Girin · Route Studio

Sri Lanka, arranged in moments.

Q: How does payment work?

A route is held with a 20% deposit once you are ready to book, which lets us start securing your stays, guides, and car on the ground. The balance falls due 60 days before you travel and is settled in full before departure, so there is nothing to pay or arrange once you arrive in Sri Lanka. Everything is confirmed in writing before any money changes hands.

Tell Route Studio how you like your days to feel. It does the kind of thinking a good local planner would, sketching a route that makes sense and leaving you to make the final tweaks. When you’re ready, our team and local hosts arrange and book the trip itself.

Plan Your Trip See how it works

Takes about 3 minutes · No sign-up

How Route Studio works

Preflight → Draft route → Day-by-day view → We book it.

It starts with how you travel and shapes a real route — not a generic itinerary — then our team and local hosts arrange and book the trip.

01 Preflight
Tell Route Studio how you travel.

A short set of questions about your pace, interests, season, and budget. Five minutes, no sign-up. It’s there to read your style, not just your dates.
02 Draft route
Let the studio sketch the days.

Behind the scenes it matches drive times and seasons with guides written by people who know the island. Out comes a draft route built from the signals you gave it — a starting sketch, not the final word. The studio does the first pass; the route is then composed and booked by people who live here.
03 Day-by-day view
Refine the trip, day by day.

A clear daily view of the route — swap regions, lengthen a stay, see why each stop or moment is there. Export the deck when it feels right.
04 Send & arrange
Send the route — we book the trip.

When the route feels right, send it to us. From there, real people take over: Girin and our local hosts arrange and book the stays, activities, private guide, and private car — handling the trip end to end. You travel; the on-the-ground work is ours.

Plan Your Trip

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Hosts

The people behind every Girin route — guides, instructors and operators who live and work across Sri Lanka. Tap a host to see where they work, what they specialise in, the languages they speak, and their experience.

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Our hosts will appear here in a moment.

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About

Girin Route Ateliers is a route house for Sri Lanka — local knowledge, arranged into moments, composed into routes that hold together editorially and on the ground.

We compose the route, then arrange it on the ground — stays, activities, private guides, and transport, booked through hosts who live and work across the island. The studio is where a trip starts; people are how it gets done.

A route is yours to set the level of. The shape of it holds either way; the stays, the pace, and how quietly or richly it’s done move with what you ask for. And whoever you are travelling as, someone who knows your route is on call while you’re on the ground — a real person, not a queue.

One fee, one quote. When you enquire, we come back with a single all-inclusive price for the whole route — private car and driver, your guide, accommodation, activities, and entry fees, all held in one figure confirmed before you travel. Outside it sit only the things that are yours to choose day to day: food and drink, and anything you’d like to give in gratuity. No per-stop billing, no vendors to settle with on the road.

How payment works. A route is held with a 20% deposit once you’re ready to book — that’s what lets us start securing your stays, guides, and car on the ground. The balance falls due 60 days before you travel, and is settled in full before departure; there’s nothing to pay or arrange once you arrive in Sri Lanka. Everything is confirmed in writing before any money changes hands.

If plans change. The deposit secures real commitments with the people and places along your route, so it isn’t refundable. Beyond that, what we can return depends on how far out you cancel: 60 or more days before travel, everything paid beyond the deposit is refunded in full; between 30 and 59 days, half the balance is returned and the rest covers commitments already made on your behalf; inside 30 days, payments are non-refundable, as stays, guides, and transport are by then booked and largely paid. Cancellations are confirmed by email and dated from when we receive them. If we ever need to change a route for reasons on our side, you’re refunded in full or we rebuild it with you — your choice.

Our promise to you

One price, held. The quote we give is the price you pay — confirmed before you travel, never revised on the road.
A real person, on the ground. Someone who knows your route is reachable while you travel — not a queue or a chatbot.
Booked, not brokered. We arrange and pay your stays, guides, and transport directly — you settle one fee with us, no vendors to chase.
Local hosts, not a call centre. The people behind your route live and work in Sri Lanka.
Fair if plans change. Clear, written cancellation terms — no surprises.

Frequently asked

What is included in a Girin trip?

You pay a single all-inclusive fee, quoted on enquiry, covering the whole route — private car and driver, your guide, accommodation, activities, and entry fees, all held in one figure confirmed before you travel. Only food and drink and any gratuities you choose to give sit outside it. No per-stop billing, and no vendors to settle with on the road.

What level of trip can you arrange — is it luxury?

A route is yours to set the level of. The same route can sit mid-range or run to the highest end, ultra-luxury included; the shape of it holds either way, while the stays and pace move with what you ask for. Whoever you are travelling as, someone who knows your route is on call while you’re on the ground — a real person, not a queue.

How does payment work?

A route is held with a 20% deposit once you’re ready to book, which lets us start securing your stays, guides, and car on the ground. The balance falls due 60 days before you travel and is settled in full before departure, so there’s nothing to pay or arrange once you arrive in Sri Lanka. Everything is confirmed in writing before any money changes hands.

What is your cancellation and refund policy?

The deposit secures real commitments along your route, so it isn’t refundable. Beyond that: cancel 60 or more days before travel and everything paid beyond the deposit is refunded in full; cancel between 30 and 59 days and half the balance is returned; cancel inside 30 days and payments are non-refundable, as stays, guides, and transport are by then booked and largely paid. If we ever need to change a route for reasons on our side, you’re refunded in full or we rebuild it with you.

Do you use a call centre or local people?

The people behind your route live and work in Sri Lanka. We arrange and pay your stays, guides, and transport directly, so you settle one fee with us and have no vendors to chase. While you travel, someone who knows your route is reachable — not a queue or a chatbot.

The founders

Girin Route Ateliers is built by two people who have spent their lives moving through Sri Lanka — one through the law and the long way round, the other through a family travel business and the road itself.

Sankha Karunaratne

Co-founder · Legal Officer

I’m Sankha Karunaratne, co-founder of Girin Route Ateliers.

By trade, I’m a lawyer. By instinct, I’m a traveller. For years, I’ve crossed Sri Lanka the long way — trekking little-known trails, diving its sites, following waterfalls, and learning the island through the people who live and work across it. The more I travelled, the clearer one thing became: Sri Lanka does not suffer from a lack of possibility. It suffers from too much noise.

Planning a trip should not feel like sorting through a hundred conflicting reviews, vague recommendations, and endless tabs. When I tried to organise travel with friends, the same problems kept returning. Too many choices. Too little trust. And in the middle of it all, the real character of a place gets lost.

Girin began with a simple belief: technology should bring the human side of travel back, not replace it.

We built Girin around local knowledge — guides, hosts, cooks, cyclists, naturalists, and others who know Sri Lanka properly — and around a moments-led way of planning that keeps the process calm and clear. Our Moments deck helps travellers shape a route through a smaller set of considered choices, grounded in what is actually worth seeing and doing. From there, we arrange and book the whole trip end to end, with a dedicated guide, driver, and concierge support on call, so the logistics stay invisible and the travel itself can stay present.

We also built a forum for groups and solo travellers who want to plan together and travel more safely than strangers meeting cold.

We are early. We know trust in travel is not claimed; it is earned, one real trip at a time.

Mahinda Siyaguna

Co-founder

I’m Mahinda Siyaguna, co-founder of Girin Route Ateliers.

I’ve spent most of my life travelling across Sri Lanka, often enough that it feels like I’ve traced almost every main road and many of the smaller ones. Travel, for me, has never been a passing interest. It has been family work, a way of seeing the island at close range, and a constant thread through everything I’ve done.

In my twenties, after a short stint in Europe, I came back to Sri Lanka and joined my brother Sunil at Globe Jeter Tours, which he had founded in 1979 as one of the country’s first tour operators specialising in individual and small group tours. Globe Jeter helped pioneer this more attentive way of seeing the island, including becoming the first company to take foreign guests to visit the Veddah community, Sri Lanka’s indigenous people. Working inside that business, I learned how routes behave on the ground: how season, road conditions, guides, and pacing decide whether a trip feels effortless or exposed.

Later, I spent a long stretch in corporate roles in Sri Lanka, mostly around finance, insurance, and trading.

Girin is where those two lines meet. The years on the road taught me how Sri Lanka feels when you move through it properly. The corporate years taught me how to build frameworks that can carry that feeling reliably, trip after trip.

How we try to travel well with the people and places along a route — the Girin Pledge, our 1% giving, and our approach to landscapes and wildlife — is set out on our Responsible Tourism page.

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Responsible Tourism at Girin

Girin Route Ateliers works in a single country, with a clear focus: routes through Sri Lanka shaped by local people. Our responsibility work follows the same line — the people who make our routes possible, the places those routes move through, and the wider culture of travel on the island.

We group this into a few clear commitments.

1. Working with partners we can stand behind

Our routes rely on Sri Lankan guides, drivers, cooks, naturalists, craftspeople, and other small operators. Most of them do not have CSR departments — they are busy running their own work on the ground.

To keep things usable, we built the Girin Pledge: a short agreement covering fair work, care for local environments, guest safety, and steady improvement. Partners who sign become Girin Pledge Partners and can access a simple online portal with short videos, examples, and checklists. The goal is to help them make a few better choices each season, not to bury them in forms.

This Responsible Supplier Programme is the heart of how we try to travel well with other people’s work. You can read the full Girin Pledge — what it covers, and how we support partners.

2. 1% of profit for routes and culture

Starting now, Girin will donate 1% of annual net profit to philanthropic activity linked to travel and place in Sri Lanka. We will prioritise:

Performance arts and cultural projects that sit close to our routes.
Craftspeople whose work is part of the texture of a trip.
Wildlife initiatives that protect the landscapes and species our routes depend on.
Community-led activities such as surfing, cycling, and hiking.

We will work with local partners and publish a short yearly note on where this money went, and why.

3. Landscapes and wildlife

We are careful about the kinds of moments we put into our routes. We do not support activities that depend on obvious harm to wildlife, or that ignore local conservation rules. Where we find existing moments that are not aligned with this, we either change how they run or remove them. When we design new routes, we look for partners and formats that minimise unnecessary impact and respect local guidelines.

4. Access to movement and skills

Many of our routes are built around simple forms of movement: riding a bike, learning to surf, walking in the hills, being on the water.

As Girin grows, we intend to direct part of our 1% commitment and in-kind support towards projects that widen access to these skills and spaces in Sri Lanka — local cycling initiatives, community surf clubs, or trail projects. We will focus on named, local organisations rather than generic themes, so we can point to specific work and specific people.

5. How this will evolve

This work will keep evolving as Girin grows. We will adjust our supplier programme, our giving, and our own practices as we learn alongside our partners and travellers.

Each year we aim to share a concise update: how many partners are in the Girin Pledge, which projects received funding, and a few grounded examples of what has changed. The aim is to stay precise, honest, and usable — not to add another layer of travel language.

Responsible Tourism

The Girin Pledge

Girin Route Ateliers is built around local knowledge. Our routes depend on Sri Lankan guides, drivers, cooks, naturalists, craftspeople, and other small operators who know their places properly and run their own work on the ground.

Most of our partners do not have CSR departments. They are busy leading rides, cooking, teaching, guiding walks, or running small operations. The Girin Pledge is designed for them: short, practical, and realistic.

What the Girin Pledge covers

The Girin Pledge is a short agreement between Girin and our moment partners, setting out four areas of responsibility:

People — fair work, safe conditions, and respect for staff and collaborators.
Place — care for local environments, from waste to wildlife.
Practice — honest communication and steady improvement over time.
Guest safety — clear briefings, basic safeguards, and calm handling of any incidents.

Partners who sign become Girin Pledge Partners. Where it helps travellers choose, we may show a quiet note on route and moment pages to indicate that a guide or activity partner has taken the pledge, and what that means in practice.

How we support partners

Because most partners are small specialists, the pledge avoids jargon and long reports. Instead, we ask them to:

Be open about where they are starting from.
Choose one or two concrete improvements to focus on each year.
Stay in touch with us about what is working and what is difficult.

To make this easier, we are building a simple online portal for partners, with:

Short awareness-raising videos on living wage, safe work, environmental basics, and guest safety in a tourism and guiding context.
Practical examples from other small operators on the island.
Light checklists and templates a guide, driver, cook, or craft partner can adapt without extra staff.

The aim is not to turn partners into policy experts. It is to give them enough context and tools to make a few better choices each season — including how they prepare and look after guests on the ground.

How this will evolve

This work will keep evolving as Girin grows. We will adjust the pledge, the portal, and our own practices as we learn alongside our partners and travellers.

For now, our focus is clear: to work with local specialists we can stand behind, and to help them strengthen how they look after their people, their places, and their guests.

Training for moment hosts

Our short host-training films walk partners through the pledge in plain language — people, place, practice, and guest safety. Watch the host training videos.

The Girin Pledge

Host training videos

Five short films for moment hosts. They walk through the Girin Pledge in plain language — what it asks of us all, and how it works in practice across people, place, practice, and guest safety.

Watch them in order, or jump to the one you need. Each film is a few minutes long, made to be useful on a phone between jobs.