Sri Lanka Is Drawing Visitors After Years of Turmoil — Here’s How to Visit

Leaves rustled in the tall trees overhead, and I felt a cool breeze on my skin. I could hear the gurgle of a stream in the distance, and the sounds of chanting. I was in the tropical woodland surrounding a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, in Matara, Sri Lanka. Ramya Jirasinghe, a mindfulness coach and former Buddhist nun, was walking me through a one-on-one meditation session. At her suggestion, I submitted to the sensory experiences around me “without judgment,” listening to sounds without chasing them in thought. Slowly, the tension in my shoulders eased. My mind swirled with images of all that I had experienced in the previous week. As instructed, I let them flow freely.

I was at the end of a five-day journey that had begun in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Galle Fort, in southwestern Sri Lanka, and taken me across the southern tip of the island to the leopard reserve of Yala National Park. In between I had taken in the dramatic coastline of Weligama and had stopped for some beach time in Hiriketiya. Sri Lanka is a country I’m particularly fond of, so when I was asked to revisit to report this story, I seized the opportunity. Yes, I was dying to go back, but I’d had another motive for coming: I wanted to see if the island nation was ready to welcome international visitors again. 

In 2022, Sri Lanka’s economic crisis made headlines around the world and resulted in an abrupt change of government. Tourism, already battered by COVID and a 2019 terror attack, took another severe hit. (According to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, visitor revenue slid from a peak of $4.4 billion in 2018 to just $507 million in 2021.) Sustainable tourism companies, which use visitor dollars to support local communities, had been particularly affected. To organize my visit, I turned to Ayu in the Wild, a Sri Lankan–owned sustainable tour operator that donates around 3 percent of its annual revenue to social and ecological causes.

At the start of my trip, Ayu in the Wild invited me to see one such initiative, a dance-therapy class for differently-abled children in Pinnaduwa, a village about five miles from Galle Fort. I was wary of going, concerned that the children and their parents might feel objectified. But Rangi Gamage, who is employed by the tour operator to teach the class, convinced me otherwise. 

Gamage is an artist trained in Pahatharata Natum, a traditional form of folk dance. She’s also a fantastic cook, and I first met her at a vegan lunch set up by Ayu in the Wild. Gamage had prepared a typical farmers’ meal and served it in a clearing between her family’s millet fields. 

I helped myself to a stir-fry of turkeyberry, leafy greens, chili peppers, and grated coconut; a dish of radish and jackfruit seeds; and an aromatic button-mushroom curry. All of it was accompanied by a regional variety of red rice, pickled vegetables, and crispy pappadums. The ingredients had all been grown within a stone’s throw of where we sat, and everything was packed with flavor. 

Sensing the stupor her meal had induced, Gamage went in for the kill. “They actually enjoy performing for guests,” she said, once again referring to her dance-therapy class. “In their regular schools the children are often left out of events. This makes them feel included.” Maybe it was the effect of her cooking, or maybe it was her obvious sense of pride in her work, but I finally agreed. 

The class was held in a large hall, open on three sides. I watched as 20 differently-abled children filled the room. They were, I was told, from the area’s most impoverished neighborhoods. As the music played, the children, several with impaired movement, imitated Gamage as she led the class from the front of the room. They struggled; they laughed and tried to keep up. Every so often Gamage would correct a child’s posture, or commend others for their hard work.

An hour later, as Gamage got ready to wind the class down, one young dancer tugged at her teacher’s sleeve and whispered in her ear, prompting her to laugh out loud. She wanted to dance for the “Indian guest” — me — to the song “Kala chashma,” from the hit Bollywood film Baar Baar Dekho. “Does he know the song?” the girl asked Gamage. I replied in the affirmative. As the energetic bhangra song played, the children let loose: freestyling, jumping, wriggling, kicking their feet up in the air, all the way through to the end.

It isn’t just Ayu in the Wild that is making travel to the island more sustainable: every one of the hotels I stayed at, whether it was a cute boutique hotel or a luxurious lodge, is making environmental and social causes a focus. At the eclectically designed Malabar Hill, a 12-villa property on the top of a forested hill a couple of miles inland from Weligama Beach, the owners fund training for young people interested in pursuing careers in hospitality and help women set up batik workshops, with the ultimate goal of using their fabrics within the hotel. 

Another key Malabar Hill initiative is to protect the wilderness that surrounds the hotel, which is home to more than 500 species of flora and 240 species of fauna — including such rare creatures as the purple-faced leaf monkey and the rusty-spotted cat. The resort’s logo features the Sri Lanka gray hornbill, another charismatic resident, which I saw dipping in and out of my villa’s infinity pool.

“This isn’t the first crisis Sri Lanka’s tourism industry has had to deal with,” Malabar Hill’s general manager, Sanjiva Gautamadasa, replied when I asked how they were coping. “Whether civil war or political upheaval, we’ve learned to roll with the punches.” Pivoting to local ingredients is just one way the country has adapted: Malabar Hill, too, sources 80 percent of its produce locally and also has its own kitchen garden.

I saw another example of conscious tourism at Wild Coast Tented Lodge, a 28-suite all-inclusive resort built on a strip of dryland forest between Yala National Park and the Indian Ocean. It’s a striking property: accommodation is contained within tented structures designed to resemble cocoons, while the public buildings mirror the boulders strewn across the landscape. But despite this high-concept design, nothing is fenced in; instead, elephants and other animals, even leopards, are allowed to roam freely through the property.

The hotel’s wastewater is treated and released into nearby watering holes for the benefit of wildlife. The lodge’s parent company, Resplendent Ceylon (a part of Sri Lanka’s famous Dilmah tea brand), finances conservation projects for elephants living inland at Udawalawe National Park, as well as for dugongs, an endangered marine mammal found off the country’s eastern and western shores. 

All of this is funded by a superlative level of luxury. And the food was fantastic — which felt even more impressive considering the limited ingredients the chefs were able to source for the kitchen. At every meal I was offered a range of Sri Lankan and international dishes, and when nothing appealed, they were happy to whip up off-menu preparations: one morning I had an inexplicable urge to eat string hoppers, Sri Lanka’s classic breakfast dish of steamed rice noodles.

Though I seemed to find invention everywhere I looked, it wasn’t always prompted by necessity. Take Smoke & Bitters, a spacious open-air bar and restaurant across the road from Pehebiya Beach, in Hiriketiya, that champions regional ingredients in all its recipes. I ordered a negroni made with a Sri Lankan gin, Colombo No. 7, that has notes of native spices such as cinnamon.

Smoke & Bitters has put Sri Lanka on the world cocktail map, placing 29th on Asia’s 50 Best Bars list in 2024. It was set up in 2020 by two lifelong friends — Lahiru Perera, a graduate of Ireland’s prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School, and Don Ranasinghe, a veteran of the U.K. bar and club scene. “Our thought was: how do we deliver Sri Lankan flavors but in a progressive and sustainable way?” Ranasinghe told me. Curious, I ordered another cocktail, this time choosing the Mai Chai, a twist on the tiki-bar classic. It’s made with a tea-infused rum, spiced orgeat, and triple sec, all three created in-house. Maybe it was the cocktails, but sitting under a web of lights strung between trees, surrounded by couples on date nights and groups of friends weekending by the beach, the mood felt defiantly, infectiously upbeat. 

Another occasion of great revelry was the evening I spent at a Galle Fort landmark, the Amangalla hotel. A serendipitous meeting led to drinks with friends from Mumbai, with whom I spent hours reminiscing over bottles of New World wine in the name of research for the wedding reception they were hosting at the hotel later that week. The building we were drinking in dates back to 1684, when the Dutch ruled over Sri Lanka. For centuries it housed army officers and administrators, travelers and traders until 1948, when the island gained independence from Britain. Today, the interiors are refurbished with polished teak floors, shuttered windows, and four-poster beds, and the amenities are every bit as modern as you would expect from the Aman brand, which took over the property in 2005.

In addition to Amangalla, there are dozens of well-maintained structures within Galle Fort, also known as the Old Town, that tell the history of the island. One evening I walked around the ramparts overlooking the Indian Ocean, where families sat enjoying the breeze. Elderly women played with their grandchildren. Men chatted outside a whitewashed mosque, its name in Urdu written in an Art Deco font. Kids ate ice cream and cotton candy, while teenagers played cricket in the narrow lanes between homes. I found it heartening to see that a place imbued with so much history hadn’t been forgotten, but continues to be lived in. 

“Galle Fort has changed a lot over the years,” Chirath De Silva, a third-generation resident, told me. He gave me a tour of the Old Town in his vintage open-top Beetle, taking me from its highest lookout point to churches and colonial-era offices that now house the local government. While many of the area’s heritage structures have been turned into hotels, shops, and restaurants, more than 2,000 people still live inside the Old Town. “This was the kindergarten I went to,” he said as we drove past a building that today houses a pan-Asian restaurant.

Some of Galle’s chicest addresses are housed in these buildings, including outposts of Colombo stores such as Spa Ceylon, which sells ayurveda-inspired beauty products, and Barefoot, known for its handmade crafts and textiles. But there’s still plenty of old-world charm at places like Shoba, where you can shop for authentic beeralu, a form of lace the Portuguese introduced to Sri Lanka. It’s produced on a device with dozens of bobbins, and there’s one right by the cashier’s counter. “Galle Fort may keep on changing, but for those of us who’ve grown up here, it will always be home,” De Silva said.

Back on the grounds of the Buddhist temple, my meditation session was almost at an end. Suddenly, the silence was interrupted by a ringtone-like sound: “popopopopo.” It was the call of a crimson-fronted barbet. I thought back to where I had learned to identify it: on a forest-bathing experience in Kanneliya, part of the Kanneliya-Dediyagala-Nakiyadeniya (KDN) Biosphere Reserve in south-central Sri Lanka, which I had visited after my stay at Weligama. Indika Siriseeli, a self-taught naturalist, was leading a group of us along a path to a secret waterfall. She’s a member of the Kanneliya Guides Association, a volunteer group that wants to make this region more accessible to nature-loving visitors. More than 300 plant species have been identified within KDN, with UNESCO designating 45 percent of them as rare.

As we walked, the sunlight filtered through the forest canopy, creating patterns on the path under my feet. The barbet, along with a chorus of other endemic birds, provided the soundtrack. A short distance in, Siriseeli pointed to what I thought was a bright green creeper uncoiling against a rock. As I squinted to examine it more closely, a yellow eyelid opened to reveal a blank stare. I quickly stepped back: the creeper, about five inches long, was actually a green vine snake. Farther ahead Siriseeli showed us a tree whose bark is used in tribal medicine to cure stomach ailments, and another whose leaves are juiced to heal wounds. 

As we settled on boulders to watch a stream come down from the mountains, it struck me that the ability of people like Siriseeli — to recognize bird calls, to spot reptiles in thick foliage, to forage for medicines and food — comes from an understanding of a world that is completely alien to city dwellers like me. In that moment, my own urban issues seemed trivial, even meaningless. 

I HEARD jirasinghe, who had been leading me in meditation, say: “Move your fingers, move your toes, gently open your eyes…” I was being nudged out of my reverie. It had been blissful, recollecting all that had happened on the island. And even more blissful that my teacher hadn’t been able to tell that my thoughts were drifting.

As we made our way out of the forest, Jirasinghe offered to show me the inside of the monastery’s temple. The Kurumbure Raja Maha Viharaya is a mix of colonial and Sri Lankan architecture, with European-style columns and a terra-cotta-tiled roof. It’s said to date back to the 18th century, when the kings of Kandy, in northern Sri Lanka, ruled over the whole island. Inside, a seated idol of the Buddha, its face illuminated by light streaming in from above, projected an air of serenity and hope. The walls of the sanctum were covered by hand-painted frescoes, in which the Portuguese, Dutch, and English, as well as East Asians and Arabs, were all depicted — scenes from a time when Sri Lanka was an important stop on the Maritime Silk Road and visited by people from around the globe.

As we turned to leave, Jirasinghe said, “When you see these paintings, you realize how prosperous we once were. Which only means we can do it again.”  

See the Best of Sri Lanka

Galle 

Amangalla: In the heart of Galle’s Old Town, the Amangalla offers atmospheric rooms, a superlative spa, and heartfelt service.

Fort Bazaar: Fort Bazaar is an intimate, style-forward property where every stay comes with complimentary spa vouchers, sundown gin and tonics, and guided walks around Old Town.

39 Coffee, Bistro & Wine Bar: This spot, which serves meze and Mediterranean entrées at the Fort Printers hotel, is one of Galle’s best-kept secrets.

Isle of Gelato: A cubbyhole of a place on Pedlar Street sells artisanal ice creams, including vegan recipes, that have amassed quite a following. 

Ropewalk: Modeled on a 1920s speakeasy, Ropewalk bar champions arrack, Sri Lanka’s national spirit, and also serves classic cocktails. 

Barefoot: One of Sri Lanka’s iconic brands, Barefoot is your best bet for consciously produced souvenirs, handicrafts, and textiles.

Shoba: Shop for traditional Sri Lankan lace at Shoba, the Pedlar Street cafe and gallery.

Spa Ceylon: The Galle outpost of Colombo’s favorite ayurveda-inspired beauty brand also has a spa, so you can try the goods before you buy them.

Urban Island: Born as a skills-development project for rural artisans, Urban Island produces high-quality handmade homewares and textiles.

Var Vara: Russian transplant and designer Elena Shnyreva works with local artisans to create chic resort wear from batik fabric.

Hiriketiya

Smoke & Bitters: Set among palm trees near Pehebiya Beach, this spot is currently No. 29 on Asia’s 50 Best Bars list. The cocktails are the main event, but be sure to line your stomach with the excellent modern Sri Lankan food.

Negombo

The Wallawwa: An 18th-century home turned boutique hotel, The Wallawwa, located near the airport, is easily the most comfortable place to get over your jet lag. The gardens provide fruits and vegetables for the hotel’s kitchen.

Weligama

Malabar Hill: A 12-villa eco-aware property, Malabar Hill is decorated with a mix of Moroccan, Rajasthani, and Sri Lankan styles. While it’s built on a hillside a couple of miles inland, it also has a restaurant and bar on Mirissa Beach.

Yala National Park

Wild Coast Tented Lodge: An all-inclusive Relais & Châteaux property designed for wildlife lovers, Wild Coast Tented Lodge has cocoon-shaped suites with four-poster beds, claw-foot tubs, and leather trunks that double as minibars.

How to Book

Sustainable travel specialist Ayu in the Wild can set up tours of Sri Lanka that include visits to community projects, as well as stays at boutique and high-end hotels.

A version of this story first appeared in the October 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Back to Sri Lanka”