9-Day Sri Lanka Cultural Tour with Safaris and Bentota Beach

• Meet your tour guide upon arrival in Sri Lanka and transfer to your hotel in Sigiriya.
• Stop mid-way at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. It is an institution that has been looking after orphaned or injured elephants that would otherwise have surely died. You can watch the elephants bathe in the river after the youngest babies are milk-fed.
• Reach Sigiriya, check in at the hotel, and in the evening travel to visit the Sigiriya rock fortress, one of Sri Lanka's most fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Sites. No matter how often you climb to the summit of this one-time hilltop fortress of the maverick Sinhalese king Kassapa, the pleasure barely diminishes because of the spectacular views from the summit.
• Go for an elephant ride at Sigiriya.

Overnight stay at Sigiriya.

Approximately: 3 hours 20 minutes / 146 Km

• Have breakfast at the hotel, travel to Polonnaruwa, and visit the Polonnaruwa cultural sites. Polonnaruwa was the capital of Sri Lanka from the 11th to the 13th century AD. This ancient city is today one of the most beautiful centres of the island's cultural heritage. In its prime, the city housed hundreds of thousands of people inside its strong encircling walls.
• Visit a forest Buddhist monastery in the evening.
• Take a jeep safari through Minneriya National Park, looking for elephants, deer, peacocks, boars, and many kinds of birds.

Overnight stay at a hotel in Sigiriya.

Approximately: 1 hour 10 minutes / 56 Km

• Have breakfast and travel to Kandy via Dambulla and Matale. En route, visit the Golden Rock Temple. Golden Rock is a cave temple that dates back to the 1st century BC. Its rock ceiling is one large sweep of colourful frescoes depicting Buddhist mythology and the tales of the Buddha's previous births. The caves house the largest collection of Buddha statues in one place.
• Drive to Matale to visit the Nalanda Gedige Temple. The small building is designed like a Hindu temple with a mandapa, an entrance hall originally roofed, a short passage to a bare cella, and an ambulatory around the holy centre. There is no sign of Hindu gods. The temple is said to have been used by Buddhists. This is one of the earliest stone-constructed buildings in Ceylon.
• Visit the Matale spice garden.
• Head to the Temple of the Tooth Relic and see a cultural dance show in the evening. Kandy is the last seat of the Sinhala kings and a very popular destination for visitors from home and abroad.

Overnight stay in Kandy.

Approximately: 2 hours & 30 minutes / 90 Km

• Have breakfast at the hotel and leave for Nuwara Eliya. En route, visit a tea factory, tea plantation, and Ramboda waterfall. Sri Lanka is famous for its "Ceylon Tea," which has added cheer to the world for more than a century.
• Arrive in Nuwara Eliya to be greeted by the fresh wintry atmosphere, the cottage-type bungalows, and the colonial air. Nuwara Eliya is also known as "Little England."
• Go for a city tour in Nuwara Eliya and visit Gregory Lake in the evening.

Overnight stay in Nuwara Eliya.

Approximately: 2 hours / 76 Km

• Travel to Yala. En route, visit Ella Gap and Ravana Falls.
• Check in at the hotel, and in the evening go for a game drive in Yala, one of the island's most popular wildlife parks, where you can see almost all the animals found in Sri Lanka. One of Sri Lanka's premier eco-tourism destinations, it lies 24 km northeast of Tissamaharama and 290 km from Colombo on the southeast coast of Sri Lanka, spanning a vast 97,878 hectares over the Southern and Uva Provinces. The vegetation in the park comprises predominantly semi-arid thorny scrub interspersed with pockets of fairly dense secondary forest. Small patches of mangrove vegetation also occur along the coastal lagoons. The park is renowned for the variety of its wildlife, most notably its many elephants, and its fine coastline with associated coral reefs. It also boasts a large number of important cultural ruins, bearing testimony to earlier civilizations and indicating that much of the area used to be populated and well-developed.

Overnight stay at a hotel in Yala.

Approximately: 4 hours & 10 minutes / 159 Km

• Have breakfast and leave for Bentota. En route, visit the Galle Dutch Fortress. Galle is an ancient city that is now a modern and buzzing town. It was the most important seaport in history, where seafaring merchants arrived to trade and barter. This is also where the Portuguese first set foot in the year 1505 and built a fortress, which was later captured and fortified by the Dutch. The fortress is one of the best preserved on the island. A visit to the fortress and watching the sunset from the rampart is an unforgettable experience. The oldest Protestant church in the country, called the 'Groote Kirk', built by the Dutch, is located inside the fort. It is situated close to the New Oriental Hotel, also built by them as the Governor's Residence in 1684.
• Go for a boat ride on the Madu River.

Overnight stay in Bentota.

Approximately: 3 hours & 10 minutes / 209 Km

• Have a beach day. You will have many choices for spending your time. You may leisurely stroll on the golden beaches, be enthralled by the magical atmosphere, or laze on a sundeck reading a book of your choice and sipping a cool, fresh tropical fruit drink of pineapple, mango, or banana.
• Go for water sports such as water skiing, windsurfing, snorkelling, or cutting through the choppy water on a jet scooter, and much more.

Overnight stay in Bentota.

• Head to Colombo. En route, visit the turtle hatchery. Turtle Hatchery Projects have been launched to conserve the population of turtles that are reaching extinction, and such projects are found along the southern coast of Sri Lanka, where turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. The turtles dig a hole on the beach, lay eggs, and cover it with sand, where it is supposed to incubate by the heat of the sun. What often happens is that the eggs are dug out by fishermen and sold to people who consume them. But now the eggs are bought by the conservation projects and hatched naturally in enclosed areas, where birds do not have a chance to pick them up. This offers them a better chance of survival.
• Travel to Colombo and enjoy a city tour. Colombo is the capital of Sri Lanka; it is the largest city and main port of the country. It is also the commercial and financial centre of Sri Lanka. A bustling metropolis, the city is an attractive blend of old and new. It has the lazy charm of a bygone era combined with the verve and vivaciousness of a modern city.

Overnight stay at a hotel in Colombo.

Approximately: 1 hour & 30 minutes / 101 Km

• Visit the important places in the capital city of Colombo, if you have time, such as the Parliament, Gangarama Temple, Independence Square, Galle Face Green, the museum, and the World Trade Center.
• Transfer to the airport on time for your flight.

Approximately: 44 minutes / 34 Km