Sri Lanka: Negombo > Sigiriya

Mar 24-25 2025 |

Section 1 of my Sri Lanka journey. From the Colombo airport I proceeded 15 minutes to Sri Lanka Bike Rent in Negombo, picked up the Aprilla 150 and proceeded to my Agoda booking at Blue Wave Beach Resort. Once there, my top priority was to come up with a preliminary route plan - south coast or north-east to Tricomolee via Sigiriya. I decided on the latter.

It was my first visit to Negomba and I was a bit surprised how touristic it is. When I first came to Sri Lanka in 1999, the place had a nasty reputation as a sex tourism hotspot (that was 1999; I had an extended stay in Unawatuna, allegedly next to Arthur C. Clark's former house; and as rumor has it, there may have been some parallels between Clark's lifestyle and the scene at Negomba back then). Anyways...I stayed one night Negombo, had a great local $1.50 breakfast at Fresh Hut and hit the road.

The ride from Negombo to Sigiriya is pretty dull. It's basically a never-ending busy developed street, full of traffic and fumes. In the last last hour of the ride things mellowed out, started to see some decent views, with much less traffic. For this journey, no matter how crappy the ride is, the destination makes up for it.

Sigiriya is one of the world's great historical sites, downright jaw-dropping, a must-see spectacle where the topography, history and engineering are amazing. There is not much of a town there, so the accommodation is all around the mountain, mostly "homestays" that are exactly that. I stayed a Sigiri Dilu Villa, $14, a great room in a house in the countryside.

Next morning I climbed the mountain. It was fairly busy, but not on the scale of other major sites in SE Asia like Angkor Wat or Borubador. It's hard work getting to the top, with many "casualties" on the way up - people who could not make it up the many steps in the glaring sun. It's hard to imagine how people climbed to the top back in the day, and the steps carved into the rock are a cringe-worthy sight. After touring around the plateau for an hour I headed back down. Fortunately, the sights on the way down are as amazing as the trip up, including the Mirror Wall, with its 1500 years of graffiti, and the grotto of frescos of stunning full-bodied nymphs (which may have covered much of the mountain back in the day). It's not clear what exactly Sigiriya was built for, but one idea is that the king built this site as his pleasure palace. Per the frescos, things must have been pretty gonzo here back in the day! The last section of the walk at the bottom of the mountain continued to be fantastic, full of grottos and gardens. After 2 hours of hiking and touring, I visited the museum, which is just ok but not at par with the mountain.

After a 3-hour tour of Sigiriya I went back to my homestay, picked up my bag, and headed on to Trincomolee.