The Sri Lanka End-to-End Trail
Sri Lanka is surveying a walking route from Point Pedro in the far north towards the east coast and on through the interior. It is the next trail after the Pekoe Trail, and it is not finished. Here is what has actually been published, and what has not.
You cannot walk this trail yet
As of September 2026 there is no published route, no waymarking, no stage list and no GPX track for the End-to-End trail. Two walkers completed a reconnaissance on foot in July 2026, and Sri Lanka Tourism says the trail is expected to be fully operational in 2027. Nothing on this page is a route description, and Hike Lanka does not guide it.
We have published this page early so the record is accurate while the trail is being built. It is written from named sources only, and it will be rewritten once an official route exists.
What it is
Sri Lanka Tourism and the EU set up a programme called Heritage Trails: a set of long walking routes meant to spread visitors, and their money, beyond the usual stops. The Pekoe Trail, 22 stages through the tea country, was the first of them. The End-to-End trail is the next one, and it is both much longer and much less finished.
It is being developed by the Presidential Task Force on Tourism Development together with the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), who commissioned two experienced walkers, Sarath Wijewardane and Arron Moore, to cover the ground on foot and work out what is actually practicable. Five technical specialists support them. SLTDA says it will manage the finished trail under a new set of trail management criteria launched in July 2026.
Where it goes, as far as anyone has said
The published accounts do not agree on where the trail ends, and we are not going to resolve that for them. Sri Lanka Tourism describes the section it will manage as running between Point Pedro, the northern tip of the island, and Trincomalee on the east coast. The same coverage describes a wider walk continuing inland, and the two walkers were reported to be aiming for the southern tip of the island.
Between those ends, the places named so far are the northern coastal line through Thiriyaya, where the Girihandu Seya archaeological site stands, and Kuchchaveli, then inland to Sigiriya, the Knuckles range, Kandy, Horton Plains and the Sinharaja rainforest. By the time the walkers reached Kandy they had covered 456 kilometres in 21 days, with two rest days, and expected the whole walk to take around a month and a half.
That is a list of places, not an itinerary. Nobody has published which way the route runs between any two of them.
The places that have been named
Numbered pins are the places named in press coverage of the reconnaissance walk, ordered north to south. They are not stages, and nothing joins them on this map, because no route has been surveyed or published.
- Point Pedro: Sri Lanka's northernmost point, and the reported northern end of the walk.
- Thiriyaya: Girihandu Seya, the Buddhist archaeological site named on the northern coastal section.
- Kuchchaveli: Named as the far end of the northern coastal line.
- Trincomalee: The east coast city named as the other end of the section SLTDA says it will manage.
- Sigiriya: Named among the inland attractions on the wider island traverse.
- Kandy: Where the two walkers had reached in July 2026, 456 kilometres in.
The Knuckles, Horton Plains and Sinharaja are named in the coverage but carry no pin here. Each is a mountain range, a plateau and a forest reserve rather than a point, and dropping a single marker on one would put a coordinate on the map that we chose rather than one anybody published.
Why it matters
Most walking in Sri Lanka happens in the hill country, and most of the money follows it there. A route that starts at Point Pedro and runs down the north and east coasts reaches districts that were worst hit by the war and that see very few walkers. That is the stated reason for building it, and it is the reason it is worth watching.
It also changes what a long walk in Sri Lanka can be. The Pekoe Trail is a hill country walk through tea estates. This one would take in coast, dry zone archaeology, montane forest and rainforest on a single line, which nothing here currently does.
When you could walk it
No walking season has been established, and we are not going to invent one. It is a genuinely hard question because the route crosses the island. The north and east are at their wettest from around December to February, which is exactly when the Hill Country is at its driest and clearest, and the south west is soaked through the Monsoon from around May. A route running through all of it has no single good window, and working that out is part of what the reconnaissance is for.
Expect the answer to arrive from SLTDA with the route itself.
What to walk in the meantime
The Pekoe Trail is the finished trail from the same programme: 22 waymarked stages, published figures, and a free public API for the stage data. We walk it with people, on a five day section through Uva and a full 14 day trek.
Several places named on the End-to-End route already have guides here: the Knuckles range, Horton Plains, the Sinharaja rainforest and Pidurangala, beside Sigiriya. Our three day Knuckles traverse walks one of them properly.
Not to be confused with this programme: Heritage Trail Sri Lanka is a separate 14 stage route from Galle to Ratnapura, with a published stage list.
Where this comes from
- The reconnaissance walk, the 456 kilometres, the named places and the 2027 date: The Sunday Times, 26 July 2026.
- The Heritage Trails programme, and the Pekoe Trail as its first route: EU Delegation to Sri Lanka and SLTDA.
- Pin coordinates: OpenStreetMap, checked 17 September 2026. Feature ids are recorded in the page source.
If we have got something wrong, or the route has been published and this page has not caught up, tell us.
Walking Sri Lanka before this one opens
Tell us your dates and how far you want to walk, and we will come back with a plan built on trails that exist today.