Car & driver hire in Sri Lanka

[FritataPatate]

Holiday booked for this November. Four of us need car and driver for about 10 days to travel from Negombo through cultural triangle, ending up at South coast. Any recommendations please?

See Lanka travel

I did that this year. Had a perfect experience with car and driver via Blue Lanka. They’re a local company so your money stays in the local economy. Can’t fault anything at all about their service. They will book all the tickets for sites etc too. They have suggested itineraries but if you haven’t been before there is a daily obvious route starting in Negombo and going around Sigiriya/Kandy/Ella and round to the beaches.
We had Gayan. Lovely guy who made our holiday with all his local knowledge and little side trips.
My one tip would be to make it clear you only need the driver/guide for the tour part and maybe not for the crashing on the beach part if you’re at the beach for a few days. Blue Lanka would still pick you up for the airport run if you want. Oh and maybe don’t bother with Yala if you only have ten days.
Have been to LKA three times. Wonderful place. Have a great trip.

Do you want a driver/tour guide or just a driver to get you from A to B? For the latter, it is really easy and relatively cheap to get around and you don’t need to prebook - Uber and the local equivalent PickMe are apps that are widely used. Or if you want a driver pre-booked with more certainty, Kangaroo Cabs is good too. We travelled as a family for 4 weeks and had no issues. For short distances tuktuks are a lot of fun

Thank you so much for these useful replies. I’m a bit nervous as I have devised the itinerary and booked it independently. We only need the driver for part of the trip. We are actually going for 3 weeks: a couple of beach days at the start, then 10 days travelling, covering the usual sites, then a week which includes beach days with a side trip to Yala I thought I would book separately. I’ll look at the companies suggested.

Interested in this as we too are planning a 3 week trip to Sri Lanka. 2 weeks sightseeing then a week on the beach.

What is the cost involved for this? We would probably want a guide for some of the trip but not all.

We booked through https://srilankacaranddriverhire.com/ and it was fine and you only pay once over there - you put your itinerary you want the driver for so dates / where going to and then drivers put bids in. Can be for part of your holiday rather than all of it - we did for 10 days of ours and had bids from US$600 to US$800 - we went with one at US$650 who was great. We didn't go for one that was a guide as we wanted to be on our own mostly but there are guides on there. We paid in Sri Lankan currency in cash rate on the day and a Wise card was useful for this.

We also gave tips to add to this amount and any lunches they had with us we paid for though you don't have to but its very difficult economic conditions over there especially with fuel price rises. It is fairly standard to tip for drivers. I think $650 was £483 at the time so with tips and a lunch we paid for maybe we gave £550. But we didn't use them much for trips out as had safaris etc via accommodation if we had there would have been more lunches but those are only a few pound each. They book their own accommodation with this option.

That's two people but price is for the car which was normal sized car so 3 adults plus driver. The $800 ones were much bigger vehicles like minibuses which we didn't need.

We paid around $2000 for a car and driver for two weeks but that also covered all entrance fees and tickets and very good accommodation with breakfast. Basically we only paid for lunch, dinner and tips on top of air fares.
It is fairly easy to get around but seems like a waste of time to be at bus stops and train stations and taxiing between places when a driver will take you from A to B and with so many little stops along the way and constant support and information and language help. Things like stopping for fruit stands, diversions to see a waterfall.
We did take the train from Kandy to Ella but driver just met us at the other end. He was worth every penny.