Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Patrick is brilliant. He listens to what I am looking for and goes above and beyond in terms of customer service.
We got very good advice. Our stay was perfect.
Fabulous attention to detail. Consistently great service
Philippa was great. She made sure all our complicated bookings worked.
Everything worked perfectly. Fab hotels. Really great transfer vehicles and staff. Will definitely include DialAFlight as a provider of holidays.
An amazing holiday at a great price and we felt we were in good hands throughout the whole process
First class service from start to finish. Great help and advice in identifying holiday locations and good support throughout
Jessie is of course a star. She’s simply amazing.
Thanks to Harvey as ever
Went very well and excellent booking process
Finn, as always, was so helpful and dedicated throughout
All went smoothly and we felt in safe hands
We had a very enjoyable trip. All went smoothly - thank you to Michelle for all your help.
Seamless. Thanks
Great service from Dexter. Would highly recommend.
Amelia was incredible, we had to change our return trip at short notice and she could not have been more helpful. Also, the resort team were amazing, the service beyond excellent. We had a very good trip.
Stacey is the best travel agent! We have used her for 10 years. She understands what myself and family require.
Great service as usual, thank you!
This was our 2nd visit to the Anantara Dighu - but since the hotel has been taken over by another hotel group things are no longer as good as they were. The HB option only entitled us to dine at 2 a la carte restaurants so for a 10 day stay this is limiting. This resulted in us using the other restaurants and only a $60 allowance was entitled per adult which didn't even buy you a main course. It is a shame as the quality was not what it used to be.
Stan always gives us a very professional service and that is why we keep coming back
The service Greg provided was first class from start to finish as always - it’s a pleasure to book with you..
Thank you for booking my holiday. I really enjoyed my stay in Mauritius
All airlines were great and our resort in Maldives was excellent. Thoroughly recommend our Oblu Xperience for both families and couples. All inclusive was really good and a great variety of cuisines. Thank you Brody for organising our trip.
Outstanding from start to finish, with faultless electronic and human communications throughout. Dexter Tahsin is a legend!
Thank you for suggesting we went all inclusive. It was the correct choice. Brilliant holiday.
Everything worked out very well. Many thanks to Nicky Degun for all her amazing help in making this a holiday to remember.
Liam Rush is simply outstanding! I will continue to book future flights with him as he's always friendly, personable and efficient. A great advocate for the company .
Very responsive and extremely helpful. Thank you
We booked a small group tour because we wanted company but it turned out to be just us.
Excellent customer service especially from Finley Bee who kept us updated throughout the process.we have already recommended DialAFlight to friends and family.
The road to Kitulgala winds from the Indian Ocean, past buffalo standing in paddy fields, to the Sinharaja rainforest where parakeets chatter at monkeys swinging through jungle palms.
It's a road I have wanted to travel all my life. It's in Kitulgala where the jade green Kelani River cascades over granite boulders on its journey from the Highlands of Sri Lanka to the ocean. And it's where one of the most memorable landscapes in film history was shot.
The Bridge On The River Kwai is the World War II Oscar-winner about an Army colonel, played by Alec Guinness, obsessed with proving British superiority over his Japanese captors by showing that his engineers could build a better bridge than theirs.
I was still in short trousers when I first saw the film in a suburban cinema. It held me spellbound - not the story but the voluptuous backdrop.
The jungle of wild palm, banana and bamboo, flecked with bougainvillaea - where crested serpent eagles swoop on fish in the river - has more than a supporting role in the drama.
Today, TV travel programmes have made the most remote landscapes accessible, but in those days only the cinema could conjure up such sights.
Although the 1957 film was set on the Death Railway of Burma, where British PoWs built a real bridge over the real River Kwai in Thailand, it was actually filmed in Sri Lanka (still called Ceylon when the movie, directed by David Lean, was shot).
Many decades later, I discovered The Bridge On The River Kwai was shot in Kitulgala, a village with a very remote setting but in fact not far from the capital Columbo.
My aim was to reach the sandbank in the river where the spectacular climax to the picture unfolds. I wanted to stand on the spot where Guinness's character, Colonel Nicholson, dizzy at discovering the bridge is wired with dynamite and filled with remorse, falls on top of the detonator blowing it up, sending a train of Japanese soldiers into the riverbed below.
The jungle has reclaimed the rainforest where Columbia Pictures spent millions to build and destroy the bridge. Today this location is once again ruled by leopards.
The villagers still celebrate their place in film history, welcoming British visitors. A hand-painted sign saying Bridge Road Of Kwai River directs them to the home of Chandralatha Jayawardena, a child actor in the film, who acts as a guide recounting entertaining stories about the production.
At the colonial-style Kitulgala Rest House, informal photos of the stars, Jack Hawkins and William Holden, in swimming trunks, plaster the walls.
Friendly villagers invited me into their homes to admire debris from the bridge, relics displayed like works of art.
Despite heavy logging in other parts of Sri Lanka, Kitulgala has been saved from development and is now protected.
An excellent base for exploring Sri Lanka are the luxury Anantara hotels in the south at Tangalle and Kalutara, both within a comfortable drive of Kitulgala.
Peace Haven Tangalle is set in a former coconut plantation which opens onto a glorious beach, an hour’s drive from the film location, passing tea plantations and temples on the way. There are two swimming pools, and enough wildlife to delight David Attenborough.
The week I arrived guests shepherded 140 baby hawksbill turtles to the sea.
Later I took the road north to Anantara Kalutara passing Galle where Portuguese invaders built a sea fort in 1588.
Anantara Kalutara is designed in the breezy modern style, open sided, allowing a fusion of indoors and outdoors. It sits on a narrow peninsula jutting into the ocean on one side, a lagoon on the other.
It may seem late to capitalise on The Bridge On The River Kwai but the government has a plan to attract major studios to shoot new films against the country’s extravagant beauty. That really would put Sri Lanka back in the picture.
First published in the Daily Mail - February 2019
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