Sri Lanka bird watching tour

Planet

All of the wilderness areas you will visit on this specialist birding tour, whether national parks, forest reserves or other protected areas of special scientific interest, run various local projects targeting sustainability, conservation, environmental regeneration and biodiversity enhancement. Your contribution as a paying visitor will help fund these essential programmes, providing the necessary resources and local employment. Every park or reserve has specific objectives and priorities, from protecting the fragile sea turtle hatching sites, Sinharaja’s diminishing rainforest or threatened bird nesting grounds to elephant or leopard conservation.

The accommodation included in this tour has sustainability and authenticity at its core:
- Villa Hundira is a luxury homestay built from scratch on vacant land by the visionary Sri Lankan-Swedish owners, who opened their doors to guests after developing the villa for themselves and raising a family. The villa’s very essence is family, community and authenticity.
- Wilpattu Tree House Hotel is a simple and comfortable tree houses in a rural setting overlooking Hunuwila Tank and surrounded by virgin forest, opposite the entrance to Wilpattu National Park. Immersed in tranquil woodland with only the call of the wild to be heard, no trees were cut down in the construction and local materials were used. Authentic and locally-sourced food is served in the restaurant.
- Borderlands Eco Lodge is surrounded by mountain peaks and pristine forest. The rustic riverfront tents and cabins overlooking the tumbling torrents of the Kelani River in Kitulgala are all made locally and covered by traditional thatched roofs. The structures are demountable and may be reused or removed at any time so drastically reducing their impact on the local environment.
- Oatlands by Jetwing is a British colonial era holiday home in the Hill Country capital of Nuwara Eliya which has undergone a considered refurbishment, giving the century-old bungalow a new lease of life, unlike buildings of a similar age that have been demolished or restructured. The bungalow is furnished with classic colonial trappings of the period, reusing and revitalising furniture and fittings from times gone by. Jetwing Hotels leads the way in sustainability on the island, initiating across-the-board programmes for carbon, energy, waste and water reduction, improving biodiversity, and sourcing local produce, internalising supply chains and the responsible use of products.
- 98 Acres Resort & Spa is surrounded by the eponymous scenic tea estate in Ella. The uniquely designed luxury resort of spacious contemporary tree houses is constructed with the emphasis on eco-friendliness and sustainability, using recyclable materials as much as possible that blend perfectly with the natural environs. Discarded railway sleepers form decks and walls, rough-hewn granite lends simple elegance to floors, and thatched roofs of Iluk straw add to the rustic splendour.
- Kithala Resort positions sustainability as a fundamental principle of its operations and leads the Biodiversity Educational Research Initiative, investing in local environmental projects to find solutions to the country's dwindling biodiversity. Other initiatives include a sustainable waste management system, organising regular community-based ‘clean ups’ of the local area to remove non-biodegradable items from the environment and sourcing more than 80% of the fresh produce used from local suppliers.
- The Rainforest Ecolodge is a global sustainability award-winning eco lodge (a LEED Platinum Hotel – 5th in the World) designed to minimise its impact on the environment through a closely managed sustainable development including the use of recycled materials. The eco lodge is surrounded by the wilderness of Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a UNESCO Biosphere World Heritage Site, and seamlessly blends sophisticated luxury with an immersion in nature.
- Fort Bliss is an elegantly appointed villa built in harmony with the original Dutch colonial architecture of Galle fort, which dates back to the 17th century. Located only a few metres from the famous ramparts, the classically designed courtyard garden and sit-out veranda complement the antique furniture found throughout the building. Thameez and her husband have gone the extra mile to provide one of the best value places to stay within the fort.

Decarbonising travel is a critical element of the drive to slow and, ideally, reverse climate change. Your long-haul flight to Sri Lanka contributes approximately 80% of the total carbon footprint of your entire holiday, but there are ways of mitigating your flights’ greenhouse gas emissions. Potentially the best current option is to invest in a local community generation project at home. At the present time, we have little choice but to use petrol- or diesel-engine vehicles in Sri Lanka since there is a poor uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) on the island and the charging infrastructure for EVs is essentially non-existent. We don’t promote internal flights for obvious climate breakdown reasons but we do encourage train journeys around the island, particularly through the spectacular Hill Country, along the palm-fringed west coast to Galle and up to seldom-visited Jaffna in the far north.

People

Community is a fundamental tenet of our operations in Sri Lanka. We are fortunate to have a group of expert and passionate Sri Lankan naturalist guides with many years’ experience of chaperoning foreign visitors around their wonderful country and showing them the best of the island’s exotic bird life. You can be assured of their quality, knowledge and experience since all are trained and licensed by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Not only that, they are friendly, caring and a joy to be with! Don’t be shy, relax in their company and you will come away with unique and vivid memories of your holiday that will stay with you for the rest of your life. But don’t take it from us – our very positive feedback from past customers is testament to that fact.

Staying in locally owned and managed guesthouses and hotels while on this tour will contribute directly to the local economy as well as provide crucial employment to local people. Tourism to Sri Lanka accounted for 25% of foreign exchange income and 12% of GDP at its height before the pandemic which shows how important your holiday is to the local economy and the difference you can make by travelling there.

Much of the accommodation on this tour has social responsibility at its heart:
- Villa Hundira, through one of its passionate owners, Indira, runs an on-going community project, Thimble, which supports local fisher folk through an arts and crafts workshop in-house. Learn how the handcrafted tapestries in the villa are made, and watch them come to life yourself.
- Borderlands Eco Lodge is a fervent believer in the therapeutic effects of personal and group interactions with the great outdoors, providing professional development and corporate training schemes for local companies and offices. It also arranges and runs school summer camps, junior school programmes and youth leadership expeditions for local education authorities.
- Jetwing Hotels has spearheaded people-powered sustainability in the hospitality sector in Sri Lanka for many years through youth development and foster schools programmes, women-focused career opportunities, local tuk tuk support schemes, community swimming pool access (following the devastating Asian tsunami in 2004), local farmer associations, and the emphasis on local employment.
- Kithala Resort, part of the Thema Collection which is committed to sustainability, is determined to be an active advocate of the traditional agrarian community in the local area by investing and participating in sustainability projects including village partnership schemes, sponsorship of youth educational initiatives and local employment opportunities.
- The Rainforest Ecolodge continues to follow its central sustainable development objective to develop and improve the quality of life of a local tea estate community with their participation through a community outreach programme. Thirty-seven families on the neighbouring Enselwatte Estate were marginalised, isolated and lived in extremely poor conditions when the project began. Initially the project invested in upgrading their basic facilities while considering a longer term strategy to empower them to access opportunities that would be available once the eco lodge began operations. Medium and longer term areas of the community outreach programme targets health, education, social services and life skills – empowering the community to have a voice over the future of their affairs. A community-managed cooperative society and options to supplement incomes are other longer-term aims, with the support and recognition of the Enselwatte Estate management.