A Dutch-speaking tour guide from Lakpura is a Sri Lankan guide who travels with you through the country and talks you through it in fluent Dutch. Instead of reading signboards and guessing at what you are looking at, you have someone beside you who can explain the history of a site, the meaning of a ritual you have walked into, and the way daily life works in the town you are passing through. Where the people around you are speaking Sinhala or Tamil, your guide translates for you.
A shared history along the coast
For travellers from the Netherlands and Flanders, parts of Sri Lanka feel oddly familiar. The Dutch East India Company held the island's coast from the middle of the seventeenth century until the British took over at the end of the eighteenth, and the traces are still there to read. Galle Fort, fortified by the Dutch and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the most complete of them; in Colombo, the Wolvendaal Church still stands; and the Burgher community carries names and family histories of Dutch descent. A handful of Dutch words settled into Sinhala and stayed there. A guide who speaks Dutch can walk you past the gables, the gravestones and the street names, and tell you what happened here after the Company left.
What your guide does
- Explains what you are looking at, from the ramparts and warehouses of Galle Fort to the ruins at Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.
- Translates with local people in markets, tea shops and village lanes, so a conversation can go further than a nod and a smile.
- Guides you through temple etiquette: where to leave your shoes, how to dress, and what is and is not photographed at a shrine.
- Reads the Dutch-period detail on tombstones, doorways and inscriptions, and puts it in the context of what came before and after.
- Answers practical questions as they come up along the way, from what is in a dish to what a word means to what is worth your time tomorrow.
- Gives you the background to festivals, Buddhist and Hindu practice, and the crops and work you see from the roadside.
Book a Dutch-speaking guide for as many days as your trip needs, from a single day to four weeks, choosing the number of days when you book. Tell us your itinerary, whether that is the coast, the hill country, the ancient cities or some of each, so the guide can be matched to where you are going.
