Hiking & Peaks

A lush hill-country village with iconic train rides, waterfalls, and tea plantations.

An ancient rock fortress rising 200m above the jungle - a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

'Little England' - a cool hill-station surrounded by endless tea estates.

A dramatic highland plateau with World's End cliff and misty cloud forest.

A rugged limestone range with hiking trails, cloud forests, and endemic wildlife.

Sri Lanka's last great lowland rainforest - a UNESCO World Heritage Site bursting with endemic species.

A ridge-top tea town with edge-of-the-world views, misty monasteries, and the gateway to Lipton's country.

Sacred mountain with a pilgrimage trail and sunrise views across the Central Highlands.

The 'City of Gems' - Sri Lanka's sapphire capital, gateway to Sinharaja and the classic Adam's Peak trail.

Sri Lanka's bird paradise - lagoons and mangroves alive with nesting waterbirds, plus uncrowded leopard country.

The safari crossroads of the Cultural Triangle - a village lake, catamaran rides, and every park within reach.

Anuradhapura's rock temple of famous carvings - home of the celebrated 'Isurumuniya Lovers'.

A remote highland station and the hair-raising hairpin road to Bambarakanda - the hill country's wildest day out.

Sri Lanka's tallest waterfall - a 263-metre thread of white falling through pine forest near Kalupahana.

A medieval capital ringed by giant animal-shaped rocks - climb Elephant Rock for sunset over the city and its lake.

Ella's beloved sunrise hike - forty-five easy minutes through tea to a ridge with enormous views.

A seven-terraced rock monastery with painted caves and a giant reclining Buddha - the 'little Sigiriya' of the south.

Sri Lanka's highest mountain at 2,524m - a cloud-forest summit you can actually drive to.

A dizzying spiral tower on a mountain summit near Gampola, with 360° views and a heart-pounding final staircase.

A breezy mountain-foot village of streams, hikes, and reservoirs - the adventurous back door to the highlands.

Sri Lanka's tallest lighthouse marks the island's southernmost point - next stop, Antarctica.

A scenic ridge walk overlooking Kandy Lake and the surrounding hill country.

The highest railway station in Sri Lanka - a misty 1,898-metre platform at the gateway to Horton Plains.

A 109-metre triple-tier waterfall tumbling beside the Kandy–Nuwara Eliya road at the Ramboda Pass.

A 13th-century rock citadel with Sri Lanka's most beautiful ancient staircase - Sigiriya without the crowds.

The cave monastery near Matale where the Buddhist scriptures were first written down 2,000 years ago.

The flat-topped mountain shaped like an open book, watching over the Kandy road - a short, superb sunrise hike.

A drowned valley of tea and mist near Hatton - Sri Lanka's most beautiful reservoir and its finest bungalow country.

Claimed as the first Buddhist stupa in the world - built by seafaring merchants on a hill above the north-east coast.

White-water rafting through lush forests on the rain-fed Kelani River.

A cliff-top forest hermitage above the Kumana wilds, crowned by a rare cylindrical dagoba and vast jungle views.

The sacred mountain where Buddhism arrived in Sri Lanka in 247 BC - 1,840 steps to a summit of stupas and views.

The nine-peaked guardian of Uva - a 2,036-metre range with sunrise views reaching to the east coast.

The cave temple where silver ore funded the great stupas - with golden Buddhas and a shrine floor of Dutch tiles.

A wind-blasted mountain pass in the Knuckles foothills, with the 'Mini World's End' cliff and grassland plains.

A historic royal forest rising behind Kandy's Temple of the Tooth, laced with shady walking trails.

An eerie red-earth plateau above the sea, tied to Ramayana legend and unlike anywhere else on the island.

The southern gateway to Sinharaja - a tea town with rainforest trails, river pools, and none of the crowds.

The hermit mountain of Polonnaruwa - two millennia of forest monks on a great rock east of the Mahaweli.

Sri Lanka's second-highest waterfall, with natural infinity pools you can swim in at the very lip.

Ella's serious hike - railway tracks, tea paths, and a cliff-top summit staring down the whole Gap.

The railway station on the ridge between two climates - walk the tracks where the island's weather splits in two.

A pink quartz mountain rising from Asia's largest ironwood forest - one of Sri Lanka's strangest, loveliest places.

A temple on a rock above a wild beach, where Queen Viharamahadevi landed - and the gateway to Yala's coast.

A cliff-edge viewpoint above a sea of eastern lowland - Uva's answer to World's End, without the entry gate.

A dramatic rocky outcrop overlooking Sigiriya - stunning sunrise views without the crowds.

A jungle mountain of a thousand ruins near Ampara - believed to hold the ashes of Mahinda, who brought Buddhism to the island.

A dramatic 30-metre waterfall framed by jungle, near Ella.

A brightly painted Hindu temple at Seetha Eliya, held to be the very place Sita was held captive in the Ramayana.

Sri Lanka's tallest dam - a 122-metre concrete arch flung across the Mahaweli gorge, with a spectacular viewpoint.

Home of Sri Lanka's biggest seated Buddha - 50 metres of serene concrete with a walk-through 'hell tunnel' below.

The 'Potato Range' - a railway-flanked peak guarding the Kandyan gap, with one of the island's best half-day hikes.

An 1889 imperial lighthouse on its own islet off Beruwala - boat trips, reef water, and West-coast maritime romance.

Sri Lanka's widest waterfall - a curtain of a dozen cascades in the hills between Welimada and Nuwara Eliya.

A 14th-century stone temple on a rock summit - the South Indian-styled jewel of the Kandyan three-temples loop.

A 2,212-metre peak named for a railway - climbed from the station at its foot through tea and cloud forest.

The south's great rainforest - waterfall pools, giant creepers, and endemic wildlife without Sinharaja's crowds.

Sri Lanka's second-highest peak - and the highest you can actually climb, across the wilds of Horton Plains.

The deep south's thermal pools - a renovated bathing garden in the scrub near Sooriyawewa, beloved by safari-goers.

The chief shrine of the god Saman, guardian of Adam's Peak - Ratnapura's great temple and its September pageant.

A road's-end village deep in the Knuckles, living traditionally beneath the sacred peak of Lakegala.

Nuwara Eliya's mini World's End - open grasslands with a nine-peak panorama and resident deer.

The golden grass dome above Badulla - a sunrise summit that glows like its orange namesake.

The Mahaweli's mightiest reservoir - a vast dam and eagle country on the wild road from Kandy to Mahiyangana.

The cliff cave above Ella where legend hides Princess Sita - and archaeology finds 25,000-year-old Sri Lankans.

Colombo's stupa on stilts - a harbour-mouth dagoba raised on arches so arriving ships see it first.

A 2,200-year-old monastery rising from the wilds of Yala - pilgrims, monks, and leopards share the rock.

A remote rock temple where the sacred Bo sapling rested on its journey - carved Buddhas on a wilderness outcrop.

Sri Lanka's third-highest peak - an easy cloud-forest summit where legend says Ravana's sky-chariot landed.

The camping summit above Bambarakanda - a bare ridge with Sri Lanka's tallest waterfall at its feet.