Small group adventure touring in Sri Lanka
Adventure tourism is a really booming industry with small groups headed off to some really amazing places. Sri Lanka being one of them other examples are trekking, biking and Kayaking in Cambodia to visit Ankor Watt and Phnom Penn, taking on Everest base camp or heading out to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. You don’t need to be super fit to go on these tours, but a basic level of fitness is really helpful. Most of these tours are action packed and need people to get involved to really make the most of them. Tours will have an activity rating so you will know ahead of time if you’re expect to scale mountains, walk through historic cobbled streets or something in between. The tour that I took in Sri Lanka is adults only and rated as easy to moderate of activity level (the Sigiriya rock climb was noted as moderate!). Most of the people who are on these tours are over the age of about 40 but don’t let that put you off. If you are interested in the area and up for the challenge of the trip then go ahead and book it.
I think a lot of people worry when going on these tours that it will be the type of tour where there’s 30 people all following somebody with an umbrella trying to shuffle around some major tourist destination and hear what the guide is saying. On these adventure tours group sizes tend to be around 12. Your tour leader will learn names really quickly and you start to move around like an established group that has known each other for years before you know it! Your friendship with your tour leader becomes really strong over the length of your tour as you really get into your destination investigating places the way locals would rather than a tourist.
The huge advantage of these small groups is that your tour becomes more personal. Our trip to a homestay (where we were served food in someone’s home) would never have been possible on a large group tour. Thanks to our guide being bilingual we were able to speak to our host family at the home stay about their lives – this was such a fantastic experience. When things don’t go quite to plan your guide is there as a local expert and can change plans an itineraries at the drop of a hat. Our day on a train in Sri Lanka was scuppered because of a train break down. Our fearless leader was able to change our itinerary and get us to our next destination – arranging some lovely stops in the mountains without any of us having to lift a finger or even think about things.
My tour of Sri Lanka was done with Exodus, they are one of a group of adventure companies that I have confidence would bring every traveller a similarly amazing experience. So, would I recommend this kind of Adventure Travel/Small group tours to my clients? Absolutely yes! If you are after something different, you are ready to join in and have an adventure then this is the holiday for you. I had the time of my life with Exodus. It was absolutely amazing, but utterly exhausting. If you’re looking for something that’s different to the norm, to experience a country from a local perspective then this is the way to do it. You’re in such safe hands and the experience is one that genuinely you can’t get anywhere else x
