jeep and you may well meet your first herd within the opening stretch of the drive. Keep an eye out too for spotted deer, sambar, barking deer, water buffalo and jackal.

Nearby, the Udawalawe Elephant Transit Home tells a gentler story. Set up in 1995, it cares for injured and orphaned elephants before returning them to the wild, so the idea here is to watch rather than touch as they feed and play together.

From Udawalawe, you continue to the coast at Unawatuna.

You set out early from Unawatuna to Mirissa, taking a packed breakfast from your accommodation, for a morning of whale watching. This small fishing town is one of the few places in the world with a resident population of blue whales, and dolphins are regularly seen on trips off Mirissa and Dondra Head on the south coast. A BBC wildlife documentary was filmed in these waters, on one occasion recording 30 blue whales in a single day.

Back on land, Mirissa is a spot for sailing, surfing and diving, with golden beaches and the famous stilt fishermen balanced above the shallows.

Next you travel to Galle for a city tour. The old Southern capital is where Dutch architecture meets a tropical setting, its streets lined with colonial-era verandas and the creak of wooden doors, and its ramparts and bastions have stood for more than three and a half centuries.

Walking clockwise around the fort, you pass the old gate with its British coat of arms, the Zwart Bastion, the oldest of them all, and the 18-foot lighthouse beside the Point Utrecht Bastion. Laid out on a neat grid, the fort is still a living town of offices, courts, businesses and churches, and the Dutch Hospital Shopping Complex is the place to browse for souvenirs before you return to Unawatuna.

After breakfast, you travel back to Colombo, the country's commercial capital and the engine behind well over half its national output. It is a city in fast-forward, and how you fill the day is up to you.

You might drive past the crisp white Race Course, a horse-racing venue back in 1893 and a wartime airstrip, now given over to clothing, food and tea boutiques. Over in Pettah, the Floating Market makes for offbeat browsing, while the emerging Colombo Port City, built out over the sea, promises parks, commercial complexes and even an F1 track. Along Bauddhaloka Mawatha, the Arcade at Independence Square has turned a colonial landmark into one of the city's smartest places to shop and eat, complete with a walk-over fish tank.

As the day winds down, you could enjoy a cold beer at the Dutch Hospital among its fashion, jewellery and handicraft boutiques, breathe in the incense and listen for the bells at the Gangarama temple, or dip into Colombo's nightlife of clubs and casinos. If the timing is right, there may be an exhibition at the BMICH or a performance at the Nelum Pokuna theatre to end the day on.

After your final breakfast, you transfer to Colombo Airport in good time for your departure flight.