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About ESL

Experience Sri Lanka began when the founders fell in love with Sri Lanka, 7 years ago.

Since then we have grown from strength to strength and are now part of the Experience Travel Group featuring South East Asia.

Our philosophy has not changed. We believe we need to offer clients more than they can find out themselves on the internet. Therefore our UK based consultants have lived in, visited and generally know our area inside out. Our website is the most comprehensive in the business and we offer a unique service in that we have a specialist office for client support both in London and Sri Lanka.

Our Staff:

Melissa Nicholas begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Melissa’s interest in Travel is a consequence of growing up in Shropshire where everything in life seemed to be happening about 2 million miles away! We have never yet found anything that Melissa does not know about planes, airports, flight routes and airlines in general.

Her passion for South East Asia started on a gap year trip in the 1990’s and her 12 subsequent visits, travelling around and staying in everything from tents to humble beach bungalows to luxury hotels, have left that passion undimmed. She particularly loves Vietnam, especially Hoi An as it’s a destination with everything, great people, beaches, lovely hotels, heritage, culture, shopping and great food.

A keen amateur photographer and professional pub quiz expert (specialist subject UK pop charts 1984-88), we poached Melissa from the now defunct independent travel specialists, Quest Travel, She had spent 10 years at Quest organising tailor made tours of Asia and Australasia, the last 5 as a Sales Team Manager. In the 2 years she has been with us she has visited, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Laos and Cambodia and with slightly less relevance, Argentina and China.

Whilst she specialises in South East Asia, she likes to keep her hand in and has been known to book trips for clients to Karachi, Kathmandu, Khartoum and Kauai while with us at Experience Travel.

Samantha

Samantha handles our Sri Lankan office skillfully from Colombo. Her part German part Sri Lankan background has blessed her with the logic and efficiency of the west and the charm and open heart of the east.

She is an experienced traveler herself having traveled extensively in Europe, Asia and North America with her family so she is well aware of the wants and needs of discerning travelers.

With her connections on the ground and attention to detail, we have good relationships with all our partners on the ground.

Her guiding philosophy is to enjoy life, so she will ensure that our clients enjoy true Sri Lanka hospitality and leave with wonderful memories.

Tom Armstrong

Tom's first fell in love with Sri Lanka in 1999 and hasn't looked back since. Besides being in the country at the time of the 2004 tsunami, when he founded the Aid Sri Lanka Foundation, Tom has spent the best part of 5 years living in Sri Lanka, speaks Sinhala fluently and is one of several investors, in The Mudhouse, Anamaduwa. His time keeping is also somewhat Sri Lankan too, but that's a whole different story.

He has also lived and worked for over in a year in our Bangkok office and travelled extensively throughout Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand both in that period and over the past 10 years. Tom loves the hidden away nooks and crannies and is generally never happier than when sleeping on the floor of lodge in his yak herder's coat - though he is partial to a night or two in the Sarojn Phuket among other more material indulgences. He is our chief scout and loves discovering and photographing new places or unearthing Asia's forgotten gems. A massive favourite of Tom's is Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam.

Tom's specialist subject is languages and besides his fluent French, which endears him to the older generations in Cambodia and Vietnam, and the Sinhala mentioned earlier, he is now wrestling with the extremely tricky tonal Thai language. We wish him luck!

Before becoming one of the founders of Experience Travel, Tom worked as a guide with Explore Worldwide on many tours around the world. Particular favourites of his were Libiya, UAE, Tunisia, Oman and Spain. He liked Madeira too, though apparently there are only so many times a man can walk around a small island without getting bored.

Tom is currently working in from our Bangkok office, and working on that Thai...

Sam Clark

Sam's passion for Asia was first ignited by the travel writing of Norman Lewis and the sad fact that the furthest he went as a child was Scotland for a camping holiday in the rain. Ever since spending his 19th birthday in northern India, he has been making up for lost time, travelling as much and as extensively as possible throughout the world and living in Sri Lanka for a period (where he was another founder member of Aid Sri Lanka.

Sam's specialist subject is being tall in Asia: his 6'7 frame is noticeable in the UK, but faintly ridiculous in short statured Asia. There is barely a door frame on which he hasn't struck his head throughout the region and the story of how he accidentally knocked a house down, late one night in Kandy (after a drink or two), has been told and re-told until it has become almost a legend in Sri Lanka.

With two young children, Sam is also developing a reputation as the family specialist of the company and has an overly obsessive interest in family room configurations, kids car seats, airline family packs and so on and so forth. With a Kiwi wife, Sam knows all about long distance travel with kids and they always stop off in Thailand on route so Sam can indoctrinate his family in Thai food.

Never a man for temple fatigue, Sam is particularly interested in the history of this region and especially the line running through the great irrigation civilisations of Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Thailand. Sam will happily bore anyone who shows the remotest interest in the common thread of Indian heritage that links the mind blowing achievements of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and Angkor in Cambodia - a 1000 years and 500 miles apart.

Sam was a founding member of Experience Travel 5 years ago and before that was a Sales Manager at Quest Travel and learnt the trade (and travelled the world) originally with Dial-A-Flight.

Nick Clark

Nick is our Sri Lanka, group and adventure specialist. A massive sports nut, Nick combines this with a love of travel by organising cricket tours of Sri Lanka (both watching and playing), bicycling in Laos and diving in Thailand, among other adventure based holidays in the region.

When not taking in the cricket Nick loves doing exploring life in Asia and he is the leading company expert in what he describes as 'chilling....'

When roused though, the energy is a site to behold as he chucks himself wholeheartedly into designing a complicated itinerary for clients in Sri Lanka or keen cyclists wanting to tackle the mountainous scenery of Laos.

He spent far too much of his gap year in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and two of his subsequent summers were spent organising teaching placements in Sri Lanka. He has recently returned from a comprehensive recce of the forgotten nooks and crannies of southern Cambodia on our behalf and spent last Decemberin Sri Lanka where he hugely enjoyed the Kulu Safari experience.

Tracey Edginton

A journalist with a nose for a story, Tracey worked for several years for Save The Children in Sri Lanka, handling their in country communications. Tracey now works part time for Experience Travel, editing, proofing and putting together exciting holidays for our lucky clients.

Tracey is from down under but lives in London, complaining bitterly about the weather and dreaming wistfully of lazy days by the beach in Thailand. Tracey read Somerset Maugham as a teenager and never looked back, spending months first of all in Thailand, then Laos and other parts of Asia. She has been back to Thailand many times since, most recently for a wedding of a friend in January.

Tracey's specialist subject is Winston Churchill and while undoubtedly a great man, he had very little to do with the region in question. This rarely stops her crow baring him into the conversation, or indeed the itineraries... Please ignore it.

Nishad Wijetunga

Nishad runs the Experience Travel (Colombo) office and when you need a cool head in a hot climate, Nishad is your man.

Ever ready with a quip, a few ideas and a contact book wider than the Galle Road: if Nishad cannot sort it for you - he'll know someone who can (in fact he'll have gone to school with them/their brother/their cousin).

Nishad is always keen for an excuse to take a poor thirsty westerner down to the bar and demonstrate some good, old fashioned Sri Lankan hospitality.

An operator with many years travel experience under his belt, Nishad is always on hand for our clients in Sri Lanka.