The Fabulous Getaway

15/08/2026

Traditional Sinhalese villages were built around four elements that worked together as one system: the gama (the village and its farmland), the pansala (the Buddhist temple), the wewa (a reservoir built to store monsoon rain for the dry months), and the Dageba (a stupa, a dome-shaped Buddhist monument).

Farming was the village's main livelihood, the reservoir kept the fields watered when the rains stopped, and the temple and stupa gave the community its spiritual life.

Each depended on the others, and together they brought prosperity and peace.

08/08/2026

One of the best parts of vacationing on Sri Lanka’s coastline is the fresh seafood we’re known for. And nowhere better to see where it comes from than live, in action.

5.45am. Negombo Fish Market, or Lellama as we call it. This is when the fresh fish comes off the boats and multiday trawlers straight to the market. You get to see a huge variety being sold: prawns, cuttlefish, tuna, snapper, crab, grouper, mullet, mackerel, barramundi.

The really special part is the fish auction. The most valuable fish, like yellowfin tuna, get auctioned off right there, fisherman surrounded by buyers, and it moves fast, like any live auction anywhere in the world.

01/08/2026

This moment was not a part of Dilanke and Kavishka's itinerary.

Just the backroads they happened to be driving in search of a remote temple, when they spotted one elephant with the whole lake to itself.

31/07/2026

Vesak and Poson are two of Sri Lanka's most significant Buddhist festivals, falling in the months of May and June. Both are celebrated in a similar way across the island.

Dansal are set up on street corners where food and drink are offered to anyone who passes. Entire streets transform for the occasion, and bakthi gee, devotional hymns, echo out from temples and Vesak zones into the night.

At the start of June, TFG held our own Dansal, a coconut roti stall, and many from the community around us joined in.

26/07/2026

The team recently spent a few days in the Hills, visiting some of our favourite stays: Ceylon Tea Trails, Sri Lanka , Uga Halloowella , Nine Skies | Teardrop Hotels , Jetwing Kaduruketha, Wellawaya and more.

We tried their latest activities, met the new resident managers, saw the rooms they’ve added and ate a lot of local specialities.

17/07/2026

Kitul is remarkably versatile, giving local families so much from its leaves, its timber, and most importantly, its sap.

Boiled down, the sap becomes treacle, a kind of plant-based honey, or jaggery, a dark unrefined sugar set into solid blocks. Left to ferment, it turns into vinegar, or Raa, a mildly alcoholic drink that tastes something close to craft beer.

Though kitul grows widely, the profession itself is physically demanding, and skilled tappers are becoming fewer each year. A Kitul tree takes around fifteen years to flower and become ready for tapping, and the sap is easily affected by the weather, and by animals like monkeys and bats.

All of this makes pure kitul sap hard to come by. And so, whenever we find it in its pure form, we cherish every drop.

14/07/2026

Sri Lanka's paddy farming follows two seasons of yield, tied to the country's monsoons. One of our favourite places to see this is at Peace Haven Tangalle, where they follow these traditional planting methods with local communities, cultivating two varieties of rice.

The paddy feeds directly into the resort's farm-to-table kitchen, and part of the harvest is shared with nearby communities, extending the impact beyond the resort itself.

09/07/2026

Chena Huts sits in Yala’s wildlife-rich buffer zone, where the shady, scrubby bush around the property gives way to a stretch of coastline with beach, dunes and rocky outcrops forming the boundary.

All five of Sri Lanka’s marine turtle species come here to lay their eggs in the sand. On a walk along this coast, rangers lead the way at dawn or late afternoon, keeping an eye out for tracks and signs left behind, elephants, wild boars, even the elusive rusty-spotted cat.

Sometimes wildlife also wanders into the resort. Elephants, buffalo, deer and a rich variety of birdlife move through the surrounding bush, alongside where you’re staying.

25/06/2026