Lonely Planet Sri Lanka (Travel Guide)

Good

I used to find Lonely Planet guidebooks to be informative and worth the money, but not this one. This is a relatively poor edition, which lacks detail / useful information, and which is quite superficial / surface-level. I lived in Sri Lanka for almost 25 years, speak one of the local languages (Sinhala) fluently, and wanted to revisit the country after like 15 years, and I bought this guide to update myself about the country and to help me plan my 5-week long stay. In addition to the very sparse information and practicalities about the country, There are also a bunch of mistakes in this guide, which shows that this book was not edited or fact-checked properly. Under the languages section, for instance, the guide tries to teach the reader how to pronounce local words. But some of these pronunciations are inaccurate. The Sinhala phrase it provides for "I'm lost" actually translates to "I'm dead" in Sinhala. It is clear this section wasn't checked by a native / fluent speaker of the language. This is a common problem when white westerners do not appropriately collaborate with local people to produce these types of books, but think they can write guides to these countries and become "experts" about the country within a limited period of time. It also advertises the Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka as a "contributing writer," but this is a reference to a mere 3-page entry that discusses in a limited fashion contemporary Sri Lankan writing in English. Lonely Planet guidebooks used to be very good, but their quality has really fallen over the last 7-8 years in general. Part of the issue seems to be that their writers are doing poor research and don't seem to really know what they are talking about. Some of them seem to be quite clueless and not really have traveled enough in the country they are writing about to merit contributing to these types of guides. Lonely Planet should start investing in better researchers and writers who are actually part of these local communities if they want to sustain their publications.

I have Lonely Planet guides from my travels (Morocco, Madagascar, Bali and Lombok) and ordered the 2021 Sri Lanka Guide, it’s formatted and laid out as the others. The new 2024 Sri Lanka Guide format and contents are much different and really not helpful at all. I agree with the other reviewers of this new edition that they’ve lost the practical tips, user friendly layout, and important information. Indeed, if this is Lonely Planet’s new style, I don’t know that I’ll be purchasing new guidebooks from them. The 2021 Sri Lanka version is much much better even if it’s dated.

Checked this out of my local library to see how it compared to another Sri Lanka tour book (Rough Guides). RG author seemed a bit down on Sri Lanka, and didn't like a lot of things but at least they told you about them. This feels like a thin regurgitation of a tour book, with very little information. And what's there is hard to understand as it seems like the context all got stripped out. The introduction and sample itineraries have the old LP feel, but the individual chapters are a big disappointment.

Lonely Planet travel guides used to be the gold standard for more adventurous travelers in the days of the Wheelers (founders). They included concise and in depth historical, cultural and practical information in well-organized and engaging style, comprehensive knowledge conveyed well to enable culturally sensitive travel. This guide seems to be written for people who don’t read, or by people who don’t, or both. Maps are lame and confusing. Information is painfully limited and poorly organized. There is lots of dumb stuff, like half-page QR codes, links in purple on red backgrounds that are illegible, and random shutterstock images that don’t begin to convey what could be and fit the flow poorly. How do trains work? Where are stations? Why bother recommending only 3 places to eat or sleep in an entire city, as an afterthought? Why repeat points multiple times, when you’ve only bothered to make very few points? Hopefully the Wheelers are dead or ignorant of what has happened to their legacy. Pretty sad. Maybe this is what a book looks like when everyone has ADHD. Disappointed.

New Design is USELESS

This latest version of the Sri Lanka guide is terrible compared to the last one (15th ed) and the old design in general - it lacks any practical information about transportation (no detailed information about means of transportation, time, prices, frequency), accommodation (vague indicators about prices), food (vague indicator about prices and standard), things to do around (except for general info) - DO NOT BUY, instead get the last one based on the old design (15th ed). If Lonely Planet plans to publish its guides in this design and layout with only very general information, it's better to find better guides with more detailed information.