Nuwan Perera
11 years · English, Sinhala, some German
Grew up in Dambulla and knows the cultural triangle better than the guidebooks do. Leads our early-morning Sigiriya climbs.
About us
A small agency that answers the phone
Travika has designed private Sri Lanka journeys since 2014. We are not a marketplace, we do not resell other people's tours, and the person who plans your trip is the one who answers when you call.
We started with one van and two people who were tired of watching visitors get sold the same nine stops in the same order. That is still the problem we are solving: Sri Lanka is small, slow and extraordinarily varied, and almost every itinerary sold to a first-time visitor ignores at least two of those three facts.
So we do it the other way round. We ask what you actually want out of a fortnight, tell you which parts of the island deliver it in the month you are coming, and then build the route around that — usually with fewer stops than you expected and more nights in the two or three places that are worth them.
The office is in Colombo. The guides are our own. The itineraries are written by people who have slept in the hotels and driven the roads, and who will tell you when something on this website is not right for you.
In numbers
- 0
- Trading since, under the same two owners
- SLTDA
- Licensed travel agency, licence number pending
- 0
- Driver-guides, all of them on our own payroll
- 0
- Vehicles we own, none older than three years
- 0.0
- Average from 1,240 reviews across Google and TripAdvisor
- 0 h
- The longest you will wait for a reply from a person
How we workSix things we will
Six things we will
hold ourselves to
None of these is a slogan. If we break one, tell us and we will make it right.
We only sell one country
Sri Lanka, and nothing else. Every consultant here has driven the routes on this website, most of them within the last year.
Our guides are our staff
Eleven driver-guides on our own payroll, not a pool of freelancers booked by the day. The same person stays with you for the whole trip.
We will argue with you
If your month is wrong for the coast you want, or a hotel is not worth its rate, we say so before you book rather than after.
No commissions we hide
We contract rates directly and quote from them. Nothing on this site is marked up because a supplier paid to be here.
No captive animals
No elephant rides, no photo stops with chained animals, no turtle handling. It costs us bookings and we are fine with that.
Estimates are labelled as estimates
The planner prices from real rates, but it is never a quotation. A person confirms availability before you are asked for money.
The people drivingChauffeur-guides,
Chauffeur-guides,
not drivers
Licensed national guides who drive. One of them stays with you for the whole trip, briefed on what you care about before you land.
Thilini Senanayake
6 years · English, Sinhala, Tamil
Former naturalist at Wilpattu. If there is a leopard within a kilometre of the jeep, she will find it.
Ravi Kumar
5 years · English, Tamil, Sinhala
Based in Jaffna, runs our northern and east-coast routes. Will talk you into the crab curry and he will be right.
