Sri Lanka holiday: Day 1-3, getting there, Wilpattu and Anuradhapura

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Hi everyone, so I’m back from my amazing holiday to Sri Lanka! I’ll post up the highlights of my holiday as I wrote down what I did at the end of each day in my notepad (didn’t want to take a laptop or tablet).



The first thing to say is Sri Lanka is a truly great place to visit and is now well up there with my favourites. The country is stunning; the wildlife opportunities are second to none, there’s so much history and the people are so welcoming. It’s sad to see the country has been recently hit by flooding – I’d encourage everyone to consider the island as a place to visit, you won’t be disappointed and it clearly helps a lot with their development and job creation for the locals.



I went with Unique Travel after having them recommended to me from a friend who used them for their honeymoon to the island. Although I was traveling alone I was able to join the group holiday to Sri Lanka that they offer – the itinerary of which covered pretty much the main places I wanted to visit.



After a long flight we arrived and were transferred to our hotel in Negombo. I was pretty tired at this point given the length of time flying so I took a quick nap in my hotel room before exploring around the area. TBH I wasn’t expecting much given this was the first day stop off, but Negombo has a stunning beach looking over the Indian Ocean, a Lagoon full of local shipping boats and a rich offering of architecture at the two local churches.



The next day (and after fairly long sleep) we were on our way to Wilpattu – one of the national parks in Sri Lanka. I was pleasantly surprised that I only saw a handful of other tourists in the park as we made our way through – I’m not sure if it was the time of year but it was great. A trip to Wilpattu would be highly recommended for bird watchers – I was amazed by the array of colourful birds we saw but no doubt would mean much more to someone more informed than myself! Not lost to me was the amazing sighting of a leopard which is apparently rare to spot, as well as elephants and buffalos. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see a sloth bear, but again, our guide said these were rather shy creatures.



Day three saw us visiting the city of Anuradhapura which I had been excited about visiting since planning the holiday. Taking a stroll around the ancient buildings was a highlight of the holiday for me and the fact the city is still used to this day adds greatly to the experience. The Brazen Palace and Ruwanwelisaya and Jetavanarama dagobas (hopefully that’s how you spell them) are the obvious highlights, but there is so much more to take in so I would highly recommend it to anyone going to Sri Lanka.



Next stop, Sigirya!

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