The Cost Of Travel In Sri Lanka 2025 - Our Detailed Budget Breakdown
We honestly didn’t think we would end up going to Sri Lanka so quickly into our round the world trip.
Not because we didn’t want to, or had any concerns about the political situation.
We’d wanted to visit Sri Lanka for many, many years.
Ever since we watched a video series several years ago where a group of friends rented a tuk tuk to drive around Sri Lanka, we knew that one day we would pay a visit to the island nicknamed ‘The Pearl of the Indian Ocean’.
But we were also determined that we were also going to rent a tuk tuk to drive around the island, and that was the only way we were going to see the country.
This also meant that we had put Sri Lanka firmly on the ‘future travels’ list - renting a tuk tuk just seemed like too much of a pipe dream.
Flash forward to mid way through our 7 month trip and we’re in Malaysia, wondering which country we should visit next.
Very affordable flights to Sri Lanka popped up, but we put it out of our heads and continued searching for somewhere else to go.
Because even though we really wanted to do it, it would surely cost too much and would blow our budget, right?
Curiosity got the best of us though, and we started to look into some of the costs.
And it really wasn’t as much as we thought it would be.
So, with heavy hearts we said a sad goodbye to Kuala Lumpur and boarded our flight to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.
From there, we rented a tuk tuk that took us around the country for 4 weeks.
It was hands down one of the best things we’ve ever done.
Joe said, and I quote, “it made me feel so alive”.
It is true, there is nothing quite like being wedged between two buses (one going the wrong way down the road hurtling towards you) to make you truly feel alive.
We’ve written all about our incredible tuk tuk experience in this post here.
Our budget in Sri Lanka increased because of the tuk tuk rental, but we actually saw the tuk tuk as part of our whole experience of Sri Lanka. It allowed us to get off the beaten path, and also save money on accommodation as we were able to stay a little out of the main touristy areas.
During our 30 days in Sri Lanka we spent 650,177 LKR (Sri Lankan Rupees) or £1772.72/ $2236.45. This works out at £59.09 or $74.55 per day.
Prices are given in Sri Lankan Rupees, then converted to GBP (our currency) and USD. The conversion rate is more or less the same now as when we visited, so I have converted Sri Lankan Rupees to GBP and USD using the current conversion rate.
All figures include two people, as I needed Joe there to drive the tuk tuk. I bribed him with the promise of curry every night and Sri Lankan pancakes so he was happy.
Accommodation
We spent 175,200 LKR on our accommodation for 29 nights. This works out to be £472.82 or $588.63, or £16.30/ $20.30 per night.
We have our own set of rules for accommodation we book, like never staying in hostels. You can read about our accommodation checklist and why we have it in this post here.
This is how the overall cost is broken down:
2 nights at a guesthouse in Mount Lavinia - 12,900 LKR or £34.80/ $43.33
2 nights at a guesthouse in Balapitiya - 7700 LKR or £20.77/ $25.86
4 nights at a guesthouse in Mirissa - 30,000 LKR or £80.91/ $100.75 (including breakfast)
1 night at a guesthouse in Tangalle - 5800 LKR or £15.64/ $19.47
3 nights at a guesthouse in Udawalawe - 16,800 LKR or £45.29/ $56.39 (including breakfast)
3 nights at a guesthouse in Ella - 16900 LKR or £45.56/ $56.72 (including breakfast)
2 nights at a guesthouse in Nuwara Eliya - 13100 LKR or £35.32/ $43.97 (including breakfast)
2 nights at a guesthouse in Maskeliya - 10,000 LKR or £27.02/ $33.64 (including breakfast)
1 night at an Airbnb in Kandy - 4900 LKR or £13.24/ $16.48
3 nights at a guesthouse in Sigriya - 15800 LKR or £42.69/ $53.14 (including breakfast)
3 nights at another guesthouse in Sigriya (because the first one was only available for 3 nights!) - 15000 LKR or £40.53/ $50.45 (including breakfast)
2 nights at a guesthouse in Kandy - 21,000 LKR or £56.74/ $70.62 (including breakfast)
1 night at a guesthouse in Negombo - 5300 LKR or £14.31/ $17.81
We had mixed experiences with our accommodation in Sri Lanka, to be honest. On one hand, we literally stayed in some of the BEST places we have ever stayed with the most incredible, generous people.
We had never gotten selfies with hosts before going to Sri Lanka - we ended up having photo sessions with three lots of hosts, and having some truly eye opening conversations about their experiences in Sri Lanka with the political turmoil and the tsunami in 2004.
Some of the people we met in Sri Lanka are the most wonderful people we have ever, ever met.
On the other hand…..we battled giant cockroaches whilst having food poisoning, had a host give our room to another couple and the room we received didn’t have most of the amenities listed (including the ultimate holy grail in 30 degree weather - the fan), plus we had mould all over the wall and the wifi didn’t work the entire time we were there (not the hosts fault, but frustrating nonetheless).
This wasn’t all in one place, mind you, but it gives you an idea of the juxtaposition of what you can get for the same price point across Sri Lanka.
This all happened whilst we were following our own personal ‘rules’ for booking accommodation (which you can see here).
We have done a whole post about where we stayed and our route to help you plan your trip to Sri Lanka.
Transport
For obvious reasons, our expenses in this category came out substantially higher than usual.
As with all our budget breakdowns, the transport section covers all travel within Sri Lanka, but doesn’t include the cost of travelling to the country, or travelling to Abu Dhabi from Colombo.
We’ve included these figures in our full budget breakdown of our 7 month trip which can be see here, where we breakdown every single expense for the whole 7 months.
Overall, we spent 179,900 LKR or £485.66/ $604.67 for all our transport in Sri Lanka.
Our biggest expense in this category was of course, our mighty tuk tuk (nicknamed Pippin’ as a Lord of the Rings reference and how zippy it was - Joe thought it was funny, but most people didn’t get the reference!)
We spent 154,350 LKR or £417.04/ $516.80 on our tuk tuk rental for 28 days.
This does not include the mandatory $150 deposit that everyone has to pay upon booking, as we received this back in full. It does however include a small discount we received as we had a minor hiccup on Joe’s driving lesson day (see article about how to rent a tuk tuk in Sri Lanka here).
Our next biggest expense was petrol to power little Pippin’.
We spent 19880 LKR or £53.68/ $66.84 on petrol, which when you consider the amount of driving we did is pretty darn good!
We’ve got a whole section in our renting a tuk tuk article about fuel in Sri Lanka, how to pay and what to look for to make sure you are not being ripped off.
We paid 5775 LKR or £15.59/ $19.41 for our airport transfer booked through Uber when we arrived, 300 LKR or £0.81/ $1.01 for a tuk tuk greasing and 2550 LKR or £6.89/ $8.57 on Uber to get around Colombo before we had our own tuk tuk.
Sri Lanka, unlike the other countries in Asia we had visited previously, didn’t have Grab and instead used Uber, which we would recommend using rather than flagging down taxis.
The local buses are incredibly affordable in Sri Lanka and quite the experience in themselves (we ended up on what felt like a disco bus), so we decided to take the bus from Mirissa to Galle instead of driving.
The return bus trip cost 700 rupees for both of us. Do be aware of what you should be paying though - on the return journey we were told the ticket was more (around 500 rupees), but when we told him we’d paid 350 rupees on the outward journey he then charged us that for the return journey.
Entrance Fees & Activities
This is one of the categories where spending can wildly vary.
We are pretty budget conscious travellers, however we don’t see the point in travelling to another country to sit and do nothing (although this is something we have struggled with, see this post).
We also don’t feel the need to see and do absolutely everything, just because the internet and social media tell us we need to.
Like for example, even though we’ve been to Florence twice now, we still haven’t been to the Ufizzi. And you know what? We’ll probably never go.
It has taken us a long time to get to a place where we don’t feel we have to run round, ticking things off a list that someone else online has created for us.
Saying that, there are things we are interested in and love doing, so we prioritise these experiences when travelling.
We love churches and temples, we both have degrees in History and we love animals. We also love a good view and enjoy hiking. So anything that incorporates one or more of these things always piques our interest. Many of the activities we enjoy are often free, which helps keep our budget down!
We spent 117,500 LKR or £317.25/ $394.92 on all our entry fees and activities.
This is one category where we needed to be selective in Sri Lanka as we knew it could be easy to spend way too much.
The country is home to incredible archeological sites, wildlife safaris, surfing and tea plantations.
It is also home to some (comparatively) pricey entrance fees for tourists, so we needed to pick and choose what we did.
Sri Lanka is also the only country we’ve visited so far where they charge an entrance fee for the parks.
Coming for a country where this isn’t the case, it was a big surprise to us when we wandered into a park in Galle and had people chasing after us for tickets. We initially thought it was a scam, but soon realised that everyone has to pay to enter these spaces.
The entrance fee you’ll pay varies, but in Nuwara Eliya the fee for tourists would’ve meant we would’ve paid around £5 for both of us to enter a very small park.
Our largest expense in this category was our two days of whale watching in Mirissa, which came in at 52,000 LKR or £140.45/ $174.88.
We went with a company called Raja & The Whale, who we would highly recommend, and despite not seeing any whales either day we both agreed it was 100% worth the money.
You can see our full write up of our whale watching experience here.
Our second biggest spend was the Udawalawe Safari, coming in at 44,500 LKR or £120.15/ $149.52 for a private half a day safari & an incredible breakfast by the lake.
We would’ve been happy sharing the safari to bring down the cost but there weren’t any other guests who weren’t already booked on, and afterwards we both said we were glad that we got to have our first safari experience to ourselves.
We tipped our driver, which is customary if you are happy with a tourist service in Sri Lanka (we can’t remember exactly how much, but it was around 15% and it would’ve been more if we had had more cash on us as he was fantastic!)
This again was 100% worth the money and one of our most memorable experiences of any trip we’ve ever taken.
See our full write up of our safari experience here, including costs and how to choose the right national park in Sri Lanka for what you want to experience.
The remaining costs were made up of some historical temples, a tip for a free guided tour of the Bluebird Tea Plantation, a cooking class at our guesthouse and climbing the Biodiversity Tower.
We have broken down every single activity we did in Sri Lanka here (including the free ones), including the location and cost.
Food & Drink
This is another category where you can go wild or be incredibly reserved.
We like to think of ourselves as mid range budget travellers within this category.
We love trying new food when we are travelling, as in our opinion it’s one of the best ways to explore a new culture.
Sri Lanka is also home to some in-cred-ible food.
We have even crowned the Sri Lankan pancake as one our favourite foods in the world, and regularly discuss it.
Miscellaneous
You will always need to account for random expenses when on a trip. Sometimes these small expenses actually add up more than you might think, so make sure you have room in your budget for them.
Our overall expenses in this category come out to 37,500 LKR or £101.25/ $126.
Most of this cost was made up of our e-visas, which were $104/ £83.56.
Sri Lanka is one of the only countries where we purchased a sim card at the airport. We read online that this was one place where you were unlikely to be scammed, so we decided to get two sim cards from Dialog.
We paid 1800 LKR or £4.86/ $6.04 for 30GB for 30 days, so 3600 LKR overall.
This is much more data than we usually get, and to be honest we mostly just buy one sim card and then use the hotspot, but we didn’t want to risk this with driving the tuk tuk. We were also very grateful for our data when we experienced power cuts.
Read more here about how to navigate arriving in Sri Lanka for the first time, the visa process, withdrawing money and getting into the city.
We also spent 3300 LKR or £8.91/ $11.09 on boxes of tea (like we did in Malaysia) as gifts for people at home and as gifts to ourselves!
The Final Figure
So, that’s how we reached the grand total of 650,177 LKR or £1772.72/ $2236.45. This works out at £59.09 or $74.55 per day for two people for 30 days.
We are already laying plans to go back to Sri Lanka, rent another tuk tuk and drive around the North of the country to explore some of the hidden gems of this beautiful country.
Is the cost of renting a tuk tuk for a month more or less than you expected? Would you drive around Sri Lanka (or have you)? Let us know below!
