Blogs from Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 3

Samstag, den 24. November bin ich endlich in Sri Lanka angekommen. Ich hatte mich schon sehr lange darauf gefreut hier her zu kommen und ich würde auch nicht von diesem wundervollen Land enttäuscht werden! Mein Flug hatte 3 Stunden Verspätung, aber glücklicherweise hatte ich gute Gesellschaft : ich hatte am Flughafen Eva aus Deutschland kennengelernt und sie war super nett. Da das Flugzeug zum Glück nicht voll besetzt war konnten wir sogar Plätze tauschen und nebeneinander sitzen und so war dann auch die Verspätung und der lange Flug nicht so schlimm. :-) Als ich in meinem Hostel ankam (leider hatten Eva und ihre Schwester - die bereits in Colombo war - ein anderes Hostel gebucht das ziemlich weit von meinem weg war und keiner von uns konnte das Hostel mehr kostenlos annulieren), das Tuk Tuk Hostel, ... read more

We saw Elephants today. We saw elephants roaming around in a wild environment. We also saw them not in the national park. I’m getting way ahead of myself here we will start at the beginning. Meg was met by a snake when she went to the toilet this morning. We THINK it was a common Krait (Dad please don’t google what a common krait is you will just freak yourself out). It backed out of the room immediately by Meg’s account. I know she wasn’t bitten because she didn’t have extreme paralysis and nearly die. So we’re all good. We hadn’t received a message from our driver as to when he would be here but he popped up at about 10am. He took us to a village safari where we would experience village life. This entailed ... read more

We were picked up early in the morning by our driver, who then began to take us on the 2 hour trek towards Habarana, where we would spend the next 2 nights in a tree-house just outside the town in the jungle. Exciting right? On the way our driver (who seemed to want to make amends for the erratic driving the day before), took us to Dambulla’s Cave temple. Not advised for elderly or unfit, as we found out when one middle aged overweight woman had a bit of a tirade at her husband for scaling the cliffs at such pace. It’s a very steep climb. Once again Monkeys surround the cliff face. You must walk the temple barefoot so after depositing our shoes, and discovering that the rock face at 11.00am is really, REALLY fucking ... read more

Up and out by 9am, we headed for the first venue on our hiking spectacular, Ella Rock. Extensive research of travel blogs online told us that the way to get there involved starting at the train station in Ella, which meant getting breakfast at the shops in town, which was effectively a roti with honey inside. From the trains station we walked left off the platform and down the tracks itself. We were met by signs saying this was illegal, but there were many other people doing the exact same thing and nothing happening about it, so we continued. The view to our left spanned out over the valleys overlooking the top of the trees. After about half an hours walk we came to another train station and just after we took a sharp left turn ... read more

Last day at work and we drove back to the centre. Although it was Saturday there were some children in the tiny little school Anton had pointed out the day before. We parked up and I asked him to walk back down with me and ask the teacher if I could say hello. In fact, the teacher spoke very good English and the students understood me perfectly. It was the poorest school I’ve ever been in, one room, basic wooden benches and tables. The teacher, who’s been there 4 years, was very happy for me to go in and ask a few questions. The students were 16 and studying history, of the British period in Sri Lanka. Very sorry about that, I said, and they all laughed. They were giggly and excited I’d gone in and ... read more