Original Article – Times / Sunday Times
Literary festival or bookish retreat
As we go to press, writers are arriving at “authors’ favourite” Galle Literary Festival, held every January. This year’s speakers include the Booker prize laureates Shehan Karunatilaka and DBC Pierre, the Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb, and the bestselling authors Anthony Horowitz and Alexander McCall Smith. If you want to attend in 2025, Sri Lanka specialists Experience Travel Group will whizz you there with tickets (ten nights’ B&B from £3,450pp, including flights; experiencetravelgroup.com). Alternatively, bookish types can check in to the atmospheric tea plantation hotel Stafford Bungalow, the highest estate on the island, for a new six-day writers’ retreat. Three days are spent with the author and Sri Lanka expert Juliet Coombe, with two guided walks and a visit to a tea factory filling the rest of your time.
Details Five nights’ B&B from £2,340, including some extra meals (staffordbungalow.com). Fly to Colombo