Cultural Tour Sri Lanka

On arrival to the Colombo airport, meet and greet and transfer to your hotel in Colombo. Enjoy the rest of the day at leisure.

At around 06:00 hrs, pick-up from your hotel in Colombo, beginning the tour with a visit to Dambulla Rock Temple to explore this 2,000-year-old sacred pilgrimage site carved deep inside a mountain. This awe-inspiring complex of five caves is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that features thousands of metres of painted walls and ceilings, and contains more than 150 images of the Lord Buddha as well as a few of deities and Sri Lankan kings. Then continue to Polonnaruwa for lunch. After lunch, take a city tour of Polonnaruwa and discover the well-preserved ruins of this ancient city. Built about 1,000 years ago, it features a large artificial lake, which is still in use and feeds a network of irrigation canals, the remains of a royal palace and a number of temples and administrative buildings. Transfer to your hotel in Sigiriya/ Dambulla/ Habarana

Take the road after a delicious breakfast. Begin to explore on a high with a climb to the fifth-century Sigiriya fortress, which sits atop a rock that dramatically rises almost 200 metres above the rainforest. King Kashyapa built a citadel at the top of this giant boulder known as the ‘Lion Rock’, which was the innermost stronghold of a vast fortified city. In time it came to be abandoned and forgotten, covered by dense overgrowth until the British encountered it and began a painstaking archaeological exploration. Today, the terraced gardens and cisterns, the moat, the ‘Mirror Wall’ and the fragile frescoes of the ‘heavenly maidens’ among the other remnants of this once thriving city offer only a tantalising indication of what once stood here. Pass through the lion’s ‘belly’ and climb to the top via a spiral staircase that snakes its way around the rock. From the summit, enjoy breathtaking views over the surrounding landscape and beyond into the horizon. Continue to Kandy, en route visiting a spice garden. Lunch in Kandy. Afternoon city tour of Kandy with a visit to the Temple of the Tooth Relic and in the evening, enjoy a cultural show followed by dinner at the hotel

reakfast at the hotel. Begin the day with a visit to an arts and crafts centre, a gem museum and the tea factory in Giragama. Take to the road to stop at the enchanting Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, which was founded in 1975 with just five calves and has grown to more than 100 today. As well as all the elephants rescued from the rainforests, there have been dozens of births at the shelter, with the first arriving in 1984. Here, they are fed, bathed and allowed to roam freely. Catch sight of them at feeding time – a bottle for the calves and coconut leaves for the adults – and then watch these gentle giants frolicking in the waters of the River Maha Oya at bath time. Lunch in Pinnawala. Drop off at your hotel in Colombo.

After Breakfast proceed to onward Journey