kovsie, i had another look at the BSL website and found that in fact, the most forested area appears to be to the SW of the Hill Country, near Singharaja - here's the link.

http://www.boutiquesrilanka.com/inte...ng_walking.php

in 16 days you would have plenty of time to spend a few days in the centre, say at Dambulla getting your SL feet and see Sigiriya, then heading south to Kandy, the Hill Country, then the forest, Galle and back to the west coast for the flight home.

Thanks annhig - I will look again!

kovsie, if you like that idea there is the most wonderful hotel at Dambulla - the Kandalama - which Cathy recommended to me [and others I think]. Really you could not have a better introduction to Sri Lanka. it is about a 4 hour drive from the airport, but that was most interesting, and we didn't have to do anything except look out of the windows of our car and watch Sri Lanka go past.

http://www.heritancehotels.com/kandalama/

<i>at Dambulla getting your SL feet and see Sigiriya, then heading south to Kandy, the Hill Country, then the forest, Galle and back to the west coast for the flight home.</i>

That was pretty close to our route. Think we were pretty happy with the itinerary choices we'd made. Our "forest" was more brushy though, at Udawalawe. And we had a beach stop in there before Galle. Btw, north of Galle, we'd skipped the local versions and visited an internationally run sea turtle program where my daughter got to help release hatchling sea turtles... we all agreed that was the highlight of the trip.

If forest is what you are looking for then it may be worth a look a NAMAL UYANA CONSERVATION FOREST. it is famed for its Ironwood forest and its mountain of Rose Quartz.The forest takes a bit of finding as it is some 8kms off of the main Dambulla –Anurhadapura road.

You can pick up a guide at the park head quarters for the 2 km walk through the forest to commence the ascent of the rose quartz mountain. It is a pleasant walk through the cool of the forest, through several streams before the climb up the bare rock of very pale pink quartz (not the vivid pink that is shown in the posters). We also got to meet a, apparently famous, monk who lives in the forest. Worth a detour of a couple of hours.

For beaches, we like Goyambokka, near to Tangalle and also Mirrissa.

Thanks to all of you for thoughtful and good advice. I was just days away from finalising our bookings ... then life happened.

However, Sri Lanka is still high on my bucket list, hopefully will go there in 2015. I will return to this thread!

oh dear, kovsie, what a shame.

I hope that you make it to Sri Lanka another time.