Rajah Travel Corporation

Transfer Airport

• Transfer Colombo Airport to Post Hotel

• ARR Chargeable Trf Colombo Airport to Hotel

• Arrival Transfer Colombo Airport to Hotel

• DEP Chargeable Trf Post Hotel to Colombo Airport

Gold Seal Protection

• Gold Seal Protection

Dining Summary

• 10 Dinner (D)
• 12 Breakfast (B)
• 4 Lunch (L)

Choice Highlights

• Sigiriya: Climb this UNESCO World Heritage Site, an ancient rock fortress built in the 5th century by King Kashyapa. Once a royal citadel, its summit offers sweeping views over the surrounding plains. Along the way, see the famed Sigiriya frescoes, the polished Mirror Wall and the remains of one of Sri Lanka’s most remarkable engineering achievements.
• Sigiriya: Designed in the tradition of Sri Lanka’s ancient royal gardens, this lush retreat showcases a rich variety of tropical flora. Its thoughtfully arranged terraces, water features and shaded pathways reflect early innovations in landscape design. Learn how gardens once served as symbols of power and ingenuity, blending natural beauty with advanced irrigation techniques.

Authentic Dining

• Colombo: Get to know your Travel Director and fellow travellers over a rooftop dinner. As the city stretches out before you, raise a toast to the journey ahead. You’ll enjoy a menu thoughtfully crafted from seasonal, locally sourced ingredients, offering a taste of the island’s rich culinary traditions.
• Habarana: Welcomed by the local community, take a guided walk through the farmlands of Hiriwadunna, where fresh vegetables, fruit and spices thrive under traditional cultivation methods. Enjoy an outdoor lunch featuring authentic Sri Lankan dishes, prepared with ingredients sourced straight from the fields. As you dine, you’ll hear stories of sustainable farming practices and the deep-rooted traditions that shape rural life.
• Dambulla: Gather for a traditional Sri Lankan barbecue, where fragrant spices and fresh local ingredients take centre stage. You’ll enjoy a selection of grilled specialities, expertly prepared over an open flame. The rich aromas and bold flavours reflect the island’s culinary heritage, creating a relaxed and flavourful dining experience.
• Kandy: In the village of Menikkumbura, join a Local Expert for a hands-on cooking experience, using fresh, locally sourced ingredients. Learn the techniques behind Sri Lanka’s fragrant dishes before sharing a meal together in a relaxed setting, gaining insight into the country’s rich culinary traditions.
• Nuwara Eliya: Savour a traditional high tea in the elegant surroundings of the Grand Hotel, a colonial-era landmark in Sri Lanka’s hill country. Delicate finger sandwiches, freshly baked scones and handcrafted pastries are served alongside a selection of fine teas. Overlook beautifully manicured gardens and enjoy the tranquil charm of Nuwara Eliya’s misty highlands.

Insight Choice

• Sigiriya: Climb this UNESCO World Heritage Site, an ancient rock fortress built in the 5th century by King Kashyapa. Once a royal citadel, its summit offers sweeping views over the surrounding plains. Along the way, see the famed Sigiriya frescoes, the polished Mirror Wall and the remains of one of Sri Lanka’s most remarkable engineering achievements.
• Sigiriya: Designed in the tradition of Sri Lanka’s ancient royal gardens, this lush retreat showcases a rich variety of tropical flora. Its thoughtfully arranged terraces, water features and shaded pathways reflect early innovations in landscape design. Learn how gardens once served as symbols of power and ingenuity, blending natural beauty with advanced irrigation techniques.

Insight Experiences

• Anuradhapura: Meet a practicing monk who will guide you through a blessing ceremony, a deeply spiritual ritual invoking peace, protection and prosperity. Experience the soothing rhythm of traditional chanting as age-old customs unfold, offering a rare insight into Sri Lanka’s Buddhist traditions.
• Galle: Perched on wooden stilts above the waves, fishermen use a time-honoured technique passed down through generations. This unique method, developed during World War II amid food shortages, requires patience and balance as they cast their lines into the shallows. Though increasingly rare, it remains a powerful symbol of Sri Lanka’s coastal heritage.

Make Travel Matter

Kosgoda: Visit a pioneering sea turtle conservation centre, where a dedicated team works to protect Sri Lanka’s endangered turtle species. Guided by a conservationist, learn about the threats facing these marine creatures, from habitat loss to pollution. Depending on the season, witness hatchlings being released, supporting vital efforts to safeguard the future of these ancient travellers. Your visit directly supports United Nations Sustainability Development Goal 14: Life Below Water.

Top Rated Highlights

• Colombo: Discover Colombo’s vibrant heart on a tuk-tuk adventure through its historic streets. See the colonial-era Colombo Fort and explore the lively Pettah Market before visiting the striking Red Mosque. Pass the Old Town Hall, step inside the Dutch-built Wolvendaal Church and admire the eclectic Gangaramaya Temple where Sri Lankan, Thai, Indian and Chinese influences blend seamlessly across its shrine rooms and courtyards. Conclude at Hotel Nippon with a classic mutton roll and a refreshing drink.
• Dambulla: Dating back to around 750–400 BCE, this ancient burial site offers a glimpse into Sri Lanka’s early civilisations. Carefully arranged stone chambers once held cremated remains, accompanied by pottery, beads and iron tools: evidence of advanced social and cultural practices. As you explore the well-preserved tombs, admire the ingenuity of their construction and uncover the beliefs that shaped the lives of the island’s earliest inhabitants.
• Anuradhapura: Explore Anuradhapura, visiting key religious and archaeological sites. See the Ruwanwelisaya Dagoba a large stupa recognised for its scale and engineering, and visit the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, a sacred fig tree linked to the Buddha’s enlightenment. Continue to Thuparamaya and the remains of the Abhayagiri Monastery. At Isurumuniya Temple, view its noted rock carvings, then meet artisans in a nearby village known for traditional clay pot making.
• Polonnaruwa: Explore this UNESCO World Heritage Site with your Travel Director, uncovering the legacy of Sri Lanka’s medieval capital. Flourishing between the 11th and 13th centuries, the city thrived through an advanced irrigation system that sustained large-scale rice cultivation. Walk among its well-preserved stupas, temple complexes and the Royal Palace, once the centre of a powerful kingdom.
• Dambulla: Step inside Sri Lanka’s largest and best-preserved cave monastery, a sacred site for over two millennia. Dating back to the 3rd century BCE, this UNESCO-listed temple sits 160 metres above the plains, offering panoramic views over the central highlands. Explore its vast caverns, where more than 150 Buddha statues and intricate murals cover the walls, depicting centuries of Buddhist teachings and Sri Lankan history.
• Kandy: Join the daily puja ceremony and step inside the inner chamber as the casket housing the Sri Lanka’s most sacred relic: a tooth believed to have belonged to the Buddha, is briefly revealed. The tooth itself remains enclosed, but this moment offers rare, close access to the focal point of devotion. In a Small Group, it’s easier to enter the chamber during the busy ritual and observe the ceremony with clarity and calm, gaining a direct sense of how the temple functions as a living pilgrimage site.
• Kandy: Experience the energy and precision of a Kandyan dance performance, a tradition rooted in royal courts and ritual practice. Dancers move to the pulse of the drums, leaping and turning in layered costumes, while fire-breathers and acrobats add a striking ceremonial edge.
• Nuwara Eliya: Travel by train through Sri Lanka’s central highlands, where mist-covered mountains, cascading waterfalls and emerald tea plantations unfold at every turn. This scenic journey from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya offers a glimpse into the island’s colonial past, passing historic railway stations and landscapes unchanged for generations before arriving at the hotel.
• Nuwara Eliya: Discover Nuwara Eliya with your Travel Director, exploring a town once known as Little England for its colonial bungalows, golf courses and rose gardens. Stroll along the shores of Gregory Lake, an artificial reservoir built in 1873 to support British agricultural experiments. Next, visit the Nuwara Eliya Post Office, a striking Tudor-style building dating back to 1894, which remains one of the country’s oldest functioning post offices.
• Nuwara Eliya: Visit a tea estate and factory before heading into the fields for an immersive, Small Group Exclusive look at the work behind Ceylon tea. Dressed in traditional attire, you’ll take part in a guided picking session or, outside harvest season, observe how the plants are maintained. The experience highlights the people and skills that shape each stage of production, offering insight that larger groups usually cannot access. Finish with a freshly prepared cup in the landscape where it is grown.
• Ella: Gaze out from one of Sri Lanka’s most striking escarpments, where the central highlands drop sharply to the southern plains. Formed by ancient geological shifts, this dramatic gap cuts through the mountains, offering a view that stretches for miles. Tea-covered slopes, winding roads and distant waterfalls create a landscape shaped by both nature and history.
• Yala National Park: Embark on morning and evening game drives through Sri Lanka’s most celebrated national park, covering nearly 1,000 square kilometres of dry woodlands, open grasslands and coastal lagoons. Its combined freshwater and saltwater ecosystems support Asianants, crocodiles and abundant birdlife. With luck, glimpse the solitary Sri Lankan leopard, as Yala hosts one of the world’s highest leopard densities.
• Yala National Park: Explore the diverse birdlife surrounding your hotel on a guided nature walk, where the calls of kingfishers, herons and bee-eaters fill the air. As you wander through coastal scrub and wetlands, spot colourful species that thrive in this rich ecosystem, gaining insight into Sri Lanka’s remarkable avian biodiversity.
• Galle: Walk through the cobbled streets of this UNESCO-listed fort, uncovering its blend of Portuguese, Dutch and British influences. Built in the 16th century, its bastions and ramparts have withstood centuries of monsoon winds. Stop at the Galle Lighthouse, standing since 1939, and take in sweeping views of the Indian Ocean.

• Cinnamon Lakeside, Colombo
• Jetwing Lake, Dambulla
• Cinnamon Citadel Kandy
• Grand, Nuwara Eliya
• Jetwing Yala
• Jetwing Lighthouse, Galle

Arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s lively capital. You’ll drive past colonial buildings, temples, markets and modern streets before settling into the hotel, a calm base within the city’s energy. This evening, join your Travel Director and Small Group for a rooftop dinner, sharing locally sourced dishes that reflect the island’s culinary traditions while looking out across the Colombo skyline.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Cinnamon Lakeside, Colombo

Set off on a tuk-tuk ride through Colombo’s busy streets, moving from colonial-era buildings into the city’s more compact neighbourhoods. You’ll travel through the lanes of Pettah Market, a long-standing centre of trade and pause at the Red Mosque, noting its Indo-Saracenic design. Next, visit the 18th-century Wolvendaal Church, built by the Dutch. Continue to Gangaramaya Temple and finish the day at Hotel Nippon, a historic stop for travellers, and try its well-known mutton roll.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Cinnamon Lakeside, Colombo

Journey inland to Hiriwadunna and walk through village fields shaped by traditional farming. You’ll enjoy a farm-to-table lunch prepared with seasonal ingredients and served in the open-air before continuing to the Ibbankatuwa Megalithic Tombs to see the stone-built chambers that outline early burial practices of Sri Lanka’s prehistoric communities. Later, arrive in Dambulla, with time to unwind at the lakeside hotel.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Lake, Dambulla

Travel to Anuradhapura, a UNESCO-listed city famous for its stupas, monastic sites and reservoirs that outline the scale of Sri Lanka’s early capital. Walk among stone structures that shaped the city’s religious and civic life for centuries. At Isurumuniya Temple, observe a monk leading a blessing ceremony. Later, visit a village where artisans shape clay pots by hand, continuing a long-standing craft tradition. You’ll have the chance to see Asian elephants across open plains and around the reservoir on an Optional Experience to Minneriya National Park.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Lake, Dambulla

This morning, choose between climbing the UNESCO-listed Sigiriya Rock Fortress or visiting a nearby botanical garden shaped by Sri Lanka’s long tradition of landscape design. After time to unwind, you’ll continue to Polonnaruwa with a Local Expert, walking through the remains of this former capital and its key religious and civic structures. Finish the day with dinner full of flame-grilled flavours at your hotel.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Lake, Dambulla

Travel into Sri Lanka’s cultural centre, beginning at the Dambulla Cave Temple, a monastic site with rock-cut chambers filled with Buddha statues and painted ceilings. Continue to Kandy for a Small Group Experience visit to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, stepping close to the casket that preserves the revered relic. In the evening, watch a Kandyan dance performance marked by drumming, movement and longstanding ceremonial traditions.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Cinnamon Citadel Kandy

Spend the morning in Yatiwawala, walking through rice fields and spice gardens for a clear look at village life. Visit a local market and meet an Ayurvedic doctor who outlines the use of herbal remedies. Next, you’ll join a local host to prepare a traditional meal using established cooking methods. In the afternoon, explore the Royal Botanical Gardens, moving through avenues and collections that show the breadth of Sri Lanka’s plant life. Choose from two Optional Experiences: take a walking tour of Kandy with a Local Expert, exploring its local eateries and heritage buildings, or join a Mahaweli River Cruise past riverbanks and nearby fishing communities.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Cinnamon Citadel Kandy

Board a train into Sri Lanka’s central highlands, watching the landscape shift to tea country, waterfalls and rising peaks. On arrival in Nuwara Eliya, visit a tea estate and factory, then head into the fields for a Small Group Exclusive, hands-on look at the work behind Ceylon tea before enjoying a freshly prepared cup. Explore the town with your Travel Director, including Gregory Lake and the Tudor-style Nuwara Eliya Post Office, then settle into a traditional high tea at the Grand Hotel.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Grand, Nuwara Eliya

Travel south from Nuwara Eliya as the highlands open into the sun-drenched lowlands. Stop at a viewpoint where the central mountains drop towards the plains, taking in the spread of tea estates, winding roads and distant waterfalls. Continue to Kataragama, a sacred town alive with ritual and a prominent pilgrimage centre for Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Arrive in Yala and settle into a coastal retreat set between the national park and the shoreline.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Yala

Set out on morning and evening game drives with an expert ranger, exploring Yala’s diverse landscapes, from dry woodlands to coastal lagoons. Keep watch for Asian elephants grazing near waterholes, crocodiles basking along the shores and, with luck, the elusive Sri Lankan leopard. Between drives, you may like to take a guided nature walk through the hotel’s surroundings, where vibrant birdlife thrives, from kingfishers and bee-eaters to herons wading in the wetlands.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Yala

Travel along Sri Lanka’s southern coastline, passing fishing villages and palm-lined shores shaped by life at the water’s edge. Stop in Weligama to meet stilt fishermen, who work from wooden poles set in the shallows—a practice developed during World War II when boats were scarce. Continue to Galle Fort, a UNESCO-listed stronghold built by the Portuguese and later expanded by the Dutch. Explore its streets with your Travel Director, including the former District Judge’s house, museums, temples and a long-standing mosque that reflects the fort’s mixed heritage. Finish up at the lighthouse, a local gathering point with clear views over the Indian Ocean.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Lighthouse, Galle

Spend the day at leisure, unwinding at your hotel or exploring more of Galle’s historic streets and coastal scenery. For those seeking a deeper connection to Sri Lanka’s landscapes and traditions, a choice of Optional Experiences awaits. Set out early on a whale-watching cruise to search for blue whales and dolphins off the southern coast, or visit a cinnamon estate to learn about the cultivation of this prized spice. In the afternoon, you can opt to join a boat trip across Koggala Lake, where mangrove-lined shores and small islands reveal a mix of wildlife and local heritage. As the day winds down, enjoy dinner at the hotel with your Travel Director and fellow travellers, reflecting on the journey through this captivating island.

Duration: 1 Day

Accommodation: Jetwing Lighthouse, Galle

Spend your final morning at leisure, soaking in the last moments of your Sri Lankan adventure. In the afternoon, you’ll visit a sea turtle conservation centre on a MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience, where a dedicated team works to protect Sri Lanka’s endangered turtle species. Learn about ongoing conservation efforts, if the season allows, witness hatchlings being released into the ocean. After this meaningful visit, bid farewell to your Travel Director and Small Group before transferring to the airport. Flights should be booked for departure after 20:00, bringing your journey through Sri Lanka to a close.

Duration: 1 Day