Five — Practical
There is no bad season, only the wrong coast.
Two monsoons hit the island from opposite directions — Yala from the south-west between May and September, Maha from the north-east between October and January. Somewhere is always dry. Everything else on this page is detail.
Timing
Pick a month, find a coast.
The map below is schematic, not survey-accurate. It is there to make one point: if your dates are fixed, change your coast rather than your dates.
- Dry and reliable
- Monsoon or unsettled
Admin
What to sort out first.
None of this is difficult. All of it is worse done at the airport.
Visa
Most nationalities need an Electronic Travel Authorisation applied for online before departure. Rules, fees and exemptions change often enough that you should check the official immigration site rather than a blog — including this one.
Rupees, and cash
Cards work in cities and hotels. Everything good — the bus, the roadside kottu, the temple donation, the tuk-tuk — is cash. Draw it in town rather than at the airport rate, and keep small notes; nobody has change.
A local SIM
Prepaid data is cheap and the counters at arrivals are legitimate. Coverage is good along the coasts and in the hills, patchy inside the parks.
Mosquitoes, not exotica
Dengue is the real risk and it bites by day, so repellent matters more than a first-aid kit. Drink bottled or filtered water. Check current advice on rabies and Japanese encephalitis with a travel clinic before you go.
Type D, G and M
Three round pins, 230 V. Bring a universal adapter; hotels often have a spare but rarely a good one.
Numbers to have
Police 119, ambulance 1990 (Suwa Seriya, free), tourist police 1912. Save your embassy’s number too, and verify these on arrival.
The small print
Money, manners and the road.
The questions everyone asks on day three, answered before you land.
Small notes, given directly
Restaurants usually add a ten percent service charge that rarely reaches the waiter, so a little cash on the table still matters. Drivers, guides and jeep trackers expect a tip at the end; hand it to the person, folded, with thanks.
Gentle, and only where prices float
Markets, souvenirs and unmetered tuk-tuks bargain; food, groceries and anything with a printed price do not. Smile, counter once or twice, and be ready to walk — the walk is the negotiation. Never grind over what is small money to you.
Easier than you have heard
Sri Lanka is one of the friendlier places to travel solo, women included, with the usual sense applied: dress modestly away from beach towns, use ride apps after dark, and on a crowded bus sit beside women. Guesthouse families are the best safety net on the island — use them.
Paperwork first
An international permit alone is not valid — you also need a Sri Lankan recognition permit, which tuk-tuk rental outfits will arrange for you. Then remember that buses give way to nothing, horns are language, and most people end up happier being driven.
Not every machine cooperates
Foreign cards work at the big banks’ machines — Commercial Bank, Sampath, HNB are safe bets — less reliably elsewhere. Per-withdrawal caps are low, so fees favour fewer, larger draws. Keep the receipts if you may want to change rupees back.
PickMe first, Uber second
PickMe is the local app and works for tuk-tuks as well as cars in Colombo, Kandy, Galle and most tourist towns. It ends the fare conversation before it starts — and it is how locals ride too.
Giving offence
How not to.
Sri Lanka is forgiving of visitors who get things wrong and much less forgiving about religious images. Learn the second list.
Shoulders, knees, shoes
Cover up, take shoes and hats off at the gate, and never pose with your back to a Buddha image — people have been prosecuted and deported for it. Step over the moonstone, not on it.
Buddha imagery is not decoration
Visitors have been refused entry over Buddha tattoos. If you have one, cover it.
Nudity and toplessness are out
Beachwear stays on the beach; cover up walking through a village or into a shop.
Ask first
Especially of monks, worshippers, and people at work. A drone needs permission and is banned outright over most heritage sites.
Hands together, slight bow
A palms-together ayubowan is always right. Handshakes are normal in business; wait to see if a woman offers her hand first.
Right hand for everything
Eating, giving, receiving, pointing — use the right hand, or both.
Speaking
Six things to say.
Sinhala and Tamil are both official and English is widely spoken, so you can travel without a word of either. Six words still change how the day goes.
Sinhala & Tamil
- Hello
- ආයුබෝවන් ayubōwan
- வணக்கம் vanakkam
- Thank you
- ස්තූතියි stūtiyi
- நன்றி nandri
- How much?
- කීයද? kīyada
- எவ்வளவு? evvalavu
- Yes / No
- ඔව් / නෑ ow / nǣ
- ஆம் / இல்லை ām / illai
- Delicious
- රසයි rasai
- சுவையானது suvaiyānadu
- No problem
- කමක් නෑ kamak nǣ
- பரவாயில்லை paravāyillai
The bag
Nine things worth their weight.
Everything else you can buy there, cheaper. These are the things you will wish you had at six in the morning, somewhere specific.
| Bring | Because |
|---|---|
| One warm layer | Horton Plains at dawn and Nuwara Eliya at night are genuinely cold |
| A sarong | Temple cover, beach towel, blanket on the night bus, curtain, dignity |
| Leech socks | Sinharaja and the Knuckles in the wet — ordinary socks are a buffet |
| Day-strength repellent | Dengue mosquitoes bite in daylight; this is the health item that matters |
| Rash vest | Sun cover in the water that doesn’t wash off onto the coral |
| Universal adapter | Sockets come in type D, G and M, sometimes all three in one room |
| A hard water bottle | Refill stations are common now; a dozen plastic bottles stay unbought |
| Headlamp or torch | Power cuts, night walks, and the 2 am start up Adam’s Peak |
| Seasickness tablets | The whale boats leave at dawn into open ocean; take one before, not after |
Two ways to do it
Simple or comfortable.
Sri Lanka can be done cheaply or expensively and both are genuinely good trips. What follows is the shape of the difference rather than a set of numbers, which would be out of date before you read them.
| Simple | Comfortable | |
|---|---|---|
| Room | Guesthouse or homestay | Boutique hotel or estate bungalow |
| Eating | Rice and curry at a local place, short eats, kottu | Hotel restaurants, seafood on the coast |
| Moving | Trains, buses, metered tuk-tuks | Car and driver for the whole loop |
| Parks | Shared jeep, one park | Private jeep, dawn drives, two or three parks |
| The catch | Slower days, more waiting, better stories | Faster days, fewer accidents of the good kind |
Leaving it better
Six habits worth having.
Tourism is a large share of the economy here and it recovered from a hard few years. Where the money lands is a choice you make several times a day.
Family-run over chain
Guesthouses and homestays keep the money in the town you are standing in.
The unmarked place
A local rice-and-curry kade feeds you better and cheaper than the hotel buffet.
Straight from the workshop
Masks, mats and lace bought from the people who made them cost the same and mean something.
Wild, at a distance
No elephant rides, no roadside feeding, no turtle-hatchery selfies. Distance is the respect.
Refill
Filtered water stations are common now. A hard bottle removes a dozen soft ones from the roadside.
Ask, then show them
Especially with children. Asking first turns a taken photograph into a given one.