Trying to sum up somewhere eloquently in just one word is asking for disaster, but for Sri Lanka, perhaps it’s easier than for many other countries. That word would be ‘welcome’. It encompasses everything about this amazing place – the friendliness of the people, the high fives from children in tiny villages who have probably never seen tourists before, the incredible hospitability of everyone that you interact with during your time on the island and of course, the universally uttered greeting of ayubowan (which translates to “may you be blessed with a long life”). If you would like to find out what gravel riding is like on the Jewel Island of Sri Lanka, then read on....

Listening to a thank you speech wouldn’t normally be very high up the list of inspirational occurrences in my life. But when Jim, quite a large Australian guy in a snazzy shirt climbed onto the small stage at the end of the Ride Sri Lankan 2025 and started to tell us about how he had only got into cycling six months previously and described the revolutionary impact this had had on his life, I was as surprised as anyone when what he said actually made me quite emotional. I quizzed him afterwards about whether he had pre-planned what he was going to say and he joked, saying it had taken him months to hone his speech. The fact that he was actually talking off-the-cuff made his speech even more remarkable – he managed to sum up what everyone was feeling in two short sentences: 

“When we arrived, we all had one thing in common - a love of cycling. When we leave, we all have two things in common - a love of cycling and a love of Sri Lanka.“

Image courtesy of Sri Lankan Airlines

When the Ride Sri Lankan event was first launched back in 2023, despite the incredible value for money, it didn’t attract large numbers of sign-ups. “We had quite a few emails and messages from people who thought the event must be a scam because the headline price was so amazing” said Phil Evans from Multi-Terrain Biking, the event organiser. Fortunately numbers increased for the 2024 edition and in 2025 the event sold out for the first time. In total, there were just less than a hundred participants, but not all of them were cyclists.

"Could this be the future of multi-day cycling events where organisers do their best to keep everyone happy?"

Most cyclists at some point in their life on two wheels will have had to square the circle of trying to keep their partner/family happy and get some time on their bike. Sri Lankan Airlines, the headline sponsor of the event, obviously realised this and using their expertise of adventure tourism in Sri Lanka, they arranged a “companions tour” so that cyclists could book on the trip and bring a non-cycling partner or family member with them. Both would enjoy an incredible time in Sri Lanka, spend time together each evening in fantastic hotels and get to experience different versions of Sri Lanka. The companions tour during the 2025 event included snorkelling in the Indian Ocean, wildlife safaris, a cookery class, a tea plantation tour and a journey on Sri Lanka’s world famous scenic hill railway. Every time the cyclists crossed paths with the companions, they seemed to be having an amazing time and had experienced many incredible parts of the island that the cyclists missed out on. Could this be the future of multi-day cycling events where organisers do their best to keep everyone happy?

“Your job is to ride, our job is to take care of you” were the exact words that Saminda Perera, marketing director for the airline, said at the welcome meeting. It was obvious that the event team had taken his words to heart. From the minute we checked in for our flight at Heathrow and were given a high-quality event t-shirt and offered priority boarding, to the opening cocktail ceremony under a star-studded sky, to high tea taken in the palatial grounds of a former colonial family home, the organisers pulled out every stop to ensure we had the best possible time and went home with a lifetime’s worth of happy memories. It’s impossible to write this without sounding too gushy or like some kind of third-rate advert, but it is genuinely true – everybody in the huge organising team made you feel that they were doing everything they could to make the event special.

If I asked you to come up with a short list of the world’s best magicians, you might say David Copperfield, Harry Houdini or David Blaine. But now we should add Sampath Krishantha to the list. As a multi-time Sri Lankan national road cycling champion, you would assume he was a good cyclist. You might also assume he knows a thing or two about bikes. But I hadn’t considered for a minute that he was a bike magician too. When, a couple of hours into the first day, my electronic rear derailleur suddenly stopped working, I was pretty worried. I did all the obvious checks, but I could not get it to come back to life. After riding to the next water fill up point, I explained my issue to Sampath and he asked a few pertinent questions - was the battery charged (yes) had my bike been dropped/crashed (no), did the front mech work (yes). All he did next was to get me to lift the rear wheel off the floor, start to pedal, give the mech a light nudge and it came back to life. I had spent nearly twenty minutes trying to do the same trick, but obviously it just needed Sampath’s magic touch! Having got it to work again, Sampath took my bike and pedaled up the road to test that everything was ok, looking every inch the pro rider and then handed it back with a huge smile on his face “Your bike is good as new again.”

This incident summed up many parts of Ride Sri Lankan pretty eloquently - the parcours is pretty challenging in places and your bike will be put through its paces, so you’d be well advised to make sure it is in tiptop working order before you sign-on at the start line. If, however, something goes wrong, not only do the organisers have an unbelievably professional team in place to help out, but they will move heaven and earth to get you riding again. While Sampath had been working on my bike, they had organised a spare bike for me to ride for example. Yes, it was a lot more basic than mine, but it would have meant I could continue riding. Another participant had an issue with a mechanical shifter where the cable had snapped inside the shifter body and was well and truly jammed. The on-site mechanics couldn’t fix it, so overnight they removed it from the bike, drove four hours to Colombo to get it repaired, drove it four hours back and refitted it to the bike in time for the rider to start next morning. That’s not just good service - that goes beyond my wildest dreams of what could be expected!

Image courtesy of Michael Blann

"The police riders in particular seemed to absolutely relish their role and were smiling and happy every time I saw them."

Riding as a participant in an organised event, particularly one with the scale that Ride Sri Lankan now has, is quite an eye opening experience. Just the sheer number of fellow riders takes some getting used to. But although the overall size of the peloton vastly exceeded anything that I had experienced before, the slick organisation helped to smooth out any potential issues. If you’ve ever watched any bike racing on the TV, the peloton moves in a safety cocoon – they have motorbike outriders at the front, police motorbikes to marshall any difficult junctions and support vehicles at the back. Ride Sri Lankan runs on exactly the same principle – we had a fleet of motorbike marshalls (all of whom had been seconded from the armed forces for the duration of the event) and our very own team of motorbike police too. Between them, they controlled junctions, dealt with oncoming traffic and generally made the riders feel like they were VIPs. It was obvious from their facial expressions that it wasn’t just the riders enjoying themselves though – the police riders in particular seemed to absolutely relish their role and were smiling and happy every time I saw them despite the fact that they were putting in some huge shifts and expending vast amounts of mental and physical energy to keep us all safe.

Most of you are probably keen to find out what the actual riding is like and the answer to that would be ‘fantastic’ and ‘incredibly varied’. Over the course of 400 km we encountered everything from velvety smooth tarmac to forest trails to crazy steep concrete ramps to urban singletrack to muddy swamps. The route started on the north-east coast of the island before heading south-west and then south, through the mountainous central regions of Sri Lanka and eventually dropped out near the south coast. Every day showcased a phenomenal variety of scenery, trails, topography, culture and wildlife. The fourth ride, which took us from Ella to Tissamaharama was a perfect example – just in the course of one ride we experienced everything from lush jungle to hilltop tea estates to lowland sugar cane plantations. Over the course of 100 km, the parcours for the stage included a 20 km paved climb, a never-ending broken tarmac descent, smooth dirt roads that would be the envy of any Strade Bianche fan, gravel tracks through elephant-filled forest and some rippled farm trails. All of this was ridden under azure blue skies and constant sunshine. In short, it felt like riding in gravel paradise.

If I was forced to pick my favourite day, it would be Stage 3, where we rode from Nuwara Eliya to Ella. While on paper this day shouldn’t have been too challenging with a total distance of only 86 km, what it lacked in length, it made up for with constant changes and a new challenge around practically every corner. Unlike the first couple of days, where we had been riding close to sea level (and consequently had experienced temperatures in the low/mid 30s Celsius), Stage 3 started from the lofty altitude of 1900m. As with all the other days, we woke up to perfect weather, but when we stepped outside the door of our hotel it felt like a pristine summer day in the UK, rather than a day on a tropical island. The UK-esque feel to the day was further enhanced when we started riding and encountered lush, green rolling hills covered with dairy farms, herds of Friesian cattle, houses fitted with chimneys and numerous wind turbines.

"The increasing temperature, the severe gradients and the crumbly nature of the tarmac meant the climb was a proper challenge."

Fortunately the Sri Lankan landscape soon revealed its tropical nature again and all feelings of riding in a sunny version of the UK were banished! After a super fun, undulating, paved warm-up we reached the first challenge of the day – the climb up to the Horton Plains national park. Although less than 5km in length, the increasing temperature, the severe gradients and the crumbly nature of the tarmac meant the climb was a proper challenge. Fortunately the views were impressive and anyone who could take their eyes off the road for a second could spot troops of langur and macaque monkeys watching us from the roadside. 

After traversing the Plains (for which we had been granted special dispensation – cyclists are not normally permitted to enter into the park), the route headed downhill for more than 15km. The descent for many was the highlight of the day with an incredible, sinuous route and stunning scenery, including a long section riding through the dappled light of an ancient broadleaf forest. After a scenically located lunch stop where we were treated to freshly made veg curry and coconut rotis, we headed on down to the rolling terrain of the valley below.

The afternoon’s parcours included a wonderful variety of riding – dirt roads, gravel tracks, stretches of broken tarmac, some flowy singletrack and Phil’s favourite, some insanely steep sections of concrete road. While the majority of these sections were short (some were less than 30 seconds in length), the combination of gradients of 20%+ and hot afternoon sunshine meant there were a lot of tired legs in evidence and quite a few people had to resort to getting off and walking up the last of the sections. Fortunately, having pre-ridden the route back in September, I had a good idea of what was coming up and was able to save a bit of physical and mental energy for the hardest and longest of the ramps. Our overnight destination was the hilltown of Ella and our route for the day finished with a stunning view over the town and the surrounding landscape. The consensus of opinion from the riders I chatted with was that it had been an unexpectedly tough day, but that the sense of satisfaction in completing it made up for the tired legs and battered bodies!

As any professional cyclist will tell you, fueling and recovery are key to improving performance. While none of the Ride Sri Lankan peloton had any aspirations of becoming a pro-cyclist, the principles are exactly the same and the organisers did an amazing job behind the scenes. When I visited Sri Lanka in September 2024 to pre-ride the route, I got my fuelling strategy wrong and started each day in calorie deficit, which meant each stage felt way harder than it should have done. This time around there were two big changes – firstly, British company Torq came onboard as one of the event sponsors and each rider was provided with an incredibly comprehensive complimentary pack of nutrition products and secondly, the organisers laid on regular (and well stocked) feed stations. Each one was different, but there were always copious amounts of drinks, fresh fruit and snacks available. When combined with the incredible buffet breakfasts and dinners laid on by the different hotels that we stayed in, it meant that everyone had the maximum possible chance of making it happily through each stage. Each stage also had multiple length options, with vehicle transfers available for anyone who wanted a shorter/easier day.

The accommodation provided as part of the event package also maximised the riders' chances of full recovery. The quality of the hotels was incredible, particularly when you took into account the price of the event. Due to the size of the group, on some of the nights multiple hotels were used (and this meant there was an element of pot-luck as to the level of quality/facilities/views etc) but the majority were 4* or better. We were treated to huge air conditioned rooms, ocean views, infinity pools, high quality bed linen, decent showers and perhaps most amazingly, bags waiting in your room when you arrived at the hotel. Even the check-in process had been incredibly well organised and there were event staff waiting at reception at every hotel to hand over your room keys. Breakfast and dinner was included in the price (along with food/drinks at the feed stations) - the only thing that participants had to pay for was drinks or additional meals taken at the hotels.

"Our final 'surprise' was waiting for us out in the lagoon."

On multiple occasions during the event, the organisers had arranged something special and unexpected – a cocktail evening under the stars on the first night for example. But they saved the biggest surprise for the end of the last ride. The route for the final stage finished at a seafront hotel where everyone had access to a bedroom to get showered and changed (the event staff even provided towels and soap for anyone who needed them). Then followed a long drive up to Negombo, a former Dutch colonial port situated north of Colombo. As we disembarked from the coaches we were offered tea and cake on the lawn of an upmarket seafront hotel before being gently ushered into a flotilla of small boats. Our final “surprise” was waiting for us out in the lagoon, where a cocktail bar had been set up in the shallow waters near a section of mangrove forest. 

After a short boat ride, the various captains skillfully beached their craft on a sandbank and we hopped out to be greeted by musicians, a well-stocked bar and uniformed staff carrying plates of snacks among the guests. As well as the wow factor, the location was a significant one for the airline – they are working in close partnership with the Forest Department of Sri Lanka relating to conservation and restoration of mangrove forests. Mangrove trees can absorb carbon 2-4 times faster than tropical rainforest which makes them a big help for balancing out some of the impacts of our flight. They also help minimise the impact of high tides/storms/tsunami etc. by being a physical barrier between the ocean and the quieter brackish and freshwater lagoons that lie inland of them.  Our visit coincided with International Women’s Day and to help celebrate this, the women in the group were given the opportunity to plant a mangrove sapling into the airline-supported mangrove nursery near where the floating bar was set up.  

The event finishes in Colombo and we stayed in one of its premier hotels, a 5* leviathan located not far from the ocean. Despite the luxurious surroundings, I think many of the group felt slightly out of place when we first arrived – the sheer scale of the place was a little discombobulating if nothing else. However, the staff were super helpful, the facilities amazing and the choice of food in the dinner and breakfast buffets was mind blowing. For many of the group, the chance to do a little sightseeing or find some souvenirs to take home was not to be missed, while for others, the last day was spent relaxing by the pool. The final evening started off with a drinks party in one of the hotel’s grand entertaining spaces. Seeing everyone dressed up and in party mode was a very pleasant surprise after ten days spent mainly in cycling kit!

"Based on the success of this year’s event, we suspect that demand will outstrip the number of places available!"

The evening was finished off in style thanks to the efforts of Luke, the official film maker for the event, who had worked his socks off putting together an edit of his film to show us on a big screen at the thank you ceremony. He managed to capture the essence of the event perfectly and watching the film on a big screen was the perfect way to finish the trip. The hard work of everyone involved with the event was incredibly well received by the participants and from the conversations I had afterwards, a lot of them are already considering signing up again for next year!

If you are interested in finding out more about Ride Sri Lankan 2026, which will be held from 28^th February to the 9^th March 2026, head over to the event website. Based on the success of this year’s event, we suspect that demand will outstrip the number of places available!

Olly’s trip to Sri Lanka wouldn’t have been possible without the incredibly generous support of Sri Lankan Airlines. They operate regular direct flights between London and Colombo and are one of the most cycling-friendly airlines we've ever had the pleasure of travelling with!

What bike for a gravel tour in Sri Lanka?

You might wonder what would be the ideal bike set-up for a Sri Lanka gravel tour? While everyone’s personal preferences will differ, I think it would be hard to beat the bike I took – a Canyon Grizl CF SLX fitted with a Shimano GRX Di2 2x12 groupsetand shod with a set of Schwalbe’s G-One R Pro tyres in a 700x50mm version. This felt like the goldilocks combination of light weight, a wide range of gears (suitable for some of the 20%+ ramps that Phil threw in on some of the days), comfortable (thanks to a combination of the VCLS seatpost and the supple tyres) and fast. The bike is both fun to ride and a workhorse, allowing me to get ahead of the peloton when I needed to get photographs, while being durable enough to cope with long days on rough terrain, being transported in a truck or packed in the hold of an aeroplane. A couple of other items that I couldn’t have done without were a Wahoo Element Ace computer, the big screen of which is perfect for those of us whose age-related vision isn’t quite what it used to be and a Restrap Hydration Vest which was perfect for both keeping me hydrated and carrying all my journalist-on-a-bike clobber.