palinka101

I am travelling to sri lanka in february for close to 20 days. i have been to India a couple of times and other asian countries. My questions are these: do i really need a car and driver to tour around the country and if so, for all of the tour, or do you recommend it for only part. Also, what is the scoop with booking hotels? I've read that i shouldn't book rooms directly from the hotels because they are way more expensive. Is that true, and if it is, what do you recommend? Thanks for your help!

crellston

We normally travel completely independently wherever we go but we spent a month in Sri Lanka in Feb this year and we organised about half the time via a tour operator, the remainder ourselves on the ground. The first driver we had was hopeless and the car broke down so we got a replacement for both and our experience was enhanced tremendously. If you get a good driver/ guide then this if definitely the best way to see the country but you do need to choose very carefully.

The latter part of our trip where we were without a car was easy enough but did involve some lengthy tuk tuk and taxi rides. I have travelled teh world on public buses and train but the Sri Lankan buses were a step to far even for me! Falling to bits and travelling at speeds you would not believe!.

As for booking hotels, it probably depends a lot on what level you choose, but I doubt it would be more expensive. Many tour operators/agents will publish the rates they get so you can compare and, in our experience, they were virtually identical.

I would suggest that you book asap as we found that many places were book up when we got there and when we had to change hotels a couple of times (because of the floods) we had real difficulty. It was impossible to get a room anywhere near Yala at the time so we had to give that a miss.

Here is a link to our trip report which has a bit more nfoon our time there

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...-and-curry.cfm

Mohammed

I think a car is very necessary unless one is staying in a particularly area for an extended time. I think the key words here as crellston says are "a good driver/ guide", and that does not tantamount to big name tour companies.

Kathie

We used Boutique Sri Lanka to book hotels and a car and driver for our trip several years ago. I appreciated having the back-up of an agency. Had the car broken down or the driver not been accaptable, they would have traded out the car or the driver for us, no problem. I had friends to had to change both the car and the driver over the course of their trip.

I have a trip report herer, just click on my name and then on trip reports.

Mohammed

Buses/Trains in spite of what crellston says are actually very cheap and reasonably safe, but very rough in terms of comfort, ok if you are a very low budget student traveler. I recently touched base with a Canadian "20 something" young male student who traveled alone on bus/train, kept calling me from all parts of the country for tidbits of advice, and he had had a great time. I would not advise such solo travel for a girl though, always better if you are in a group of two or more.

thursdaysd

"I would not advise such solo travel for a girl though, always better if you are in a group of two or more."

We had this discussion before. I disagree.

Mohammed

http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/15054...transport.html

crellston

Mohammed - My previous comments were purely about the buses (NOT the trains) which I stand by entirely. I really don't care that much about comfort but the buses we encountered were decrepit and were literally falling to pieces. This implies no disrespect to the country of Sri Lanka as this is often the case in the developing world. My real problem was with teh driving standards of teh bus drivers which were appalling by any standards. I saw one bus lying on its side at the edge of the road with the passengers standing around it. No doubt a result of the driving standards which seemed to be employed by many of the bus drivers or maybe a mechanical failure. Either way I way glad I was not on that bus. "Reasonably safe" is a very subjective term.

The trains by comparison were a delight. OK they were very old but provided a reasonable level of comfort. We had a couple of long journeys by train and enjoyed both immensely. Even the breakdown and delay of an hour we experienced was entirely forgiveable given the amazing journey and beautiful scenery we experienced.