Dambulla

Four days is enough for the two things everyone wants to see: the rock fortress of Sigiriya and the sacred city of Kandy. It suits travellers flying in from India, Dubai, Singapore or Malaysia for a long weekend, and people adding a few days to a business trip in Colombo.

This is a starting point, not a fixed product. Eight days is the shortest comfortable length for a proper island circuit, and the route below is the one we would suggest if you gave us no other information: Cultural Triangle, Kandy, tea country, the train to Ella, a safari in Yala. Almost every guest who books it changes something.

The Lion Rock and the cave temples in one long, very worthwhile day from Colombo – a 4:30 am start, two UNESCO World Heritage sites and back at your hotel by early evening.

Three of the island's headline sights in one day from Kandy: Sigiriya, the Dambulla caves and a wild elephant safari.

Negombo is the closest beach base to the Cultural Triangle, which makes this the easiest long day trip to Sigiriya on the west coast – and the obvious one if you are staying near the airport.

A long day inland from the west-coast beach resorts to Sri Lanka's two greatest monuments – the option for guests on a beach holiday who do not want to leave the island without seeing Sigiriya.

Sri Lanka is not a step-free country, and we will not pretend otherwise. Pavements are uneven, many temples have stepped approaches and accessible bathrooms are the exception rather than the rule. What we can do is route around the worst of it: a ramp-equipped van with a tail lift, hotels we check for door widths and roll-in showers before we quote them, and sites chosen because they genuinely work from a chair.

Ten days of touring, then four nights of doing nothing. This is the shape of trip that German and Austrian travellers ask for by name – a Rundreise with a Badeurlaub attached – and it is, for most people, the most satisfying way to use a fortnight in Sri Lanka. You see the whole island while you have the energy, and then you stop.

A private tour built around a slower rhythm. No transfer day involves more than about four and a half hours in the car and most are under three, every hotel is chosen for lift access and ground-floor rooms where possible, and every site has a step-free or short-walk alternative so nothing has to be skipped for the sake of stairs.

An hour over the Cultural Triangle at dawn, with Sigiriya rock and Pidurangala rising out of the mist and the tanks catching the first light. November to April only, and weather dependent.