Sri Lanka by road, and why fifty miles can take an afternoon

Sri Lanka is about 430 kilometres from north to south, a little shorter than the drive from London to Newcastle, and most first-time visitors look at the map and assume they can see the whole island in a week. The map is accurate. It is the roads it does not show you. Away from a few expressways, almost every journey is on a two-lane road shared with buses, lorries, three-wheelers, bicycles, wandering dogs and the occasional cow, through village after village where everyone slows down. Then the hills begin, and the road starts climbing in bends.

The result is a country where distances and journey times have little to do with each other, and where a sensible tour is planned around hours, not kilometres.

What the clock actually says

Colombo to Kandy is about 115 kilometres. Depending on traffic, and on whether the driver can use the expressway out of Colombo for part of the way, it usually takes three to four hours. Kandy to Nuwara Eliya is shorter, about 75 kilometres, but the road climbs well over a thousand metres through tea estates, mostly in hairpins, and three hours is normal. Down on the plains of the cultural triangle, the drives between Sigiriya, Dambulla and Polonnaruwa are shorter and flatter, but still slower than the distances suggest, because the road runs through towns and markets.

The exception is the south-west. The Southern Expressway, the first of the country's motorways, runs from the edge of Colombo down towards Galle and beyond, and on it Galle is a couple of hours from the capital, far quicker than the old coast road through every town on the way.

None of this is a complaint. The slow roads are where you see the country: fruit stalls stacked with king coconuts, schoolchildren in white uniforms, roadside shrines, paddy fields with egrets standing in them. But a day with four hours in a vehicle is a day with four hours less for anything else, and it is worth knowing which days those are before you book.

How tours pace it

The better itineraries deal with this in a few ways. They stay two or three nights in one place, so that a long drive is followed by a day with none. They put the longest drives early in the morning, before the traffic and the heat build. And they break the journey: a spice garden, a tea factory, a temple or a lunch stop turns four hours of driving into two shorter stretches with something to see in between.

When you compare tours, look at the number of hotel changes, not just the number of places visited. A trip that moves every night will see more names on the map and spend more of each day on the road.

Explore Worldwide's Sri Lanka in Depth, fourteen nights, takes the island at a steadier pace than most, with the ancient cities and their parks in the north, Kandy, the tea country around Nuwara Eliya and Ella, Udawalawe and the south coast at Galle.

The train through the hills

The railway through the hill country is one of the reasons people go to Sri Lanka, and it is slower still. The scheduled trains from Kandy to Ella take around six and a half to seven hours, and often longer, for a journey a car would do in less. Nobody takes it to save time. It climbs through tea estates, tunnels and cloud forest, with the doors open and vendors walking the carriages, and for many travellers it is the best day of the trip.

Some tours take a stretch of the line, often the most scenic part between Nanu Oya, the station for Nuwara Eliya, and Ella, while the luggage goes ahead by road. Others travel the whole way by road. The line is popular and the carriages can be crowded, and after heavy rain landslides sometimes close it, when tours carry on by road instead. If the train matters to you, check the tour page before you book.

Making the long days easier

A few things help. If you are prone to travel sickness, the hill roads will find it out: take your usual remedy before the climb, not halfway up, and ask for a seat near the front. Keep water, a hat and something warm in your day bag, because the hill country can be cool even when the coast is hot. During the monsoons, heavy rain and landslides can close roads at short notice, and the UK government's advice is to keep an eye on local warnings; on a tour, the guide and driver will reroute.

Most of all, resist the temptation to fit everything in. Two weeks is enough for the cultural triangle, Kandy, the hill country, a national park and the south coast, at a pace that leaves time to enjoy them. Ten days can do most of it, but something has to give, and it is better to leave out a region than to spend the trip watching it through a window.

Just You's Sri Lanka, Pearl of the Indian Ocean, thirteen nights for solo travellers, follows the classic loop from the cultural triangle through Kandy and Nuwara Eliya to Beruwala and Galle. Explore Worldwide's Upgraded Discover Sri Lanka, twelve nights, adds Ella and a safari at Yala on the way down to the coast.