Local Knowledge

Taxis

You won't find cabs on the streets but your hotel can easily arrange one. Alternatively, hail the local dodgem version – a three-wheeler auto-rickshaw or tuk tuk. Drivers are fearless and may claim to be meterless and changeless to wring out extra rupees, so agree fares in advance.

Tipping culture

Try to avoid using coins to tip: they're considered ‘beggar money’, so opt for notes instead. Although a service charge is added to hotel and restaurant bills, staff don’t always get what’s due, so for good service try to tip in person. A chauffeur who has been helpful might expect 500 rupees a day.

Siesta and fiesta

Banks open from 9am–2pm and ATMs are plentiful in towns. Most shops open on Sundays, except for poya (full-moon day) holidays. These are also dry days in booze terms, but most hotels won’t deprive foreign guests. Watch out for Friday or Monday poya days, making for long weekends which may be tricky for travel.

Packing tips

Bring a sarong to sling over shorts or skimpy skirts when entering shrines and temples to show respect. As an alternative to mossie-repellent, confuse critters with double-strength garlic capsules, which you should start popping a week before travel.

Recommended reads

For a taste of local life, check out Running in the Family by The English Patient author Michael Ondaatje, centered around his return to his native island Sri Lanka, and his eccentric family. The Jam Fruit Tree, by Kandy writer Carl Muller, is a must for comic insight into Burgher life, a Eurasian ethnic group in Sri Lanka with colonial roots. An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies is an absorbing 17th-century memoir by Robert Knox, a seaman imprisoned by the King of Kandy for 20 years (luckily you're free to come and go as you please).

Cuisine

Trad Sinhala curries are a visual feast of at least five dishes – often featuring unusual ingredients such as jackfruit and drumstick (murunga). Brave the burn to savour the sensational blends of coconut and aromatic spices: as hot as South Indian and as fragrant as Thai. Sinhala brekky is just as legendary: sample 13 types of mangoes, five types of custard apple or venture into the uncommon realms of truffley wood apple and nougat-esque durian – well known for its stink, less known as an aphrodisiac.

Regional specialities

Made from distilled palm toddy, arrack is the most understated brew in the world: opt for 12-year-old reserve. Jaggery is organic palm molasses in solid form made from Kithul palm: add it to tea or nibble cubes of the fudgey stuff.

Currency

Sri Lankan Rupee (LKR) – not to be confused with the Indian Rupee.

Time zone

GMT +4.5 hours.

Dialling codes

Country code for Sri Lanka: 94. Kandy: (0)81.

Do go/don't go

Cats should curl up at home in June and November (during the south-west and north-east monsoons respectively), although crafty humans may note that the rains take the edge off the heat during these months and, being a small island, there is always a monsoon-free coast. Do go in July or August for the wild Perahera festivities, if you can stand the crowds.