Anuradhapura Ancient City Day Tour from Kandy (Private Tour)

One day tour to Anuradhapura

Our one day tour from Kandy to Anuradhapure and back was above expectation, qualitywise in all meaning. We whave experienced a personalized cultural tour which was organized in a best way. Ifran and the local guide gave an unforgettable day tour wuth full of professionality and kindness. We saw all the archological sites and monuments and history facts behind. Thanks for the great experience and your prepareness.

via Tripadvisor

Could have been great, but wasn’t.

I want to start by saying our driver was super nice and wanted to make sure we had a good time. However, there were lots of issues which put a damper on the experience. I expected the ride to be about 3.5 hours, but within the first two hours we stopped; I thought for snacks. This was not the case and the driver ordered breakfast which I felt he should have had before picking us up. He did buy us pastries which was sweet. A few hours later, we stopped for tea at his request. Our 3.5 hour trip took over 4.5 hours to get there. We then got lost because the driver was not familiar with the area. We had to stop and ask for directions. In my opinion, he should have mapped it out ahead of time. He was merely a driver and not a guide as he was not familiar with the area or history which was a might disappointing. Leaving one of the sites he backed into a light pole and spent almost an hour dealing with that. He did not ask if we were ok, nor did the tour operator reach out to us. We were pretty much done at that point and asked to make our trek back. Again, we stopped twice, once for tea and another time I’m not sure what he did. We were not provided water as stated in the description, but we were prepared and brought our own. For the price and value of what we got I do not think this was worth it.

Response from the operator: First, I’m truly sorry your day was affected by delays and avoidable issues. While we’re glad you found the driver kind and well-intentioned, the service you described is not the standard we aim to provide. What you mentioned is taken seriously, especially: Unplanned long stops (breakfast/tea) that extended the drive time Arriving late and a transfer taking much longer than expected Driver not being familiar with the route/area, and not being able to support as a guide The minor accident and the lack of a proper check-in to ensure you were okay Water not provided as stated in the listing/description Poor communication/follow-up from our side after the incident We will be reviewing this trip internally with the driver and our operations team, and we will tighten our procedures to make sure: drivers eat before pickups and do not add unnecessary stops, routes are planned and confirmed in advance, drivers assigned are suitable for the service booked (driver vs. chauffeur-guide), and any incident is followed by an immediate welfare check and operator follow-up. We also want to make this right. Please message us your booking reference/date (and the pickup location if possible), so we can investigate properly and arrange an appropriate compensation/refund based on what happened. Thank you again—your feedback helps us improve, and I’m sorry we let you down on this experience. Warm regards, Zameek

via Viator