Wellness and spa holiday in Sri Lanka

Planet

We work with selected local providers who are very committed to give guests the most authentic and original travel experience in Sri Lanka while leaving a lighter footprint on your trip. Our excursions maintain small-group sizes to limit the negative environmental impact in accordance to the carrying capacity of the visited site.

When traveling to Sri Lanka, you support a country that puts a lot of effort into sustainable tourism and good environmental management practices related to energy, water, waste water and solid management practices. For example, around 70 to 88% of Sri Lanka’s hotels use solar power and energy efficient lighting methods.

- Accommodation & Environment
For your tour we have chosen responsible resorts like the eco-aware and intelligent-design resort Santani, where you can experience minimalist luxury in the middle of pristine jungle. It was designed in such a way that they do not use air conditioning or heating thus reducing energy consumption by about 70% compared to standard hotels. Most of the buildings are built on stilts allowing for natural thermal flows to cool the rooms and also touch the earth least. The whole spa is built underground providing natural cooling. Almost 80% of the wood used for both structural elements and furniture is recycled.

We have also chosen Wallawwa, Camellia Hill and Kumu Beach for you, that part of the Teardrop Group for you, a small, family-run, personal and single-use plastic-aware hotel company. Your stay at Wallawwa for example will support a resort that uses LED lightbulbs and filtered water to cut down on plastic water bottles. They monitor their energy/water usage and use solar water heating. The Wallawwa’s own extensive fruit and vegetable garden supplies fresh produce where possible to the hotels’ restaurants.

In general, we are trying to keep the extra unneeded waste to a minimum in all our tours through our “bring it in, bring it out” policy for litter and rubbish such as food packaging and recycling wherever possible. In our UK and local offices we re-use or recycle the information booklets we provide to every client on arrival wherever possible. We also concentrate on providing information online via our website and electronically rather then producing a glossy brochure, hence reducing the use of paper and inks.

Our partners are currently conducting audits with clients on how to make the journey more sustainable and include less plastic. There are plans to remove all single use plastic bottles from the vehicles.

- Transport
Wherever possible we will try to include non-motorized ways of transport to limit your impact, in this tour we can offer you for example guided walking tours, boat rides at Koggala Lake, bicycle rides, kayak tours in the Muthurajawela Wetlands, or natural walks in the Knuckles Range or the Castlereagh Reservoir. When we use vehicles, we make sure that sizes are as small as appropriate and proper licensing on vehicles and certifying to national emission standards are maintained.

- Culture & Buildings
You can visit the home and gardens of Lunuganga by important architect Geoffrey Bawa will contribute to the Geoffrey Bawa Trust whose mission is the advancement and promotion of education and knowledge and the furtherance of interest in ecological and environmental studies, architecture, fine arts and more. The Trust has set up a national award scheme to recognise and reward significant examples of contemporary Sri Lankan architecture. The aim of the scheme is both to foster the production of good architecture and to encourage its wider appreciation in the community. The scheme is generally acknowledged to have had a very marked effect on architecture in developing countries.

You could also visit Kandy and the Temple of Tooth. Your entrance fee helps maintain the conservation and maintenance of this Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy. It houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country. Kandy was the last capital of the Sri Lankan kings and is a World Heritage Site mainly due to the temple.

- Nature
Sri Lanka is full of bountiful wildlife and natural areas. You will be at Castlereagh Reservoir for example, a unique area in Sri Lanka, surrounded by verdant mountains and vibrant tea plantations, featuring lush green terrain lined with remarkably bright shades of orange shores separating the azure water and the land. The natural artistry of Castlereagh Reservoir is complimented by the Castlereagh Dam that, in fact, creates the Reservoir by amassing water from Kehelgamu Oya. Water in the Reservoir is used for generating hydroelectricity, a main source of electricity in Sri Lanka. Castlereagh is a place where one can see the human ingenuity seamlessly mingling with the nature.

Also the Koggala Lake offers a rich bio diversity and eco system. The Lagoon is scattered with eight small islands that consist of lush mangrove swamps. Anchored in mud, the mangrove roots are coated with a variety of creatures, including barnacles, oysters and crabs. The dense, intertwining roots serve as nurseries for many fish species.

You have the chance to meditate with the birds on a personal Boat tour in the Mutharajawela Wetlands that cover over 6000 hectares. The mixing of seawater with wetland over thousands of years has led to an integrated coastal ecosystem that is biologically diverse and teeming with life. A variety of mangroves and other types of flora including medicinal plants are found alongside mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and 102 species of birds, 48 species of butterflies and 40 different species of fish, some of which are endemic.

People

We strive to help our clients connect with Sri Lanka and its local population in interesting and insightful ways. Our partners have a reputation for possessing an intimate, in-depth knowledge of Sri Lanka, with purposeful dedication towards enabling guests meaningful experiences. This has benefited not only clients and operators, providing more fulfilling trips, but is also positively impacting our host communities, providing immediate income and making their lives more sustainable and productive.

- Supporting the community
Our local partners have helped many hosts to develop their experiences from a product development and pricing perspective, elevating their experience and its value. They have developed experiences from scratch with many hosts and communities to provide jobs and income to local populations e.g. The Sri Lankan Garden (also incredibly sustainable operation) and most recently with the new East Coast Project., working with an Australian NGO to develop experiences on the East Coast of the Sri Lanka, employing local staff and hosts in an area where there is a significant need. We choose our partners carefully and are constantly on the lookout for grassroots conservation projects and fair trade initiatives.

There are many of the hotels we work with that employ the majority of their staff from the local area, many have community initiatives in place and offer lucrative employment options in comparison to other trades.

- Campaigns & Charity
For many years our partners have worked with a small collection of schools where they have arranged for clients to help construct toilets, paint classrooms and have worked with charities such as The Foundation of Goodness and Child Action Lanka.

When staying at the Wallawwa, you can contribute to the gift shop, whose sales go to Wallawwa CARE, that raises funds for the local community; this includes donating to schools, sponsoring the education of local children, donating medicines and helping families with losses.

- Local culture. tradition & connection
A unique spiritual and authentic Sri Lankan experience awaits you at Santani, where health science innovations from around the world are harmonized with the most effective traditional treatments of Sri Lankan Ayurveda. Santani offers a thoughtful, sustainable approach to wellness. In ancient times, anyone seeking inner peace could take refuge in the Buddhist meditation caves which still exist within this sacred, mountainous landscape around the resort. At Santani, except for a media room with a 15-seat theatre, all of the shared spaces are Wi-Fi free by design and guests are asked to respect this digital-free downtime when dining and in the spa. Wi-Fi is available upon request in your rooms.