I arrived at Colombo Airport and, rather than staying in Colombo, I went directly to Negombo for my first night. I already had an eSIM, which made things much easier from the moment I landed. I could connect to the internet, book an Uber and get myself to my accommodation without having to organise everything in advance.

From there, I continued towards Colombo, where I spent some time exploring the city on my own.

Colombo was probably one of the places where I felt most comfortable travelling alone. There are plenty of cafés, restaurants and places to explore, and I never felt that being on my own was a problem. I particularly enjoyed walking around Fort and spending time simply discovering different parts of the city at my own pace.

If you are travelling solo, I think Colombo is a great place to start because you can have a very independent experience without feeling isolated. There is enough happening around you that you can easily spend a day exploring alone, but there are also plenty of opportunities to meet people if you want some company.

One of my personal recommendations is Barefoot Garden, especially if you enjoy a slower afternoon followed by a good meal or somewhere to listen to music. Colombo has a surprisingly nice cultural and food scene, and I think it is worth giving the city more time than simply using it as an airport stop.

From Colombo, I took the highway bus directly to Kandy.

Kandy felt quite different from Colombo. It was, for me, slightly more intense. This was one of the first moments during the trip when I became more conscious of how I dressed and how I presented myself as a woman travelling alone.

Sri Lanka is culturally diverse, and the experience of travelling through a beach town is very different from visiting a more traditional inland city. In Kandy, I felt much more comfortable wearing clothes that covered my shoulders and knees, particularly when walking around the city and visiting more culturally significant places.

I stayed in a hostel Cozy Nest Kandy Villa, which ended up being one of the best decisions for a solo trip. Although I had travelled there alone, I was rarely actually by myself.

I met a beautiful group of girls, many of whom were also travelling solo, and we started spending time together almost immediately. We shared meals, explored the city and even took a cooking class together.

This is something I would really recommend to women travelling alone in Sri Lanka: don’t underestimate how much your accommodation can influence your experience. If you want to meet people, choosing a hostel, guesthouse or smaller accommodation with communal areas can completely change the feeling of travelling alone.

At the same time, you do not have to be social all the time. I would often go for a walk on my own during the day and then meet the girls later for dinner. That balance was exactly what I liked about solo travel.

From Kandy, I continued to Ella, and by this point I had already started to understand how easy it was to make connections while travelling through Sri Lanka.

One of the funniest parts was that I met the same girls from Kandy again in Ella.

That is one of the things I love about travelling through Sri Lanka. The popular route naturally brings many travellers through the same places, so even if you arrive somewhere alone, there is a good chance that you will cross paths with people you met earlier.

Ella was also a completely different experience from Kandy. The atmosphere felt more relaxed, there were lots of travellers around, and there were plenty of things to do during the day.

We rented scooters and spent time exploring different waterfalls and the surrounding area. Having a group to do this with made the experience even more fun, but it was also the kind of place where I would have felt comfortable arriving alone and joining an activity or meeting people along the way.

For women travelling solo, activities can be one of the easiest ways to create connections without having to force the social side of travelling. A surf lesson, a cooking class, a hike, a day trip or simply joining a group excursion can naturally lead to meeting other travellers.

When I finally arrived on the south coast, everything felt lighter.

There was something about the combination of the ocean, the slower pace and the beach-town atmosphere that immediately made me feel comfortable.

Places such as Weligama, Ahangama and Hiriketiya have become popular with travellers from all over the world, and there is a very international community along this part of the coast. At the same time, the atmosphere can still feel very local, particularly when you move away from the main tourist areas.

For a woman travelling alone, I think this part of Sri Lanka is particularly easy because you can build a routine very quickly. You might go for a morning surf, take a yoga class, have breakfast somewhere, spend the afternoon at the beach and then meet people for dinner. After a few days, you start recognising faces, and suddenly a place that was completely unfamiliar feels much more like a temporary home.

And this is probably where my experience of solo travel in Sri Lanka changed the most.

I realised that travelling alone did not necessarily mean being lonely.

If you are looking for somewhere to stay in Hiriketiya as a solo female traveller, Salt House is one option I would naturally recommend.

Salt House has a four-bed female dormitory, which is a particularly nice option if you want the social aspect of staying in shared accommodation but still prefer a women-only space.

The dorm has four built-in bunk beds, individual lockers, charging points and reading lights, as well as an open-air bathroom. The room overlooks the yoga shala and swimming pool, so you are still connected to the rest of the house rather than feeling like you are staying in a separate dorm somewhere.

See the Salt House Female Dormitory

For me, this is one of the nicest things about travelling solo: having the choice between your own space and a social environment.

You might arrive at Salt House knowing nobody, share a room with three other women, and within a day find yourself having breakfast together, joining a yoga class or heading to the beach. Or you can simply enjoy your own time and meet people when you feel like it.

The combination of yoga, surfing, the restaurant, the pool and the beach being just a short walk away makes Hiriketiya particularly easy to settle into, even if you have arrived on your own.

Based on my own experience, absolutely.

But I think the best thing about travelling alone in Sri Lanka is not simply that I felt comfortable as a woman. It is that I rarely felt like I was actually travelling alone.

There were days when I explored by myself, took a bus alone, walked through a new city or sat somewhere for dinner on my own. But there were also countless moments when I met people spontaneously, joined plans, shared meals or ran into travellers I had met somewhere else.

That balance is what made Sri Lanka such a memorable place for me.

If you are considering your first solo trip, I would not wait until you find someone whose schedule matches yours. Sri Lanka is a destination where you can arrive alone and still create a very social experience, especially if you stay in places where it is easy to meet other travellers and take part in activities.

And if you are a woman wondering whether you can travel around Sri Lanka on your own, my answer would be: yes, you can.

Come with the usual awareness that you would have anywhere else, but also give yourself permission to enjoy the freedom of being on your own. Take the bus somewhere you have never been, join a group for the day, talk to the woman sitting next to you at breakfast, take the surf lesson, change your plans, and see where the trip takes you.

Because sometimes the best part of travelling alone is discovering that you were never really alone in the first place.

See you soon!
Aye – Salt House Yoga Instructor