A spacious Wagon Travels family vehicle meets you at the airport and brings you to your Negombo beach hotel for an easy, gentle first evening. Body-boarding on the beach, a quiet dinner and an early night for the younger travellers in the group. Negombo is the right place to land – simple, coastal and completely undemanding.

The drive northeast takes around three hours. En route, the Dambulla Cave Temple is one of the most genuinely child-friendly heritage sites in Sri Lanka – the giant gilded Buddhas and ceiling murals that cover every surface of the five ancient shrines tend to produce a very specific expression of wonder in younger visitors. Aliya Resort offers family villa accommodation with pool and open grounds that work well for arriving with children in tow.

Sigiriya Rock is manageable and genuinely exciting for children aged six and above with reasonable fitness – the summit view across the jungle canopy is the kind of achievement that older children and teenagers carry with pride. For families with younger children, vertigo concerns or those who prefer an easier option, Pidurangala Rock provides a shorter, equally dramatic ascent with the single best view of Sigiriya itself available anywhere. The afternoon Kaudulla National Park wild elephant observation is one of the most ethically sound and visually spectacular wildlife experiences available to families in Sri Lanka.

The drive northwest to Anuradhapura takes around an hour and a half. Exploring the Sacred City by bicycle makes the distances manageable and the experience genuinely fun for older children – the Sri Maha Bodhi Tree, the temple elephants, the scale of the ancient dagobas. Your stay at Wagon Inns puts the family inside this extraordinary city.

The drive south takes around three hours, with a roadside fruit stall stop – the king coconut and fresh pineapple tend to go over well with younger travellers. The Kandyan cultural dance performance at its five o’clock timing is perfectly designed for families: the fire dances, drumming sequences and elaborate costuming hold the attention of children completely, and the timing means everyone is in bed at a reasonable hour.

Morning at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic before the comfortable three-and-a-half-hour drive southwest to the coast. The Bentota river safari is one of the most reliable child highlights of any Sri Lanka family trip – 90 minutes by private boat through mangrove channels where crocodiles, monitor lizards and kingfishers are regular sightings, and children of all ages tend to emerge considerably more animated than when they boarded.

A full beach day at Bentota – calm water, a mature resort beach and water sports for the older children who want them. The Kosgoda sea turtle hatchery, fifteen minutes up the coast, is one of the most child-friendly wildlife experiences in the whole of Sri Lanka – a working rehabilitation programme where five species of sea turtle are hatched and cared for before release. The combination of the beach day and the turtle visit tends to be the part of the family trip that everyone agrees was worth coming for.

One last morning on the beach before the two-hour expressway drive to Colombo. Odel Mall and Colombo City Centre provide a final hour of shopping before your Wagon Travels vehicle handles the airport transfer.