Visiting Sri Lanka

If you're a nice, corn-fed European and you want to experience the full, free-fall smack in the nose and loss of control that is culture shock, Sri Lanka is probably one of the better places to start. It hits you as soon as you leave the airport terminal, crowds of people, exhaust fumes, colour and noise surround you. It feels oddly rural, even here, but the drive down into Colombo and beyond is like a tarmacked log flume of cars, tuktuks and people, all flowing at their own speeds, criss-crossing madly like a vast, ceaseless game of Frogger played when you're too pissed to focus.

You'll go mad waiting for a quiet stretch. There isn't one.

There are three bits of Sri Lanka that everyone talks about - the 'cultural triangle' to the north of the island's centre, 'Kandy' which is about smack in the middle and the south, Bentota, Galle and Unawatuna. The east doesn't seem very developed for tourism, although it looks like that's changing. The north is Tiger country and nobody recommends that you and your nice luggage should venture there.

Sri Lanka is changing: the Luxe Guide refers to it as a nascent Bali. That process of change is seeing student back-packer tourism giving way increasingly to more sophisticated and 'boutique' hotels - and that means a period of over-priced hotels and guesthouses with very patchy standards of service indeed. It perhaps also explains why the Lonely Planet Guide to Sri Lanka isn't very good. Right now, you desperately need an opinion or strong recommendation because things are either very good or very bad. The LP guide gives little away either way.

So, a little like Bali Sri Lanka has a million small beachside B&Bs for around $20-25 a night, some nice looking bigger places at $50 or so a night, a range of boutique hotels and guesthouses from $200 a night and top of the range placed like the Elephant Corridor which starts at over $300 a night or the Aman at over $500 a night. That's some range - and don't believe for a second that spending $200-800 a night secures you excellence, because that ain't necessarily so.

You'd have to have the reactions of an F1 driver and guts of steel to self drive in Sri Lanka. I've driven in Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and Kuwait for 20 years now and I wouldn't try it. Similarly, going to Galle or Kandy both mean a four-hour road trip and although the scenery (much of it human on the road to Galle: the strip development is amazing) is fascinating, the constant bumping and swerving (on top of your flight) do help to ensure that you'll be pretty ragged by the time you get to wherever it is you're going. The length of the trip does go some way to explaining any oddly high airport transfer charges your hotel might introduce, although little of the surprisingly high charges will end up in the driver's pocket, of course. Expect to pay over $60 each way for an airport transfer to Galle - and an average Sri Lankan would be lucky to see that as a monthly pay packet.

There are trains, but we didn't use them. And there's a seaplane air taxi between Colombo and Koggala. But we didn't use that, either. Yes, I know. Not very intrepid at all...