Tuesday 16 October 2012

Trip Review: Sri Lanka with a 1 year old

A big thank you to Samar for her wonderful report on travelling to Sri Lanka with a 1 year old.  Sri Lanka has long been on my bucket list with dreams of curries, elephant safaris, tea plantations and golden beaches....

Sri Lanka Review

We decided to go to the Cultural Triangle as we're a little bored of beach vacations.  The biggest issue with this is the long drive from the airport.  150km takes 4-5 hours.  We specifically booked flights that meant we would be driving during my daughter's nap/sleep times so in the end the drive wasn't that bad.  Basically the roads are single lane, poorly paved, if at all, and all going through little towns so slow traffic.  But lots of fun/interesting stuff to see along the way.

We stayed at Ulagalla Resort, an eco friendly place on 50 acres near Anaradhapura:

i-escape.com/ulagalla-resort/overview

We chose it because we wanted a private pool villa and loved the rest of the atmosphere.  We were not disappointed!  Gorgeous place - lots of natural wildlife - iguanas, monkeys, birds, peacocks all around us, and the most amazing staff of any resort we've ever stayed.  They would sweep in and take our daughter as soon as she started to fuss and walk her around and play with her so we could eat in peace. She loved all of them. The food was delicious and the chef prepared all my daughter's salt-free with no problem. The veg is all from their on-site organic garden.  One day we even went with the chef to pick our own veggies from the garden and then had a cooking demonstration.



The sights were totally worth it and we were able to do them quite easily with our 1 year old.  Sigirya - a palace on a mountain known as the Machu Picchu of the East was our favourite - we climbed the 1300 steps with our daughter in a carrier.  Anaradhapura and the cave temples at Dhumbulla were also fantastic.

Loved our trip - wish there was a direct flight to Colombo (currently you have to stop in Singapore) or we would have booked another one - this time to the beaches perhaps.  People of SL are truly wonderful - friendly and warm and helpful.  Would definitely recommend that people go before the roads are paved and it gets busier - we didn't see many tourists and loved that!


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