Best Places to Visit in Sri Lanka

Founded over 2,500 years ago, Anuradhapura is unsurprisingly the oldest city in the Cultural Triangle and the nation's first capital. Back in its heyday, thousands of people lived here among royal palaces, monasteries, temples topped by glittering jewels, three-story houses, markets, pleasure gardens, public bath pools and wooded parks. 

Colombo is Sri Lanka’s capital, a port city with rich colonial heritage, and the gateway to any Sri Lankan adventure. Colombo is a city where the country's distinct cultures and histories mix and mingle ‘serendipitously’ and in fact, Sri Lanka is exactly the origin of the word. 

Dutch Fort at Galle is known as the best-preserved sea fort in South Asia. A living and breathing UNESCO world heritage site, this richly historic city is a superb mix of architecture, with fortifications that resemble the ones in Portugal's coasts.

Kandy is a beautiful city nestled among foggy hills and a peaceful lake. It's colorful houses, colonial architecture, and ancient temples give Kandy an undeniable charm. 

This national park is one of the best places in the country and arguably the world to see wild elephants, which are often present in huge numbers during the summer and early fall. The elephant gathering is considered to be the largest meeting place of Asian elephants in the world. 

The Sri Lankan tourist industry often calls Nuwara Eliya ‘Little England’. While almost all British visitors fail to recognize any resemblance, the toy-town atmosphere does have a rose-tinted English country town vibe to it, though it comes with a bewildering surrealist edge. 

Situated at an altitude of 1250 metres near Hatton in central Sri Lanka, the Ceylon Tea Trails resort borders the World Heritage Central Highlands and offers breathtaking panoramas of mountains and lush tea fields. 

Experience the last major untouched area of rainforest in Sri Lanka. The reserve occupies a wide but thin range in the heart of the country’s wet zone. Thanks to it's higher elevation the forest is commonly covered by a thick fog that nourishes its rich soils and provides water to much of southwestern Sri Lanka. 

With countless elephants, wild buffalo, sambar deer, and leopards, Udawalawe National Park gives a comparable experience to some of the best savannah reserves in Africa. In fact, for elephant spotting, Udawalawe is much better, so if that's what you are looking for, it's the one national park in Sri Lanka not to miss.

Yala is famous for having the world’s most concentrated population of leopards which makes sightings very common, but you'll also get the chance to see Asian elephants, sloth bears, sambars, jackals, spotted deer, peacocks, and crocodiles.