The actual vehicles
Not stock photography. These are the cars that turn up, photographed where they live. Four vehicles, three drivers, every plate printed below. The plate on the page is the plate at arrivals — if a different vehicle ever turns up, you have grounds to refuse it.
Walk round it yourself
Twenty-seven seconds, filmed on a phone, no edit. This is the van you get — the seats, the aisle, the headroom and the state of it on an ordinary working day.
No soundtrack, no drone shot, no agency. If a vehicle is worth putting a guest in for nine hours, it should survive being filmed without one.
Toyota HiAce GDH, high roof · 2026
- 7–8 passengers. The newest vehicle in the fleet and the one that goes out on the long premium tours.
- High roof, so you stand to get in rather than folding through a door.
- Diesel, automatic, air conditioned throughout, tinted glass.
- Luggage behind the last row without stacking cases on laps.
Toyota HiAce GDH · 2025
- 6–7 passengers. A year older than the 2026 and otherwise the same vehicle.
- Diesel, automatic, fully air conditioned.
- Note the plate: NF 3436 and NG 3436 are one letter apart. They are two different vans.
Toyota HiAce KDH, high roof · 2017
- 7–8 passengers, and the biggest luggage capacity in the fleet.
- The older shape, and the one that has done the most island-wide miles. Diesel, automatic, air conditioned.
- Individual seats with a belt on every one, a proper aisle and a flat floor — which is what matters on a nine-hour day with camera gear.
Toyota Corolla Axio · 2017
- 2–3 passengers, 2–3 large bags. Comfortable for two, workable for three, tight for four with luggage.
- Petrol hybrid, automatic, air conditioned, tinted glass. The fleet sheet lists it as petrol; the badge on the wing says hybrid, and both are true.
- Quieter than a van on the expressway and far easier through Kandy and Galle Fort traffic. The hybrid drivetrain also makes it much the cheapest vehicle here to run over a 1,400 km loop, which is why this tier is priced lower.
Four vehicles. Three drivers. That is the whole company.
Savindu, Indika and Suresh. Every vehicle has a named driver rather than whoever is free that morning, and because there are four vehicles and three of them, there is always a spare — a breakdown reschedules a service, not your holiday.
It also means they can run three jobs at once and no more. If we tell you a date is gone, it is actually gone. If we ever put you with anyone beyond these three, it will be a driver we can name and a vehicle we have inspected \u2014 never a broker\u2019s pool.
Why a decent van is rare here, and what this one cost
Sri Lanka taxes imported vehicles harder than almost anywhere on earth. The duties stack on top of one another rather than side by side: customs duty is charged on the shipped value, then the port levy is charged on that total, then excise is charged on that, and VAT is charged on all of it. A worked example on a 1,500–2,000cc car puts the effective rate at about 330% of the imported value. Industry reporting puts the range at 250% to over 300%.
Which produces numbers like these. The same van, bought in Britain and bought here:
| Toyota HiAce | United Kingdom | Sri Lanka |
|---|---|---|
| Used, typical asking price | €8,100 (median) | €48,700 (2017) |
| Used, top of the market | €20,500 | €67,100 (2015 Super GL) |
| New, 14-seater | — | €75,400 |
A used HiAce in Britain sits around eight thousand euros. The same van here is forty-eight to seventy-five thousand — six to nine times the money. A tourist van in Sri Lanka costs what a house costs.
That is the honest reason so many operators run something tired, with a bench seat and an air conditioner that gave up years ago. The good vans are genuinely, painfully expensive, and most of what you pay a cheap operator was never going into the vehicle.
And here they do not depreciate
This is the part that surprises visitors. Because supply is choked by tax, a vehicle in Sri Lanka holds its value and often gains it. These are live listings, not history:
| Age | Model year | Asking price today |
|---|---|---|
| 9 years old | 2017 | Rs 18,500,000 ≈ €48,700 |
| 20 years old | 2006 | Rs 17,800,000 ≈ €46,800 |
| 29 years old | 1997 | Rs 9,300,000 ≈ €24,500 |
| 38 years old | 1988 | Rs 3,800,000 ≈ €10,000 |
A 1997 van, twenty-nine years old, still asking twenty-four thousand euros. In Britain or Japan that vehicle is worth its scrap weight. When imports were banned outright between 2020 and 2025, a ten-year-old Prius sold for twice what it had been worth before the ban.
So a van here is not a tool that wears out. It is a capital asset — often the largest thing its owner will ever buy, and one that can be sold in ten years for close to what it cost. That changes how it gets treated.
Sri Lankan prices are live listings on the island’s main classifieds, read on 31 August 2026. UK prices are from a valuation of 24 used HiAce listings the same month. Converted at roughly 380 rupees and 0.86 pounds to the euro. Tax structure per published duty guides and Sri Lankan press reporting; rates change with each budget.
Which is why Indika takes the bus
The van is cleaned after every single trip, not once a week. Anything that needs attention gets dealt with when it appears rather than when it fails. And it is never used for anything but work — for his own journeys, Indika takes the bus.
We did not ask him to do that. It is what someone does with an asset worth more than his house, and it is the reason a nine-year-old van can still be worth putting a family in for nine hours a day.