The celebrity hairstylist adores the island’s deserted Indian Ocean beaches, its divine Ayurvedic massages and getting eye-to-eye with the elephants
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Sam McKnight is the latest person to fall in love with Sri Lanka. The island offers everything from misty tea plantations and wildlife-filled national parks to golden beaches and historic cities.
Here, McKnight shares his personal guide to Sri Lanka — the places he loves, the hotels worth booking, and the spots that keep him coming back
Sri Lanka . The country is amazing and feels` relatively unspoilt.
The last time I was there was for the first three weeks of January and I was travelling with a close friend. I had a companion voucher for British Airways and found flights to Hyderabad in India, which is only an hour’s flight from Sri Lanka , so this time it happened quite organically.
When I’m touring around the island as we did for the first week, the most important thing is a clean, comfortable bed and a good breakfast. The rest you can kind of take or leave. One great place we stayed was Thaulle Ayurveda Resort, which is absolutely divine. It has really beautiful rooms overlooking a lake and you can see crocodiles sitting on the rocks from your window. I had the most incredible Ayurvedic massage I’ve ever had there; I came back to London thinking I need to find a place for a really good massage near home.
The food in Sri Lanka is fantastic. I love eating the street food, including hoppers and lots and lots of fresh mango. But you don’t have to stick to local cuisine — many places cater for everything and offer great international dishes. I’m not a big red meat eater but I had a delicious steak every night at the hotel.
Other than sampling street food, we mostly ate in hotels. The food at Thaulle Ayurveda Resort was excellent. If you want to go really upmarket, there are two Aman resorts in Sri Lanka — one in Galle and one in Tangalle on the south coast.
I would do an elephant safari, which takes about four hours and lets you see elephants in the wild. I would also go down to one of the beaches in Galle, maybe have lunch at the Aman resort there. I’d also recommend Kandy , which is worth visiting even though it does get very busy (just make sure you check the schedules when planning a trip to the temples and other sightseeing spots). The tea plantations are also amazing, and you can learn all about the history.
It would either be an elephant safari or discovering a beautiful, deserted beach. Then there’s also the tea plantations. The thing is, because it’s a small island you can do all of these things as they’re close together. It’s not like each element is a day apart. Is there a hidden gem you are willing to share?
The Fortress Hotel & Spa is amazing. It sits on the most beautiful little promontory that sticks out into the Indian Ocean and it has the longest deserted beach fringed with palm trees, where you can see the best sunsets. It looks like a real old Portuguese fortress but it was actually built in the 1970s. I haven’t heard many people talking about it but I spent eight days there just lazing about reading books — it was heaven.
To be honest, I didn’t do anything like that. I spent a lot of summers in Ibiza but I don’t go on holiday to do that kind of thing anymore.
It’s not that expensive to hire a driver in Sri Lanka and they make really good tour guides. Your driver will know everything; they can organise tickets for safari parks, take you to hidden spots, show you the best places to buy souvenirs and street food — all that kind of stuff.
The only thing I really shopped is the traditional sarong-like garment known as a “veshti” or “lungi”. They’re decorated with beautiful checks and stripes or block colours. I would find a place that sold them in each town we went to, and there were thousands but no two were the same.
Probably Koggala Beach on the south-western shore.
You don’t need to take much. Walking shoes if you’re planning on hiking. Here’s what I took: a pair of sandals, the trainers and jumper I travelled in, a few pairs of shorts, some T-shirts, three shirts in case I felt like getting dressed for dinner. Swimming trunks, all my sun creams and lotions and options, a lot of books. Do take some bug spray, but really you can travel very, very light.
It would have to be any of the tracks on an old Ministry of Sound chill-out album I’ve got on my Apple Music called On the Beach. I downloaded it from a CD — I think it’s from 2003. It’s my go-to beach soundtrack.
It’s not a dressy, South of France situation. It’s much more laid-back and low-key, and because it’s so hot, you don’t need much. You’ll probably mainly be wearing swim stuff or shorts and a T-shirt.
No. Although we did once have a hotel booked and when we turned up it was really dreadful. Stained sheets, mattress on the floor — the pits. And it was New Year’s Eve. Luckily, our van driver found us a really amazing alternative hotel nearby.
The Last House, which was built by Geoffrey Bawa, a famous Sri Lankan architect, in Tangalle. The unique and spectacular building is a boutique hotel, but I would gladly live there. There are also many other Bawa-designed hotels and houses to visit across the island.
Being two feet away from an elephant’s eye in Pinnawala, an orphanage for elephants. That was a moving experience.
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