This is a very good trip but fell down on two points: 1) Just half a day in Colombo is woefully inadequate. 2) The current Explore practice on many recent trips of large lunches (In the case of Sri Lanka buffet group lunches in tourist restaurants) followed by large evening meals, also invariably as a group, is crazy. Most group members complained about this. A light lunch sampling local "street type" food, soup or light sandwiches followed by a decent evening meal would be infinitely more sensible. We all agreed that given we were not walking very far on most days no one needs two huge meals a day!
Fabulous walking and touring holiday. Hotels were all decent to very good. Our tour leader, Cham, was excellent - very knowledgeable and always willing to do extra optional things. We were a small group and we wanted to do everything! The tour itinerary was excellent and we felt like we saw nearly everything that a tour only group would see in addition to all the walking in remote locations and seeing beautiful views and remote villages. Highly recommended!!!
Both parts of this trip wee amazing but the tour leader, Nala, for the Sri Lankan part was amazing. We were seeing and doing so much of Sri Lanka but his efficiency and effectiveness at keeping us all informed and inspired throughout was seamless. He was knowledgeable, fun, and thoughtful with all of our group. He was careful to make sure everyone was happy and felt part of the group, and was aware of everyone's particular interests.
Nala made sure that we all knew what to expect in the day's itinerary but also added in extra activities if there was time, or the opportunity arose for example, a large banana market where the cooperative owners were happy to hear our questions and have phottaken.
We would thoroughly recommend Nala as a tour guide- everything he did was designed to keep us all happy and he was exceptional in this.