Sri Lanka with older children: highlights, places to stay and tips

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We are looking at a 2-3 week trip to Sri Lanka for next summer with our 2 DC (18 and 21).

Has anyone been there with older DC. What would you recommend are the main highlights and things to do? Any recommendations on places to stay?

We are very lucky that we can get the flights on air miles, so budget fairly healthy for accommodation and things to do.

We spent 3 nights at Willapatu with Leopard Safaris. Pricey, but an amazing experience to see leopards, crocs, elephant and bears and lovely accommodation and food. if you can tie that into your itinerary, its well worth it.

Wow, yes. We would love that. Thx

How very exciting! Love Sri Lanka, the land of serendipity.

Loads of places to visit, obvious ones Kandy, elephant orphanage, and many stops along the way. Sigiriya, tea plantations also great, as well as Galle, which is on the coast but perhaps a little more interesting than the run of the mill (can't believe I said that! They are anything but!) resorts. Lots of places are accessible by train which is fun.

One thing to say about the terrain and the roads. Car journeys are not easy. If any of your party suffer with travel sickness be ready with vomit bags! We travelled from Kandy to the Heritance Tea Factory Hotel, and it was very rough, however now as rough as it was coming down the mountain, windy bumpy roads for about 5 hours, all of us being ill. It was hideous!

Kandy hotels - there are loads. One that I stayed at (sorry I can't remember the name, it was overlooking the river and one of the ones with a pool). We arrived in the dark, and when I woke up I saw where we were and it was awesome. There were elephants walking along on the other side of the road, people doing their laundry in the river, a vista of jungle forestation. A hive of activity!

Went with DC 22 and 24 recently. Highly recommend travelling in private tour car. You spend less time on trying to manage transport and you’ll travel a lot. It’s a pretty standard way to see LKA and there is a pretty standard set tour for first time visitors that covers the must see places. if you go on tour company sites you’ll see the suggestions for 2-3 week itineraries and the common places that are covered.

I would say young people would most enjoy Ella (mandatory train journey!) and Hikkaduwa. (Busy beach place with hippy vibe).
I have been four times. Love the place. Suggest 12 days touring and 5 days beach. Good balance of adventure then a rest at the end.
We went with Blue Lanka last time and they were brilliant. V comfortable car and don’t recognise the travel sickness thing. The roads are pretty good on the tourist runs.
Of all the places on the standard routes though I wouldn’t bother with Yala.
The LKA people need your money. Please consider booking with a local company such as Blue Lanka where your money will stay in the country and go where it is needed. I am sure others will be along with other tour company suggestions. When you have found one you like you can just give them a vague plan and what sort of hotels you want and they will work hard to please you and make suggestions.
Have a wonderful trip.

Check the typical July/August routes to avoid the south-west monsoon.
Habarana - Sigirya, polonnawura, Minneriya National Park (great gathering of elephants then).
East coast - Arugum bay - hippy / backpacker vibe, surfing lessons, access to Yala
Ella - then train to Kandy, but maybe stopping mid-way for hiking (we didn't have time for this)
Kitugala for White water rafting (again we didn't have time)
Kandy was interesting but didn't love it (we were there for the perahera which was spectacular).
We travelled using buses and trains but people often hire a driver.
Accomodation doesn't need to be expensive.
Look at Green Leaf 360 in Ella for example - £25 a night including an incredible breakfast. Money 100% into the local economy.
Equally friends have stayed in some of the heritance properties and enjoyed them.

We went to Sri Lanka in Feb and toured around the South coast a bit, we had a few days in Hikkaduwa, a few in Unawatuna and a few in Marissa Beach, it's easy to explore the coast on "pick me" tuk tuks, you can also rent your own tuk tuk for a few days which is an interesting experience as we hired one for 3 days. You can get car Ubers too to head to places like Galle.

The beaches are really nice and long and make for good exploration of your kids want to go off for a bit and do their own thing. The food is amazing on the south coast, not only beautiful Sri Lankan food but you can mix it up a bit and have beautiful Italian Woodfired pizza or delicious smash burgers, so many restaurants are high rated too. When I read things about the north there was quite a lot of negativity that it didn't live up to hype and food was poor.

Also on the south coast I really recommend the tsunami museums in Hikkaduwa and also going to proper turtle rescue sanctuaries. We got a tuk tuk to the tsunami museum and the driver was so nice and told his tsunami story and it took him three days to find out his wife and two young kids had survived the wave, he was on a bus at the time that got knocked over and he had to scramble up a coconut tree.

Another thing to be wary of in terms of the north is cyclones, they had a bad one in December that wiped out a lot of roads, railway and infrastructure so again we were glad we hadn't booked to go up there. Do you research on what weather to expect in the summer as heat and humidity tends to really climb in the tropics and you might experience a lot of wet weather.

It's a trip for 4 adults, so asking about "DC" or "older children" is very misleading.
There are lots of good tours to Sri Lanka, so you probably want a mix of history, culture, wildlife and beaches - tailored to reflect the interests of all four of you.
It's a fantastic country.
I guess if your young people want some kind of club scene/nightlife, that might be an additional element.

Definitely Ella / Tea Country - even when it is raining it is beautiful. Also a vote for Sigiriya - the Heritance Kandalama is an amazing hotel. Book a table outside in advance for dinner, though.

If you want to really see a lot, I'd recommend Cinnamon Air flights - it takes 5 hours to drive to Colombo from Ella but it was 30 mins or so by plane. The roads are very slow outside of the Colombo-Galle highway (and Galle will be wet in the summer so probably one to avoid) so you could get to eg Jaffna very quickly by plane - we want to do that on our next trip to SL.