Sri Lanka West Coast Holidays

Nearly every visitor to Sri Lanka spends time on the island’s west coast – a region home to the nation’s capital with a beautiful coastline and surprisingly rural, often overlooked, interior. Commercial and cosmopolitan, Colombo is Sri Lanka’s largest city and a melting pot of peoples and cultures reflected in the city’s history and architectural styles. Originally a Portuguese trading outpost captured by the Dutch in the 1600s and falling into British hands a century or so later, this legacy has resulted in an attractive city of wide tree-lined streets, grand British mansions, Dutch churches and elaborate mosques. Arguably the most interesting part of the city is Pettah, once Colombo’s financial centre and today a busy market area of tradesmen, fruit and vegetable wholesalers, goldsmiths and gem traders. To the east of Colombo the city quickly fades into countryside punctuated by small scattered rural communities and rolling hills which, rising steeply, are the setting for tea, rubber and spice plantations. These foothills, away from the main tourist trail, conceal a number of delightful boutique properties that serve as both an ideal stopping point between Colombo and the sights of the Cultural Triangle but also as places to relax, bird watch, walk and experience everyday life in provincial Sri Lanka. For many the west coast of Sri Lanka is also synonymous with beaches and many of the country’s best-known coastal towns can be found here. Each with their own style and accommodation options, Bentota, Wadduwa, Negombo, Balapitiya and Hikkaduwa are all a short drive either north or south of the capital and therefore ideal options for post-tour relaxation.