Two-for-one tours. What’s in it for a traveler?
by Marjie Courtis
For those who consider themselves travelers rather than tourists, a bus tour can be anathema. But what if the equation becomes Bus Tour PLUS Air Fares? Or even Bus Tour PLUS Air Fares PLUS Five-Star Hotels. Oh and it’s Two for the Price of One! And you can use your accumulated Qantas Frequent Flyer points to buy it.
That’s what TripaDeal was offering for Sri Lanka. Traveler or tourist, I couldn’t resist it.
There were numerous other two-for-one destinations available, but I chose Sri Lanka, because Aussies, Sri Lankans and newspaper reports all advised that it was again a fabulous holiday destination.
I invited a friend, Kerry, from New Zealand to join me. Even with fares to and from Auckland, she found it irresistible too. As part of the deal, we shared a room. And we shared and streamlined our joint expenses with the excellent travel-worthy Splitwise App.
The itinerary included World Heritage sites, daily diverse excursions, history and intrigue. It was almost too-good-to-be-true. But I had heard that Sri Lanka was making an all-out effort to attract tourist dollars again. For me, the question was how it would compare with travelling to a destination by myself.
So I flew on Sri Lankan Airlines in October 2023 returning in November. We were chaperoned by a local guide Nila, a local bus driver Wasantha and a local bus concierge Rohana. On the bus there were thirty people – both travelers and tourists! A few too many you might think. But in some ways, thirty was an advantage. It was big enough to be able to get away and be alone if you wanted. Small enough to make new friends if you wanted to.
And we didn’t all do the same thing. We didn’t have to sit with each other at the breakfasts. We could choose where we ate dinner (albeit with limited choices) and to a lesser extent lunch. We could opt in and out of certain tours. And if we wanted to, we could have chosen to Arrive Early or Stay Behind option, to go behind the scenes a little more by ourselves.
Over my “9 day tour” (admittedly really only 7 days when you take out the flying time, and the time difference) I experienced 5 top hotels. They were the Heritance Negombo, the Heritance Kandalama, the Jetwing St Andrews (self-described as “upcountry mansion” rather than 5 star hotel), the Kandy Golden Crown Hotel and the Radisson Blu near Galle. These hotels usually supported glamorous banquets and were a restful retreat at night. The Heritance Kandalama was a highlight, set in the jungle among elephants and monkeys.
Over five days of our seven days we saw five World Heritage sites. Being a small country helped our group achieve that but the organization of the itinerary also made it possible. The guide could only provide an introduction, but like any traveler, I had my own opportunities to explore and to find out more about them myself, on tour and afterwards. I’ve written about my unforgettable experience of these beautiful World Heritage sites in Five World Heritage Sites in Five Days.
The animal kingdom was also part of the plan. We saw elephants crossing the road, ambling (with an occasional trumpet sound) through my hotel grounds or along the side of the road. We went on a jeep safari at Minneriya National Park. We saw orphaned or otherwise isolated elephants at The Elephant Transit Home at Udawalawa. This center kept the elephants close to their wild state for release on “achieving adulthood.”
It’s no surprise that the 7000 remaining elephants in Sri Lanka are generally revered and show up in artefacts in temples. OK, we didn’t see any instances of the human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka. This balances the romantic picture we experienced as by-stander tourists. Sure, as a traveler I may have been able to see the complete situation of elephant lives in Sri Lanka. But I would have needed more time. Thanks to Nila, we were given an introduction to some issues in Sri Lanka. Elephants aren’t just cute – they can be dangerous too.
And in this case, I found that I wasn’t totally restricted. I was able to “escape” the tour group if you want to look at it that way. Even on the final day, while we marked time in Negombo, I was able to hire a tuk tuk and go out and about. See my article Out and About in Negombo.
We saw fishermen and fisherwomen in Negombo and also at Koggala Beach near Galle. Well, the latter were simply there on this day for the tourists. They even sold seats on the poles they fished from. So sure, it’s hardly a sincere tourist photo that I took here. But it does represent a traditional way of fishing, still practiced by local fishing villages when the season is right. In the meantime, only a few of the stilts had sitting fishermen, always preferring to exchange the cross-bar on their fishing pole for cash.
My initial reaction was that it was great that the fishing tradition, even though not as ancient as I originally thought, is still going. That a new source of income had been introduced. Of course, that’s glib and ignores the economic hardship that many Sri Lankans are now experiencing. I couldn’t solve that problem. I just hope my tourism dollars helped in some small way, here and elsewhere in Sri Lanka.
We had local food and drinks, always with the option of Western or Indian alternatives. Sri Lankan curries featured at breakfast, lunch and dinner. The specialty was hoppers, a deep pancake made with rice flour and coconut milk, often with an egg in the middle, and usually cooked on gas burners with personal pride by a specialty cook. Local gin and arrack, the spirit made from coconut, were the base of cocktails.
Sri Lanka is renowned for its gems and some in our group had come with the intention of buying a sparkling sapphire, ruby or one of the other countless gems. Near Kandy, Tiesh by Lakmini – emporium, museum, workshop and gem information center – I was personally awed by the sheer variety and beauty of sparkling sapphires, the national gemstone. There was every hue of blue in the sapphires, there were yellow sapphires, rubies or pink sapphires, alexandrite and cat’s-eye chrysoberyl; and almandine and hessonite garnet. I’ll buy a gem at some stage for sure. I prefer to do my homework first to get the right piece.
I also went to an optional cultural show. So many tourists wrote scathing online reports of a cultural show that I happened to enjoy, so I made sure I wrote a complimentary Google review. The performers deserved it. It was colorful and entertaining and introduced masks, costumes, dances and traditions. All you had to do was consult the handouts provided on your seats.
In short I didn’t feel like a force-fed tourist and of course, the tour could only touch the surface. But it touched so many facets of the country and culture. I was interested in the cross-section of people in the group too. I was pleased with TripaDeal and their organization. I was delighted by Sri Lanka.
Even if independent travel rather than a tour is your thing, consider a trip like this as a low-fuss introduction to a culture and a country. Personally, I’ll travel with TripaDeal again. Next time, I’ll probably take the “Arrive Early or Stay Behind” option to combine tourism and travel, delving deeper where I’m most keen or the whim takes me.
