Best time to visit Kandy

Sri Lanka · South Asia

All twelve months scored on daily temperature, rainfall, humidity and holiday crowding.

The year in Kandy

Tap a month for its page

Sweet spot
Good
OK
Avoid
Busy

Go in Feb, Jun, Jul, Aug or Sep — these months score within a whisker of each other; 28C max, 8 rainy days. Jan is the next best.

Dry season: Jan–Mar, 6 or fewer rainy days a month.

Plan this trip

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Flights

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Where to stay

Things to do

Car hire

Travel insurance

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Each opens in a new tab, on the site's own pages.

Things to do in Kandy

Temple of the Tooth It houses a tooth relic of the Lord Buddha, and is consequently considered one of Sri Lanka's most holy shrines.
Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage Elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka
Royal Botanical Garden in Peradeniya The best botanical garden in Sri Lanka and one of the best in the region.
Knuckles Mountain Range Mountain range
Embekka Temple A Sinhalese indigenous deity shrine in Kandy District, Sri Lanka
Royal Palace of Kandy It now houses archeological museum.
Udawattakele Royal Forest Sanctuary The forest was planned and maintained as the part of the Royal palace complex of the Sinhala Kings.

Tours and tickets in Kandy

Each site opens on its own search: choose your dates there. A few open on their home page, where you type the place too. Links marked Ad pay us a commission if you book, at no extra cost to you; most pay nothing, and what a site pays never decides whether it is listed or where. How we rank

Sights and their lines from Wikivoyage (Kandy), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, and Wikidata; in order of how often each one's Wikipedia article was read on phones in the last 12 months.

Month by month

No fare history for this route yet, so this ranking is climate and crowds only — the price column will fill in as the scanner collects.

Month	Max °C	Rain days	Humidity	Sun h/day	Verdict	Why
Jan	28°	5d	78%	9.8h	okbusy	busier than usual
Feb	29°	3d	75%	10.7h	sweet spot busy	busier than usual
Mar	31°	4d	73%	10.7h	okbusy	busier than usual
Apr	31°	9d	79%	10.2h	ok	31C max, 9 rainy days
May	29°	12d	84%	9.2h	ok	29C max, 12 rainy days
Jun	28°	9d	83%	10.3h	sweet spot	28C max, 9 rainy days
Jul	28°	8d	81%	9.9h	sweet spot	28C max, 8 rainy days
Aug	27°	11d	83%	9.6h	sweet spot	27C max, 11 rainy days
Sep	28°	10d	83%	9.4h	sweet spot	28C max, 10 rainy days
Oct	27°	19d	87%	8.2h	avoid	monsoon: 19 rainy days, 294mm
Nov	27°	17d	87%	7.7h	avoid	monsoon: 17 rainy days, 348mm
Dec	27°	9d	84%	9.1h	okbusy	busier than usual

Rain days are the days with at least 1 mm of rain, as a weather station counts them.

Weather read at the lake and the Temple of the Tooth: ten years of ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis, through Open-Meteo's open data.

A busy month is a crowded one, not a bad one — usually it is crowded because the weather is good. It is flagged rather than scored down, and crowds alone never make a month “avoid”: that is reserved for weather worth skipping.

How busy it gets

Busiest from December to March; quietest in April, May, June and October.

Then and now

Kandy's January days now average 27.6°C, 2.2°C warmer than in 1981–1990. 6 of 12 months are clearly warmer.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1981–90	25.5°	27.7°	29.4°	29.7°	28.3°	26.6°	26.9°	27.0°	27.6°	27.4°	26.2°	25.6°
2017–26	27.6°	29.1°	31.0°	31.0°	28.8°	27.8°	27.8°	27.5°	27.7°	27.3°	27.0°	27.1°
Change	+2.2°	+1.4°	+1.6°	+1.3°	+0.5°	+1.2°	+0.9°	+0.5°	+0.1°	-0.2°	+0.8°	+1.4°

The average daily high, month by month, for the nearest ERA5 grid cell. Bold is a clear change; grey is within the ordinary spread between years. Every destination, ranked.

Getting there

Fly into Colombo (CMB), then drive. The flights under Where to book are to Colombo.

The drive from each airport is the road's, from openrouteservice.org by HeiGIT: typical, not a schedule.

How far Kandy is, and what it costs, depends on where you set off from — the months above do not.

Before you go

Type D and G plugs at 230 V. Drives on the left. The currency is the Sri lankan rupee. No UK Foreign Office advice against travel. Everything for Sri Lanka: cost of living, languages, emergency numbers and health.

Being there

On arrival

Paying — Most hotels, restaurants and shopping centres take cards, but cash still dominates; carry rupees for buses and small shops. Many shops show LANKAQR codes, which LankaPay says tourists can pay with their own phone apps.
UPI, for visitors from India — Works at participating shops, hotels and restaurants showing a LankaQR code: scan it with your UPI app.
Tipping — Not expected but welcome; about 10% for good service, unless the bill already has a service charge.

Getting around Kandy

Apps — Rides: PickMe, Uber. Maps: Google Maps. Messages: WhatsApp. PickMe covers more of the island than Uber, and both book tuk-tuks as well as cars.

The local "Three-Wheelers" ('Tuk-Tuk) are an amazingly cheap (if you know how to haggle! If you can get them for Rs 60-70 per Km you are doing well) and exciting way of seeing the city… More on Wikivoyage

From the Wikivoyage article on Kandy, written by travellers and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Open in Google MapsKandy on the map

Help

Emergency — police 118 or 119 · ambulance 1990 · fire 110. The tourist police are on 011 2421052.
TravelCharika is not an emergency service: we cannot call for help or send anyone. Numbers can change; if one fails, ask someone local or your hotel.

Put together by hand from the sources listed, checked 3 October 2026. Apps, cards and rules change, so check before you rely on one.

Sources (16)

Kandy in pictures

Island of Kandy lake — i

AntanO, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sri Lanka, Panorama of Kandy city on hills — i

Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What Kandy is like

Kandy is in the centre of Sri Lanka 125 km away from Colombo and is generally recognised as the island nation's cultural capital. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. More on Wikivoyage

Worth seeing: Temple of the Tooth (Sri Dalada Maligawa). Dawn to dusk. It houses a tooth relic of the Lord Buddha, and is consequently considered one of Sri Lanka's most holy shrines. More on Wikivoyage
Worth doing: Kandyan dancing — traditional form of dancing, which can be seen at multiple venues including that the "Kandy Cultural Centre" near the Kandy lake. More on Wikivoyage
Getting in: From Colombo - Intercity express trains are hassle-free and scenic, 2½-3 hours, 10 trains per day. There is a great observation saloon (first class) on one of these trains, but this often books out. More on Wikivoyage

From the Wikivoyage article on Kandy, written by travellers and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; the full article has far more. The numbers above are measured; this is experience.

Around Kandy

Also in Sri Lanka

Nearby

Kind of place

Kandy is in Sri Lanka, South Asia. Distances are great-circle, so a short one can still be a long way round.

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