Tailor-made Sri Lanka journeys, planned in Weligama.
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12 days Family Private tour
Sri Lanka’s Legacy in Stone and Design
- 12 days Duration
- 50 Max People
- Airport Pickup
- Udaya Guider
About this trip
About this route
Twelve days following the work of Geoffrey Bawa, the architect who shaped the way Sri Lanka builds for its climate. You see his Colombo house and his public buildings, stay along the coast where his influence is thickest, and finish at Lunuganga, the garden he worked on for fifty years.
Between the Bawa days the route covers what he drew on: the ancient cities of the Cultural Triangle, the Kandyan kingdom, the Dutch fort at Galle and the pattern of the ordinary village house.
It is private throughout, with your own driver-guide for all twelve days, which matters on a route where the best buildings are not always open when the guidebook says they are.
Why this route works
- Bawa’s buildings are still working hotels and houses, so you use them rather than queue to look at them.
- Number 11, his Colombo house, is where the ideas start, and it is open by guided visit.
- Lunuganga is the summary of everything he did, and you stay the night, which is the only way to see it without other people in it.
- The route also takes in Dambulla, Sigiriya, Peradeniya and Galle, which is the older architecture he was answering.
Who it suits
- Architects, designers and garden people, and anyone who reads buildings for a living or for pleasure.
- Travellers who would rather have two nights in each place than move every morning.
- Couples and small groups. It is a slow route with long lunches built into it.
Who it does not suit
- If wildlife is the point of your trip, this route has almost none. Tell us and we will add a park.
- If you want to cover the whole island, this one stays in the west, the centre and the south.
Included activities
- Guided visit to Number 11, Bawa’s Colombo house and studio
- Seema Malaka on Beira Lake and the parliament building at Kotte, seen from outside
- Dambulla cave temples
- Sigiriya rock fortress
- Kandy walking tour and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic
- Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya
- Ariyapala mask museum at Ambalangoda
- Galle Fort walking tour
- Mulgirigala rock temple
- Lunuganga, Bawa’s garden at Bentota
Best time to go
The west and south coasts, where most of this route sits, are at their best from roughly November to April. The Cultural Triangle works all year and is driest from May to September. If your dates fall in the southwest monsoon we run the route in the other direction and keep the coast to the end.
How booking works
Send your dates through the enquiry form on this page, or message us on WhatsApp. You get back a day by day plan with the hotels named and a price for your group. Nothing is held or charged while you think about it.
To confirm, we ask for a deposit of 50 percent of the total, with the balance due at least five days before you arrive. Bookings made within ten days of arrival are paid in full at the time of booking. Card payments are handled by PayHere, and a booking is confirmed only once we send you written confirmation.
Prices shown here are per person in US dollars, based on the level 1 hotels. A higher hotel level, extra nights or changes to the route all change the price, so ask us for a quote on your own dates. Cancellation terms are set out in our refund policy.
Day by day
A plan, not a timetable. Any day can be swapped once you are here.
Start at Number 11, the house Bawa bought in 1958 and then rebuilt around its courtyards for the next forty years. It holds his collection and runs guided visits through the day, and it explains the rest of the trip in an hour.
The city carries the public work. The parliament at Kotte sits on an island in a lake. Seema Malaka is a temple platform that appears to float on Beira Lake. The Gallery Cafe on Alfred House Road was his studio and is now a restaurant with an art space attached, and the bookshop next door has everything written about him.
Two days on the architecture Bawa read before he drew anything. The ruins at Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa come from kingdoms that go back to the third century BC, and the cave temples at Dambulla hold the largest group of Buddha figures under one roof in the country, under painted ceilings.
Sigiriya is the set piece, a fifth century citadel built on top of a rock. For the quieter version, Yapahuwa is a thirteenth century rock fortress that almost nobody visits, and Aukana has the best preserved standing Buddha on the island at around twelve metres. Mihintale, where Buddhism arrived, is 1,840 steps to the summit.
The drive from the Cultural Triangle to Kandy takes most of the morning. A walking tour is the quickest way into the town, which stacks its Kandyan, colonial and modern layers into the same few streets.
The Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya are the largest in Sri Lanka and worth a slow half day. The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic holds the relic itself, and the pujas at dawn, midday and evening are open to visitors who dress for it.
West to the coast at Bentota, where Bawa's influence sits thickest and several hotels along this strip were shaped by him or by the people he trained. Two nights here, with the beach if you want it.
The mask museum at Ambalangoda is the stop inland. It explains what the carving is for, which is theatre and ritual rather than decoration, and how each face is read.
You follow the coast south. Galle Fort is the stop on the way: a seventeenth century Dutch town built on Portuguese foundations, with the ramparts, the lighthouse and the lanes intact and still lived in. One of Bawa's coastal hotels stands on the headland just outside the walls and is worth the detour for the way it sits on the rock.
Tangalle gives you two nights of beach. Inland, the Mulgirigala rock temple is cut into a boulder more than 200 metres high, with the coast laid out below it.
Back up the coast to Lunuganga, the rubber estate Bawa bought in 1948 and shaped for the rest of his life. It is the clearest statement of what he was doing: rooms that open onto terraces, terraces that frame the lake, and a garden arranged as a series of rooms rather than a lawn with planting round it.
You stay the night. Day visitors get an hour of it. Staying is the only way to see the garden early and late, which is when it was designed to be seen.
A short transfer up the coast to Negombo for the last night, twenty minutes from the airport, and the flight home.
What is included
- Private air-conditioned vehicle with an English-speaking driver-guide for all twelve days
- Eleven nights of hotels with daily breakfast, based on the level 1 rooms
- Entrance fees for the sites and activities listed in the itinerary
- Guided visits to the Bawa house and garden on the itinerary
- Kandy walking tour and Galle Fort walking tour
- Bottled drinking water in the vehicle every day
- All government taxes and service charges
- International and domestic flights
- Lunches, dinners and snacks unless the itinerary says otherwise
- Sri Lanka visa fees
- Travel insurance, which we strongly recommend you arrange
- Tips for your driver-guide, guides and hotel staff
- Personal spending such as laundry, phone calls and room service
- Anything not listed in the itinerary
Where this route goes
Colombo, Kandalama, Kandy, Bentota, Tangalle, Bentota, Negombo
- Private tour, never a group
- Your own driver-guide and vehicle
- Every day can be changed
- One number to call, any hour
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Want this trip, but not exactly like this?
Every route on this site is a starting point. Tell us your dates and what you would change, and we will send back a version that fits.
