How to get there
Plane. Sri Lanka requires pre-arrival online visa application (called ETA). It costs around 50EUR but is usually granted within 1,2 days.
When to go
For flying: All year round. General wind direction in northern hemisphere winter is NE, summer is SW
For diving: December till April is best.
Preparation
Car Depending on your baggage you either rent a driver (yes, person plus car) for the whole trip or arrange dropoffs. It's uncommon to have foreigners drive themselves but it's possible, usually you'd then go for a tuktuk rental. We did a combo of the first two.
Don't bother trying Uber or Pickme. The drives either get cancelled or there is no coverage.
Money (EUR & credit card) Use mostly cash (LKR). The country is relatively inexpensive thouh travelling is quite costly (day driver is 50 USD)
Where to stay
Best to travel around. The booking.com images always appear shiny and nice but the places are in fact most often not. Look for positive as well as negative reviews.
General considerations
People
Friendly people, willing to help, even in case they're unable, which can be cause for some irritation.
Food
Good, Meals are beween 2 EUR and 15 EUR, so hopefully you like fish and curry, Sri Lankan rice menus and kottu are ubiquitous.
Climate
Friendly, the island is split in North East and South West with their own micro cliamtes.
Meteo
The two following resources were of great help to us for planning our flights:
Diving
The waves get very rough towards the december mid days so you should get out with boats early in the day if you don't want a neck trauma from the boat hitting the waves hard for the one hour drives out. We went with Negombo's "Sri Lanka Dive Tours" but the material was not well maintained and we don't recommend it.
The underwater scenery is ok, mostly rocky but lots of fish. We saw 5 octopodes in one dive, many nudibranchs and a big leopard stingray. A nice wreck dive near Colombo is a sunk presidential boat with armored cars.
https://blog.padi.com/sri-lankas-incredible-must-see-dive-sites/
Top Reefs
- Negombo Third reef off Negombo at 20 meters
- Negombo Second Reef system Negombo at 15-18 Meters
- Colombo Taprobane North Reef system off Colombo at 20-26 Meters
- Colombo Gale Reef South, Gorgonian Gardens, a unique sea fan reef off Colombo at 35 Meters
- Colombo Taprobane East Reef off Colombo at 20 meters
- Colombo Barracuda Reef off Colombo at 23 Meters
- Colombo Snapper Ally off at Colombo 30M - 35M
- Vakarai Reefs at 6M-8M
- Trincomalee Black Tip Rock, Pigeon Island off Trincomalee at 6 Meters
Paragliding
Flying is best in the highlands near Kandy. There are two wind directions, NE and SW, check windy. Take offs are plentiful but landings are scarce because there's either jungle or rice- or tea fields. Very few landable fields. Regulations: The Sri Lankan civil aviation authority must be contacted prior to flying.
Locals/Help
Contact Ajantha from Kandy paragliding via whatsapp or facebook, they fly often around Deltota and are happy to help! Ajantha: +94 77 757 1080 Nalaka: +94 76 734 5229
Sites
Leechy Spot NE
From Deltota: Next to Taylor Seat, a hike by foot of about 30min uphill and against some very leech infested parts of the jungle, control your shoes!
Taylor's Seat NE
From Deltota: 500LKR take off fee, only reachable by Tuktuk since the streets are very narrow.
Gurulupotha E
Landing: From the hotel Mounts Edge Regency walk along the road towards 18 bends for about 300m to discover a huge dry ricefields landing place. Take off: The take off is at the viewport 18 bends on top. A frequent bus takes you up for about 100LKR
Other spots we haven't flown:
- Gomara W: GoogleMaps location
- Marassana NE: GoogleMaps location
- Pasgama W: GoogleMaps location on Paragliding Earth
- Riverston W: GoogleMaps location
Conclusion
A wonderful getaway for two weeks but it's very tourist centered in terms of transportation. What usually happens is that you get a driver and they just do "the program" with you and visit all the spots everyone visits.
For diving we wouldn't recommend Sri Lanka in particular if you can shell off the money for the neigboring Maldives, do that.
Flying is amazing in Sri Lanka but XC is a bit tricky unless the cloud base is at or above around 2300m. It's necessary because suitable landing fields are really scarce.