Travel in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is small enough to circle in a fortnight, and that is what these six trips do. Five run 14 days and one runs 13; starting prices sit between EUR 750 and EUR 1,380 per person. Every one is private and built to order. There are no scheduled departures and no group to join, and an English-speaking guide is included on all six.

Every route begins and ends at Bandaranaike International Airport outside Colombo. After that they differ more than a "standard loop" suggests. Four work through the Cultural Triangle; two skip it entirely and spend the time in the hills and the rainforest instead. Four include a jeep safari; two do not. Kandy is the only place all six have in common.

The Cultural Triangle is on four of the six. They visit Sigiriya — the 200-metre gneiss rock that rises straight out of the jungle, with water gardens at the foot, the lion's paws at the halfway entrance, and the mirror wall with its old graffiti. The same four visit the cave temples at Dambulla, where more than 153 images of the Buddha and painted ceilings fill caves that first sheltered a king in hiding. Three add Polonnaruwa, the Sinhalese capital the jungle buried until the British came across it in 1820. One goes further north to Anuradhapura, where the Ruwanwelisaya dagoba stands 108 metres high with 344 black elephant figures round its base.

Kandy is on all six. The Temple of the Tooth sits by the lake under green hills and holds a tooth of the Buddha. Five trips add a Kandyan dance and music performance; two open the day in the Royal Botanic Garden at Peradeniya. One spends an extra day in the villages around the city, at the brick-built Lankatilaka temple on its rock and the small, weathered Gadaladeniya Vihara.

Above Kandy the road climbs into the tea country. Five trips visit a tea factory in the central highlands and walk among the bushes with the pickers; two of those have an evening free in Nuwara Eliya, a former British hill station with the pubs to show for it. Horton Plains is on three itineraries, at 2,000 to 2,300 metres: grassland, cloud forest and marsh out to World's End, an 800-metre escarpment with a view to the sea in clear weather, then back past the 20-metre Baker's Falls. The third of the three walks to Kirigalpotha instead. Around Ella the walking is gentler — Little Adam's Peak on three routes, the Nine Arches Bridge on two, and on one the Ella Rock hike, about two hours from an early start along the railway line. Two trips take on Adam's Peak itself: a start in the dark from Dalhousie, more than 5,000 worn steps, and the summit at 2,243 metres among the pilgrims.

The wildlife days split between two parks. Two trips run a jeep safari in Yala — forest, grassland and lagoon, with leopards, elephants, crocodiles and hundreds of bird species — from a night at Tissamaharama. Two others use Udawalawe, protected since the dam went up, for water buffalo, wild boar, mongoose and elephants; on one of those the Udawalawe jeep is shared rather than private. Four go into Sinharaja, the last unbroken forest on the island and a UNESCO site, on foot with a ranger rather than in a vehicle. One walks the Knuckles Range from Elkaduwa, and two stop at the Pinnawela elephant orphanage on the drive inland. The 13-day route has neither: it is the culture-led one, and it overnights at Tissamaharama without a Yala game drive.

Galle is on four routes, closing two of them and opening the other two. The fort was founded by the Portuguese in 1588 and rebuilt by the Dutch from 1649: the Dutch church, the museum, the white lighthouse at the eastern end. One route adds the turtle hatchery near Hikkaduwa. Beaches depend on the route. Pasikuda, Nilaveli and Negombo nights are part of the price on three trips; on the other three the closing beach nights are optional and cost extra. The same goes for the route that ends with a flight to the Maldives: the four resort nights are an add-on chosen by category, and the flight is not included.

All six are sold year-round. Sri Lanka has two monsoons on opposite schedules, so one coast is usually drier than the other, and both appear in the programme — Unawatuna and Negombo in the west, Pasikuda and Nilaveli in the east, the latter described as at its best in the summer months. Every trip includes hotel accommodation with breakfast, an English-speaking guide, a bottle of water on arrival and a 24-hour contact number. International flights are not included. Where the hotel list is published, rooms are Standard and Deluxe — Ceyloni City in Kandy, Oakray Summer in Nuwara Eliya, Sinharaja Forest Lodge at the rainforest, Pedlar 62 in Galle — plus a Luxury Tent at the Wild Glamping camp in the Knuckles. There is no five-star tier in this programme.

Because every trip is built to order, these six are starting points rather than fixed products. Days come out, a beach stay goes in, and the balance between ruins, walking and safari is yours to set. The detail sits on the region pages: Sigiriya and the Cultural Triangle, Ella and the hill country, and Yala and the south.