What started with a trip we didn’t get to plan turned into a new way for us to help independent travellers explore Sri Lanka.
In July 2026, a mother of two decided not to book her family trip with us. Twenty-two days later, she offered to pay us for something we’d given her for free.
Sounds a bit strange, right?
This is the story of how that happened and how a random idea has now become something we’re planning to continue at TCE.
Why a local friend changes everything
Here’s a confession: I’ve never used a travel company before, and I have no intention of using one in the future either.
Not fair, right?
Well, trust me, I get it.
I’m the type of traveller who can happily spend three months researching a destination before I even step into the country. I genuinely enjoy it.
Yet on a trip to Penang, Malaysia, a Couchsurfing meetup led me to a few local friends who took me around and showed me places I probably never would have found on my own. We ate some ridiculously good local food, had a great evening and I remember thinking: how did I not come across any of these places in all those months of research?
That’s when it really struck me: a local friend can completely change how you experience a destination.
They know the little places that don’t always make it onto the internet. They know who to trust, what’s worth doing and sometimes simply where you should go instead.
That experience stayed with me and, in many ways, became one of the reasons I wanted to co-found TCE.
I still remember, in the early days, sitting down with my co-founders and talking about who we really wanted to work with. We didn’t want to chase travellers looking for a standard seven-day package around Sri Lanka. We wanted to work with people who valued connecting with locals and actually getting to know the destination.
Today, most of our work is curating slow, tailor-made journeys in Sri Lanka, taking care of everything from accommodation and transport to guides, activities and experiences.
That works for many travellers, but I completely understand that it doesn’t work for everyone. Some people genuinely love organising everything themselves. I’m one of them to begin with, after all.
Then, in July 2026, a happy accident happened.
A happy accident
As usual, I was on Reddit.
I tend to look for posts that aren’t just generic itinerary questions, but come from someone who has clearly done their research and is looking for something specific.
That’s when I came across a post from a mother planning to travel around Sri Lanka with her two daughters. It caught my attention, so I responded.
One thing led to another and Naama reached out to us directly.
We exchanged a couple of emails, she filled out our rather long questionnaire, and we shared an outline, bounced around some ideas and eventually proposed a trip plan for her family.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t within her budget.
Usually, that’s where the conversation ends.
This time, though, something was told me that I should still help Naama in some way, even though she had decided not to go ahead with us.
I wasn’t sure what that meant yet, so I wrote back with an idea.
The arrangement was simple. During her time in Sri Lanka, she could message us on WhatsApp with any questions about her travels, and we’d do our best to help shape her journey.
There was no payment involved. We even offered to connect her directly with people we trusted if she was looking for a guide, safari driver or another service provider.
She would deal with them directly, we wouldn’t take a commission and we wouldn’t get involved in the pricing.
Basically, we’d just be there if she needed us.
To my surprise, she loved the idea.
Then we waited to see what would happen.
22 days on WhatsApp
Naama was pretty much the classic independent traveller: no accommodation booked for the whole trip, no one to chauffeur her around, just her, the kids and a strong spirit of “let’s explore Sri Lanka and wing it along the way”.
The day she landed, one of her bags went missing. We suggested a few places in Negombo she could do a bit of shopping, but fortunately the bag was traced and delivered the very next day.
From there, the messages kept flowing.
We connected her with some guides we trust, which led to a beautiful safari and a sunset kayaking experience for her and the kids. We shared weather updates and local news that helped her decide how long to stay in one place and where to go next.
We even somehow ended up helping a Spanish family she met along the way, haha.
In Nilaveli, it turned out she was staying at the same place I’d stayed years ago. We also pointed her towards some lesser-known archaeological sites around Trincomalee, which the girls apparently thoroughly enjoyed.
Then she found a quiet temple by the beach that was completely new to us.
I loved that.
This was never about us pretending to know everything about Sri Lanka. She was exploring the country and, in some ways, helping us discover it too.
The weather eventually forced some changes to her plans, so we helped her rework those as well. We connected her with a guide for Stage 1 of the Pekoe Trail, helped her find a stay with a view in Haputale and recommended a guide for Horton Plains.
Along the way, Naama kept sharing updates and highlights from the road and every time something came through, it felt like we were travelling with her too.
Before we knew it, 22 days had passed and she was flying home the next day.
Then something unexpected happened
Usually, when you travel with a travel company, the company might host you for a meal or meet you before you leave.
In this case, Naama invited me to dinner.
Sadly, I couldn’t make it because I was out of Colombo, but the invitation made me very very happy.
I think that was when I realised this had become something more than just answering questions on WhatsApp. That level of trust isn’t something I take lightly.
She also offered to jump on a call after the trip to share her feedback, and I was more than happy to hear directly from her how our little experiment, which we now call the Local Friend Desk had helped her.
Then, without me even asking, she said we should actually be charging for this and that she would have happily paid.
We politely declined, but the fact that she brought it up herself stayed with us.
Here’s the review Naama left us ❤️
Her offer got us thinking: why stop here?
So, what now?
We’ve decided to continue the TCE Local Friend Desk and make it available to other independent travellers visiting Sri Lanka.
There’s no set fee. Contributions are entirely voluntary: if you find our help useful, you’re welcome to give whatever feels right to you.
We also wanted it to do a little more than just keep the desk running. So half of every contribution goes to one of two causes close to our hearts, and you choose which.
- PLANT (Preserving Land and Nature) was established by the WNPS, and it creates and restores forest corridors that reconnect fragmented habitats, especially in the endemic and biodiversity-rich southwest of Sri Lanka. PLANT is working on over 40 locations, is actively developing over 60 km of forest corridor, has created over 360 acres of new forest and the PLANT sites are home to over 1350 species including over 130 Critically Endangered and Endangered species.
- Tea Leaf Trust has offered free education to young people in Sri Lanka’s tea estate communities since 2009. It has helped more than 8,000 of them build the skills and confidence to find work, and many of its graduates go on to become its teachers. Your contribution goes towards hardship support, such as monthly bus fares for students who travel long distances to class, so the cost of getting there doesn’t stand between them and their education.
The other half helps us keep the Local Friend Desk running.
Some people might say this makes absolutely no commercial sense.
Maybe they’re right.
But if we can help you shape your Sri Lanka journey, connect you with the right people and make better decisions along the way, while also supporting locally run positive-impact projects in Sri Lanka, we call that a win-win.
So, what exactly is the Local Friend Desk?
It’s pretty simple.
You’re travelling independently around Sri Lanka. You don’t want someone planning every day for you because half the fun is figuring things out yourself.
But you’re also in a country you’ve never travelled through before, and every now and then you might just want to ask someone local.
Maybe you want to know where to eat tonight.
Maybe you’re wondering whether it’s worth changing your plans because of the weather.
Maybe you need a guide for a particular hike.
Maybe you’ve found a safari driver online and want to know if we’d trust them.
Maybe you’re looking for something a little different to do in an area you’re already visiting.
Or maybe you just want to ask, “Is this worth the detour?”
That’s where we come in.
We’ll help where we can, share what we know and connect you with people we trust when we think they can add value to your journey.
If you need a guide, driver or activity provider, we’ll pit you in touch. You deal with them directly, agree on the price and make the arrangements yourself. We don’t take a commission and we don’t get involved in the pricing.
Hopefully, through all of this, we can help you discover what we like to call everyday Sri Lanka: the food, people, places, stories and little experiences you might otherwise miss when simply following a standard route.
A dedicated Local Friend Desk page is coming to our website soon.
For now, if you’re the kind of independent traveller who doesn’t want a travel company organising your entire trip but would love someone local to reach out to while you’re here, we’re here for you. Message us on WhatsApp at +94 70 299 1951 or email hello@thecuriousexperience.com.
It’s a slightly unusual thing for a travel company to do.
Then again, TCE was never really built to be a conventional travel company.
P.S. A last-minute addition: before publishing, we shared this draft with Naama. She was very excited and wrote back recommending a global conservation initiative she supports, This is My Earth (TIME), which buys biodiversity-rich land and hands it over to local communities to protect. It’s remarkably close in spirit to PLANT. And before we knew it, she had donated to PLANT too ❤️
These are the moments that make us happiest: a small initiative of ours contributing to something meaningful. This is only the beginning, and we hope to work with many more responsible travellers like Naama!
