We came, we saw, we fell in love. Then we stayed.
Sama Escapes is a small, Sri Lanka-based team of trip designers and driver-guides. We plan journeys the way we would for friends coming to visit: personally, honestly and with a strong opinion about where to eat.
Veni. Vidi. Amavi.
Our name is the Sanskrit word for balance, and our motto is the Latin for what happens to most people who visit this island. Sama began with two friends, one from Kandy and one who arrived for a fortnight and never left, arranging trips for visitors who kept asking for the places that were not in the guidebooks.
Fifteen years on, we still work the same way. Every journey is drawn from scratch around the people travelling. We know the estate managers, the temple caretakers and the fishermen by name, and we spend a good part of each year on the road checking the places we recommend.
Travel that leaves the island better than it found it
Over 80% of the accommodation we book is family-run. Money stays in the villages you visit.
Our driver-guides are salaried, insured and never dependent on commission from shops.
No elephant rides, no orphanage shows. Safaris with trained trackers who keep their distance.
A share of every trip funds English classes and clean-water projects in hill-country estate communities.
From first message to first morning
Dates, interests, pace and budget. A ten-minute form or a WhatsApp message is enough.
Within two working days you receive a day-by-day itinerary with stays, a map and a price.
We swap, stretch and trim until it feels like yours. As many rounds as it takes.
Your driver-guide meets you at arrivals. We stay on call throughout the trip.
Twelve people, one island
Four trip designers in Colombo and Kandy, seven driver-guides who between them have covered every road on the island, and a founder who still answers the WhatsApp line most evenings.