10-Day Sri Lanka Highlights Tour with Sigiriya, Yala and Bentota

• Meet the tour guide upon arrival in Sri Lanka and transfer by air-conditioned vehicle to a hotel in Negombo.
• Spend the rest of the day at your leisure. Negombo is a characteristic fishing town north of Colombo, located 6 km from the international airport. It is a gourmet paradise with seafood in plenty and old-world fishing craft, such as the outrigger canoe and the catamaran. Seer, skipjack, herring, mullet, amberjack, lobster, and prawn are caught in the lagoon.

Overnight stay in Negombo.

Approximately: 20 minutes / 17 km

• Have breakfast and leave for Anuradhapura. Visit the cultural sites and then travel to Mihintale Rock. Anuradhapura is the birthplace of the Sinhala civilization and one of the world's largest archaeological sites. It is considered the greatest monastic city of the ancient world and was founded in the 5th century BC.
• Mihintale Rock is believed by Sri Lankans to be the site of a meeting between the Buddhist monk Mahinda and King Devanampiyatissa, which inaugurated the presence of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. It is now a pilgrimage site and the location of several religious monuments and abandoned structures.

Overnight stay in Sigiriya.

Approximately: 3 hours and 10 minutes / 168 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 3-mile-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 and 10 minutes / 56 km

• Have breakfast, check out from the hotel, and leave to visit 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.
• Travel to Kandy via Dambulla and Matale. En route, visit the Golden Rock Temple. Golden Rock is a cave temple dating 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, and 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.
• Reach Kandy and check in at the hotel for an overnight stay.

Approximately: 2 hours and 30 minutes / 90 km

• Have an early breakfast and travel to the Elephant Orphanage, an institution that has been looking after orphaned or injured elephants that would otherwise have surely died. If you leave the hotel early, you can watch the elephants bathe in the river after the youngest babies are milk-fed.
• Head to Kandy to visit the Temple of the Tooth.
• View a cultural dance in the evening. Kandy, the last seat of the Sinhala kings, is a very popular destination for visitors from home and abroad.

Overnight stay in Kandy.

Approximately: 1 hour and 14 minutes / 39 km

• Travel to Horton Plains and have a brief walk of around 1 hour, then continue to Kitulgala. Horton Plains is a unique natural attraction in Sri Lanka. It is located on the highest plateau of the country and is known for its beautiful landscapes and rare plant and animal life. Horton Plains is one of the most important catchment areas in Sri Lanka, acting as a giant sponge that stores rainwater and then feeds several major rivers of the country throughout the year. The vegetation mainly consists of wet grasslands and montane forests. The weather at Horton Plains is quite dynamic, with average temperatures varying between 5 degrees Celsius and 27 degrees Celsius.
• Visit the Kelani River and other attractions around Kitulgala. The Kelani River, the broadest river in Sri Lanka, flowing through Kitulgala, was the main location where the Oscar-winning movie "Bridge on the River Kwai" was filmed.
• Head to Nuwara Eliya and leave for Yala. En route, visit Ella Gap and Ravana Waterfall.
• Reach Yala and check in at the hotel for an overnight stay.

Approximately: 2 hours and 30 minutes / 76 km

• Go for an early morning 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 across 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.
• Leave for your beach vacation and overnight stay at a beach hotel.

Approximately: 5 hours and 50 minutes / 90 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 and 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, 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 water scooter, and much more.

Overnight stay in Bentota.

• Travel to Colombo for a city tour. Colombo is the capital of Sri Lanka and its largest city and main port. 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.
• Visit important places in the capital city of Colombo, such as the Parliament, Gangaramaya Temple, Independence Square, Galle Face Green, the museum, and the World Trade Center.
• Transfer to the airport on time for your flight.

Approximately: 1 hour and 48 minutes / 34 km