Taxi from Hiriketiya to Negombo

This route is almost nothing but connections. A small bay on the southern coast has only one way in and one way out by road, and that same route leads, without doubling back, to the gateway of the island itself. A journey that bridges two utterly different reasons for being here — a final night of stillness before departure, or an arrival-day arrival that asks almost nothing and sets up everything that follows. Very few travellers make it for the road itself; they make it because the destination is somewhere they are already trying to reach, and this is the way the car covers it.

The journey is not short enough to ignore and not long enough to break the day in half. It lies in that uneasy middle where the figures are truthful but the texture of the drive is entirely misunderstood from a map. Three and a half hours is long enough that a traveller will feel the distance, but not long enough that the road develops the character the long transfers build. It is instead a procession of ordinary decisions, most of them made at Hiriketiya before the wheels turn north, and their sum decides whether the drive is easy or merely functional.

That strange in-between nature is the whole story of this transfer. It is short enough to be routine, long enough to need thought, and distinctive enough that routine does not quite work.

The figures, unadorned and what follows from them

The distance from Hiriketiya to Negombo is 213 kilometres by road. In ordinary conditions, a car covers that ground in about 205 minutes. Call it three and a half hours, door to door from the bay to a property in the hotel row.

• Distance: 213 kilometres, roughly north by way of inland routes and the western coast.
• Time: about 205 minutes, three and a half hours in ordinary traffic.
• The shape: a steep, narrow descent to the bay; an inland segment to the expressway; the expressway itself; and a coast-road finish into a beach town.
• Predictability: high for the middle, awkward at both ends.

That figure includes nothing but the drive. It does not include the walk from accommodation to the top of the lane at Hiriketiya, which can be anywhere from five minutes to half an hour depending on where in the bay the building sits. It does not include any stop, any delay at a junction, or any re-route if the expressway is closed. What it describes is the movement of the vehicle on a standard day, in standard conditions, covering standard ground.

Three and a half hours is also long enough that the route deserves its own planning, rather than being tacked onto the end of a departure morning or the beginning of an arrival day. It is not so long that it demands an overnight stop in the middle. That in-between length is where many of the practical problems of this route live.

The bay and its single door

Hiriketiya exists because the bay exists, and the bay is reachable from the inland road only by a single lane that drops steeply to the sand and is the only means of motor access for anything that arrives by car. That lane has consequences for how this journey begins, and they are worth understanding before the decision to make it gets finalised.

The lane is steep, it is narrow, and it provides almost no room for a vehicle to turn at the bottom. This is not the sort of constraint that makes the journey impossible, but it is a constraint that shapes how the journey starts. Most operators, when asked to come down to collect a passenger, will ask the passenger to come up instead, and the request is not obstinate or difficult. It is practical. Setting a fully laden vehicle down and then back up on a gradient where a misjudgement turns the whole enterprise into a rescue operation is not how anyone who knows the road would choose to do business.

What this means in practice is simple enough: the meeting point is at the top of the lane, not at the accommodation. The bay itself is small enough to walk end to end in a few minutes, which means nothing within it is far from where a car can safely be brought to a stop. The walk is manageable from any of the buildings on the sand, the road is well defined and easy to find, and a traveller whose luggage is minimal has an easy task. A traveller whose luggage is anything else should accept the help if it is offered and not regard it as a failure. The lane is genuinely steep.

What the lane means for arrivals

An arrival at Hiriketiya in a transfer vehicle faces the same geography in reverse, with the additional complication of darkness if the journey ends after sunset, or else a drive that arrived at sunset and the question of whether the walk down is manageable by light alone. The practical answer, as with any arrival at a property with awkward access, is to pre-arrange it. Send the property name and a note about the expected arrival hour, and someone will meet the car at the top of the lane. For any journey ending in darkness, this is not optional planning; it is elementary hygiene.

The road divides itself into three parts with quite different characters

From Hiriketiya northward, the route is divided by its own geography into three distinct segments, and the character of each is worth understanding because the journey feels different in each one.

From the bay to the expressway

The first section is a drive away from the coast and upward, as the car leaves the isolated bay and rejoins the larger road network. This is not an expressway section and it is not intended to be fast; it is the ordinary trunk road that connects the towns along the southern coast, and it carries the traffic that serves them. It is straightforward driving on level enough ground that it does not demand much of a car or a driver, but it does demand attention because the traffic is mixed — buses, lorries, tuk-tuks and private vehicles all sharing the same tarmac without any hierarchy to separate them. A journey on this section is in no sense boring, but it is in every sense ordinary work.

The expressway section and what it delivers

The expressway that runs from Matara northward is the rapid spine of this entire journey. It is graded, it is fast, it is predictable, and it is the section where the three and a half hours actually gets made possible. A car on the expressway can hold a steady speed for longer stretches than anywhere else on this route, and the distance covered in any given time is substantially higher. The road is designed for exactly this kind of work, and it does it well.

The expressway section of this journey is also the part that is most likely to impose delay, simply because it is the busiest. The road is shared with a great deal of traffic, much of it time-sensitive — buses on schedules, delivery lorries on their own time pressures — and a morning or afternoon segment on the expressway is not empty even in ordinary conditions. This is not a drawback specific to this route; it is a feature of the expressway itself. Understand it, plan for it, and it handles itself.

The key characteristic of the expressway for this particular journey is that it allows predictability over longer distances than would be possible on ordinary road. Where the old coast road would demand attention through towns and junctions, the expressway allows a driver to settle into a rhythm that covers ground at a reliable rate. That reliability is worth having, and it is the reason this route is not substantially longer than it appears on the map. A car that could not use the expressway would add a significant increment to the 205 minutes, and the choice of route matters because of exactly that.

The trade-off is that expressway time is less interesting and more monotonous than the variety you get from travelling through actual places. A traveller watching the landscape will find that an expressway journey is largely the space between towns rather than the towns themselves. This is not a disadvantage; it is simply what an expressway delivers. The speed is bought at the cost of the scenery, and for a 205-minute journey between two points that are already determined, that trade is worth making.

The coast road finish

Where the expressway ends, the coast road takes over and carries the journey north into Negombo itself. This is not an expressway section and it is not intended to be. It is the ordinary road that runs along the beach and through the town, and it is the section where the journey descends from pure speed into the texture of the actual place. It is slower, but it is not slow in any absolute sense; it is simply that the road runs through populated areas and the rhythm of the journey changes to match that.

Why someone leaves Hiriketiya this way

The route exists because it serves a particular need: getting from one end of the island to the other without backtracking, in a journey that does not demand an overnight stop. The people who make it are almost always finishing one thing and beginning another, not stopping in the middle.

For a traveller whose holiday has been based in the south, this is the road home or the road onward. The bay is not a base for further exploration inland; it is a destination in itself, and departure means either returning to where you came from or moving somewhere else entirely. The expressway makes a straight path to the north, and a journey that was going to take time and effort and tolls gets made as efficient as the geography allows.

For someone arriving at the airport or otherwise reaching the island at Colombo or Katunayake, the journey works in reverse. It is not a route that anyone takes as an arrival transfer if they are heading to the south; almost nobody walks out of an aircraft and climbs into a car for three and a half hours to reach the place they should have arrived at in the first place. The direction is predetermined and the route is chosen because it connects two things that you are already trying to connect.

The southern coast as a final destination, not a stopover

Hiriketiya works as a final night because it is genuinely remote. There is no road from the bay to anywhere else interesting except back the way you came. This makes it a terminus rather than a waypoint, and a terminus is exactly what a final night needs to be. A place you cannot drift further into is a place where you can actually rest before departure.

That isolation is also the reason the journey north is not optional or negotiable. A car that brought you to the bay will leave you at the top of the lane. Getting anywhere from there requires deciding what the next destination is, and almost nobody decides on Hiriketiya itself. They decide on an airport connection, or a onward city, or a different beach, and the car covers the distance to make that decision real.

The three and a half hours is therefore not a journey of choice but a journey of necessity, and it is simplified by that fact. There is no ambiguity about the direction or the purpose. The bay is finished and the next chapter is beginning.

Negombo as a hub: why the coast road matters

Negombo sits at a conjunction of multiple useful directions, and that geometry is the entire reason this particular beach town functions as an island node rather than as a destination in itself. It is close enough to the airport that the journey is measured in minutes rather than hours, which makes it a viable stopover point for connections or for an overnight before departure. It is far enough north that routes continuing inland stop treating the southern coast as relevant and start treating the central regions as home. It is oriented along a beach road where the hotels are strung in a line, which means that different properties along that line have quite different travel times to the airport.

For a journey from the south coast to this hub, the hotel choice matters more than it usually does, because the northern end of the town's beach road is substantially more distant from the airport than the southern end, even though both carry addresses that say Negombo. This is not a distance that matters if the next leg of the journey is inland; it becomes consequential only when the next leg is to the airport itself.

The reason Negombo functions as a hub is not that it is the most beautiful beach town or the most interesting place on the coast. It is that it is the most connected place at the northern end of the west coast, and connection is what matters for a journey like this one. A traveller arriving from the south and needing to go somewhere else can go north to Colombo and the highlands, east to the ancient sites and the cultural triangle, or to the airport for departure. None of those onward journeys are short, but all of them are easier from Negombo than they would be from a more remote location. That utility is why the town exists as a hub rather than as a destination, and why a journey from the south coast terminates there rather than continuing somewhere else entirely.

The timing question: arrival in daylight or darkness

A journey of three and a half hours does not arrive at a specific time because the start time is almost never constrained. A car can leave Hiriketiya whenever the traveller has finished packing and walking to the top of the lane, and the arrival in Negombo happens 205 minutes later, plus or minus whatever margin the road has decided to insert.

What matters is not the absolute timing but the relationship between the journey time and the available daylight. A car that leaves at dawn finishes at mid-morning. A car that leaves at midday finishes in the afternoon. A car that leaves at sunset finishes after dark, with all the complications that entails for finding a property, locating a reception desk, and negotiating the roads of an unfamiliar town in darkness.

For most travellers using this route from Hiriketiya, the timing question has already been settled by whatever happened before the journey began. A last night in the bay that concludes with an early departure means arriving in Negombo in plenty of daylight. A last night that drifts into a late morning means arriving somewhere in the afternoon shadow. Trying to engineer a specific daylight arrival is almost always futile; accepting whatever daylight the schedule provides is easier and more useful.

The expressway and what disrupts it

The expressway is the most reliable part of this journey, which makes it the part most worth understanding when it stops being reliable. The road is closed occasionally for maintenance, rarely for accident, and the closure is broadcast in advance far more often than it arrives as a surprise.

When the expressway is closed, the fallback is the old road parallel to it, which threads through the towns that the expressway was built to bypass. That road is not terrible but it is substantially slower, and it absorbs all the traffic that has nowhere else to go. A journey that was supposed to take 205 minutes can spend an extra 45 minutes in the queue, or it can be re-routed entirely depending on what the blockage is and where.

Knowing whether the expressway is open is therefore worth verifying before departure, not discovering at the approach. A local driver knows; a traveller booking from overseas does not. The question belongs on the booking, asked cleanly and answered in writing that the driver will have before the wheels start turning.

The road in ordinary conditions: what the journey actually feels like

The expressway section dominates the character of this drive, simply by covering the distance and setting the pace. For the time spent on the expressway, the journey is smooth, quick and uneventful. There is nothing to see that would not be visible from the inside of a car in any country, and there is nothing demanding or spectacular about the scenery. That is not a shortcoming specific to this route; it is the nature of the expressway itself.

The sections before and after the expressway are slower and more textured. The road passes through places where people live and work, and that gives the drive a different character than pure speed. It is not slow in any absolute sense, but it is slower than the expressway and the rhythm of the journey changes. A traveller who has spent the previous night in a quiet bay and then spent the next few hours in a fast car is experiencing not one journey but parts of several, and the experience of them individually is not the same as the blurred sum.

For a driver, the route is mechanically routine. There are no difficult sections, no places where the road makes sudden demands, and no parts where a concentration lapse becomes a serious problem. That is the kind of transfer where attention can drift, and it is also the kind of transfer where attention drifting is manageable because the road is not exacting.

The comfort of the car matters more on this journey than the scenery does. A vehicle with good air conditioning, smooth suspension and seats that do not demand to be shifted every half hour will deliver a better experience than a vehicle that forces the traveller to stay engaged with the discomfort of the journey. This is not a rough road, so a rough car is not compensated for by anything. The reverse is true: a good car makes a mediocre route feel generous, and the difference between a traveller who emerges refreshed and one who emerges stiff and irritated often comes down to how well the vehicle is sprung and how competently it is driven.

The return journey: Negombo to Hiriketiya

The same road reversed is still 213 kilometres and still approximately 205 minutes, and a car travelling back down from Negombo uses the same three segments in reverse order. The characteristics of the road do not change merely because the direction has reversed, but the context changes substantially.

A journey from Negombo south to Hiriketiya is almost always a journey at the beginning of something, not at the end. A traveller starting at a beach town and heading to the bay is usually either beginning a holiday or else making a deliberate choice to spend time in that particular place. The timing is often an arrival in the afternoon or early evening, which means the final descent into the bay happens in good light.

The only timing consideration specific to the reverse journey is arrival after sunset. The lane down to Hiriketiya is steep, it is narrow, and it is substantially less manageable after dark than before. For any journey arriving after the light has gone, pre-arranging a meeting at the top of the lane is not a courtesy; it is essential. Someone at the property should be briefed on the expected arrival and should be present at the top to guide the last walk down.

Weather and seasons: what changes and what does not

The road itself is stable across seasons. The expressway does not close for weather, the coast roads are not subject to landslip or flooding in any ordinary sense, and the route is not one where seasonal changes transform the character of the drive.

What does change is the state of the person in the car. The monsoon seasons bring rain, and rain on the expressway makes for slightly slower driving but not for dangerous driving or the kind of journey that needs to be reconsidered. The dry season brings heat, and heat inside a moving, air-conditioned car is a non-event. The places the car goes are indifferent to the season. The way the human inside the car experiences the journey changes, but the journey itself does not.

The only genuinely seasonal consideration is that traffic patterns change. The period around holidays sees the roads busier, particularly the sections near Negombo that are close to the airport. A journey in early January or late July will see noticeably more traffic than a journey in a quiet week. The time difference is not enormous, but it is real and worth accounting for if the schedule is tight.

Luggage and the bay: the practical limit of the steep lane

The steep lane to Hiriketiya is not difficult to navigate with luggage if the luggage is light, and it becomes increasingly awkward as the luggage increases. A single soft bag is no problem. A suitcase that weighs as much as the person pulling it becomes tedious. Multiple large cases become genuinely difficult, and the offer of help, if it comes, is a genuinely useful offer.

The consequences are not disaster but they are real. A traveller with heavy luggage arriving at the top of the lane faces either the prospect of hauling it down themselves or the prospect of accepting help from whatever quarter is available. Neither is an emergency, but both can turn a simple arrival into something more negotiated and effortful than it needs to be. The prudent approach is to ask the property for assistance or for a porter service if it exists, rather than making it a surprise at the moment of arrival.

For a journey ending at Hiriketiya after a transfer from Negombo, the luggage situation is part of what gets communicated beforehand. The property needs to know roughly how much luggage is arriving and in what form, partly so someone can meet it appropriately and partly so the car knows what it is loading into and whether the load is stable on the steep descent. This is not a difficult negotiation; it is just one that is worth having before the car arrives rather than on the pavement.

The same applies to a journey departing from Hiriketiya. A driver expecting to take on three large suitcases will come prepared and may offer to help move them to the top of the lane. A driver expecting a single backpack will be caught off guard if three cases appear. A simple message to the driver or the booking about what luggage is involved takes away any ambiguity and means the arrival can happen smoothly without last-minute adjustments.

Booking the journey: what to say and what to arrange

Three different booking products can cover this journey, and understanding which one is appropriate for what you are trying to do saves a great deal of confusion and re-arranging.

A simple one-way transfer from Hiriketiya to Negombo, with no stops and nothing asked of the driver except delivery to a specified property, is covered by a standard taxi booking. This is the right choice if the destination is known, the arrival is straightforward, and nothing else is needed from the vehicle once the journey is complete.

A day hire, which is the same car and driver available for the whole day, is the appropriate booking if the journey is part of a longer stay where multiple movements are planned. On this route a day hire is rarely necessary because 205 minutes of driving does not require a full day of car availability, but if the schedule involves a stop partway or a second movement the same afternoon, a day hire is simpler than trying to book two separate journeys.

A multi-day booking is the right choice if the journey to Negombo is the beginning of onward movement to another destination. Same car, same driver, luggage staying in place, and nobody needing to find new transport in a town they have just arrived in.

Whichever product is chosen, several things belong on the booking and are worth more than they look:

• The property name and location at Hiriketiya. The bay is small but it is not a single place, and different buildings occupy different points on the sand. A location that feels obvious to someone on the ground is not obvious to someone trying to find it from a map.
• The meeting point, or confirmation that it should be at the top of the lane. The assumption should be that the car meets at the top, but confirming it takes the guesswork out and ensures someone is not waiting at the wrong place.
• The destination address in Negombo, with the hotel name and the road. The town spreads along the coast and the distance from the airport changes substantially depending on which property is the target. Specificity matters.
• The walk capability. A property that charges for help with luggage can be briefed on what is arriving and what kind of assistance is appropriate. This is not about cost; it is about the driver knowing what equipment and help is expected.
• Any time constraints. If the departure time is fixed by a flight or a booked activity, stating it means the driver has it explicitly rather than working from an assumption.

Meeting the driver at Hiriketiya is handled the same way as any other meeting point. A board is held, a name is called, and the transfer begins. The walk to the car is a few minutes from any point on the bay, and that walk is the only part of the journey not covered by the fare calculation.

Onward from Negombo: almost nobody stops here as a destination

Negombo is not a final destination for most travellers who arrive there from Hiriketiya. It is a hub, a junction, and a point of connection, and the road that delivered you there opens onto several others.

• To the airport — 7 kilometres, about 20 minutes. The most common next move for someone arriving from the south and heading home or to a connection. The time is genuinely short and the road is ordinary trunk road through local area.
• To Colombo — 37 kilometres, about 60 minutes. The capital is the next major town and the centre of business and culture on the island. A straightforward drive north along the coast.
• To Kandy — 125 kilometres, about 195 minutes. The second city and the gateway to the hill country. A day journey inland that marks the start of a different region.
• To Bentota — 117 kilometres, about 110 minutes. For a traveller heading back south down the coast, Bentota is a more developed beach resort than the town you just left. The road is the same coast road in reverse, mostly.
• To Galle — 165 kilometres, about 145 minutes. The historic fort town on the southern coast, and a hub in its own right. Substantially further down the coast than where you started.
• To Hikkaduwa — 155 kilometres, about 130 minutes. A substantial beach resort further south, popular with surfers and divers. The journey is mostly coast road.
• To Mirissa — 202 kilometres, about 185 minutes. A working fishing village and beach town towards the bottom of the west coast, known for whale-watching. The journey covers most of the southern coast road.
• To Sigiriya — 158 kilometres, about 220 minutes. The great rock fortress in the centre of the island, and the focal point for many inland trips. The road runs inland and upward.
• To Dambulla — 150 kilometres, about 200 minutes. The cave temples and the cluster of ancient sites in the centre. Slightly closer than Sigiriya and in the same region.
• To Ella — 232 kilometres, about 370 minutes. The hill-country village and trekking base. A full day's drive into the tea districts.
• To Nuwara Eliya — 172 kilometres, about 305 minutes. The central highlands town at elevation, and the gateway to the tea country. Cooler and substantially more inland than where you have come from.
• To Anuradhapura — 175 kilometres, about 215 minutes. The ancient city in the cultural triangle to the north. A journey of similar length to the one you have just made, but in a different direction.
• To Trincomalee — 250 kilometres, about 305 minutes. The east coast and its beaches and historical sites. A substantially longer journey that traces a path around the island.

The route that brings you from Hiriketiya to Negombo is a bridge from one use of the island to another, and in most cases it is not the beginning of the story. It is the middle section, where the geography is crossed and the next chapter is prepared.

The journey as it actually happens: the texture of 205 minutes

A car that leaves Hiriketiya at a specific hour and arrives in Negombo 205 minutes later has passed through three quite different roads, and the experience of that passage is not uniform. The first section is the escape from the bay; the middle is the speed of the expressway; the end is the return to ordinary road and the descent into a town. Each has its own character and its own demands on the traveller.

The first section is brief and energetic. The road is climbing away from the coast and there is purpose to it. A traveller who has woken in the bay and is now leaving it experiences that transition clearly.

The expressway section dominates the time and is the least demanding on concentration. A traveller can sleep, read, or work without much difficulty because the road is regular and the car moves smoothly. This is where many people spend the mental time of the journey, and it passes quickly because there is nothing in it to hold attention.

The final section is the arrival section, and it has a different rhythm. The road is no longer pure speed but enters the texture of places, and the traveller begins to notice details again. This is where the arrival becomes real rather than abstract, and the gear shifts from the journey to what comes next.

Seasonal planning and what actually matters

A journey between the south and north coasts passes through different climate zones as it travels, and that passage creates different experiences at different times of year. The south coast has its monsoons, the expressway section is sheltered enough that weather changes gradually, and the north coast has its own patterns.

For a single journey of three and a half hours, none of this matters as much as it sounds. The car is air-conditioned or not, the road is passable or not, and the traveller either experiences the weather or does not, but the journey is too brief to be cancelled or fundamentally changed by seasonal patterns.

What does change is the experience of the arrival. Arriving at Negombo in the middle of the high season means arriving to a full town, with hotels busy and the sense of a place doing business. Arriving in the low season means arriving to a quieter place where your arrival may be more relaxed but also more peripheral. Neither is better; they are just different experiences of the same arrival.

The road from the perspective of someone who knows it

A driver who makes this journey regularly has learned to read the route as a series of predictable sections with their own rhythms and problems. The initial escape from Hiriketiya is a negotiation with the lane rather than a difficulty with the road; the expressway section is known territory where the same patterns repeat; the final coast road entry is learned the same way any local learns their own town.

What a local driver knows that a map cannot teach is which sections are predictably slow and which sections are predictably quick, and which sections change behaviour depending on the time of day or the day of the week. The expressway might be crawling at 8 a.m. on a weekday and move freely at 2 p.m. The coast road into Negombo might be locked in traffic near the airport approach at certain times or completely clear at others.

For a traveller booking the journey, having a driver with this knowledge is not a luxury but a practical asset that makes the difference between an arrival that lands when it was meant to and an arrival that discovers some new constraint about the route.

The decision to make this journey at all

Not every traveller needs to make this particular transfer, and it is worth being honest about that before booking it. The journey exists because it connects two points that need connecting, but if those two points are not where you actually are and where you actually need to go, the route is solving a problem you do not have.

The journey makes sense if the previous night was spent at Hiriketiya and the next morning or afternoon needs to be elsewhere. It makes sense if the destination is genuinely Negombo and not some other point that Negombo merely connects to. It makes sense if the time frame allows for the journey without forcing other arrangements.

It does not make sense if Hiriketiya was a detour from where you arrived and Negombo is not actually your destination but merely a junction on the way to somewhere else. A traveller in that situation has almost certainly made an inefficient choice about where to spend the previous night, and the cost of that choice is paid in this morning's drive.

Working out which case applies to your own journey is worth doing before booking, not after. A wrong routing is not the driver's fault and not the road's fault; it is a routing problem, and the road is merely the thing that makes the problem visible.

Negombo as arrival point and hub combined

For a traveller arriving in Negombo from Hiriketiya, the town is either a destination or a waypoint, and the distinction is important because it decides what happens next and what you should be booking.

If Negombo is the destination, the journey ends and whatever comes next is either a rest day or local movement. The town is close enough to the airport that an early-morning departure the next day is viable, but not so close that an airport arrival becomes a simple quick transfer.

If Negombo is a waypoint to the airport, the journey changes character. The arrival should be timed to connect with a flight, the departure should be from the property late enough not to waste the evening but early enough to catch the flight, and the booking should reflect this by being a multi-destination booking rather than a simple transfer.

If Negombo is a waypoint to somewhere else — Colombo, the hill country, the ancient sites — the same principle applies. The booking should say so, because it changes what vehicle is appropriate and how long it will be held.

Why this route exists and who makes it

This is not a route that serves a natural journey structure the way most transfers do. The natural journey up the coast from the south would stop in the western beach towns one by one. The natural journey to the airport would go there directly rather than via a small bay. The natural journey to the highlands would leave from a proper start point rather than a remote village.

This route exists because someone has chosen to spend a night in Hiriketiya, that night has ended, and now a car needs to go somewhere. The route happens to exist because the bay is connected to the road network, and the road network runs north past Negombo, which serves as a hub for everything else.

The fact that the route exists does not make it wrong; it merely makes it a route that is useful for a specific situation rather than a route that is anyone's first choice for the destination alone. A traveller making this journey is making it because the two points suit the plan, not because the road between them is remarkable or scenic or special. That is perfectly fine. Most transfers are made for exactly that reason, and this one is no exception.