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Published: November 27th 2012
Galle Test match ground
This is from the day before the match when we went in to watch the players net and bumped into Kumar SangakkaraI've always really enjoyed my cricket, attending tests, one-dayers and T20s whenever I got the opportunity. I've also always wanted to visit Sri Lanka, having heard great things about it from everyone that's been there. Therefore when I found out that England were touring Sri Lanka in March 2012, it sounded like the perfect combination!! A willing companion would be a bonus, and Chris Alger was keen too, as were a couple of the RCC team Brian and Mark, who came out for the first week to watch the cricket in Galle.
Chris and I had a three week trip, of which week 1 would be watching the cricket and the next 2 weeks travelling through this amazing island. For the first time that I'd seen, the test match was scheduled to run from a Monday to a Friday, but it became clear when we arrived and 95% of the crowd were English that this was a shrewd move by the otherwise generally inept Sri Lankan cricket board to ensure that English fans could get out here for a full test match and only have to take a week off work!!
Galle is one of the most picturesque grounds
in the world. With the Galle fort in the background and the sea a stone's throw away, its a great place to watch a test match. Unfortunately, it seemed that Sri Lanka also enjoyed playing there as we spent most of the first two days watching Mahela Jayawardene compile a majestic 180 odd, before England crumbled to concede a massive first innings lead. The Sri Lankans were well restricted in their second innings to leave England needing 339 to win – a massive ask. At 233-4 it looked like maybe, just maybe this could be a famous victory. But then a complete subsidence of any sort of competent strokeplay meant that England were bundled out for 264 and a loss by 75 runs!! That final collapse was 6 wickets for 31 runs in 13 overs. Painful to watch!!
This was the first time I had ever watched a full test match from start to finish, and although the result wasn't what I wanted, the experience was a huge amount of fun and definitely something I'd like to do again! South Africa and possibly Bangladesh are on the list (although listening to the stories from other members of the Barmy
Post sunrise view from Sri Pada (Adam's Peak)
Hopefully in the left hand half of the photo you can make out the slightly eerie pyramid shadow that is cast by the mountain Army every England fan needs to do an ashes trip at some point in their lives – the banter is meant to be unreal!!)
Aside from the cricket, my abiding memories will be the amazing seafood, the friendliness of the people and the great value. Dinner was always a highlight each day – especially on the coast where the seafood was so plentiful and so good.
There are a number of luxury hotels in Galle and at USD 200 a night their price tags were a little out of our range (we were staying in a wonderful little guest house called the Fort Fifty inn for 3,000 RPS (less than £15 per night!)). However, we found their restaurants were a lot more affordable. So it was we found the fort printers
http://www.thefortprinters.com/, which had an amazing, intimate restaurant next to a small swimming pool!! Very romantic for Chris and I to dine together!! I had never tried lobster before and given the great price I decided to splurge on this and it was superb!! In fact the restaurant was so good that we came back a second time with Brian and Mark!
At the other end of
"Typical" Sri Lanka sunset...
...or not really as the sunset mode on my camera turns anything into a glowing red/yellow/orange sunset! the culinary scale we hit the beaches of Unawatuna with friends Paul and Ren (who we'd met on the flight over and shared a cab with from the airport to Galle). Here we were eating open air at a beach restaurant and I decided to order chilli crab, thinking it would be an interesting change. Unfortunately what I got presented with was a giant Sri Lanka armoured grab coated in chilli sauce and a very inferior looking set of nutcrackers! The toughness of the crab, combined with the rubbish nutcrackers and the slippery chilli sauce meant that I was finding it impossible to get into the crab and eat any of my meal – much to the hilarity of my friends around the table. It was so tough to to make any progress, and my attempts were turning into an absolute farce! I was wearing a white t-shirt that ended up getting covered in so much chilli sauce that I decided to take it off to avoid any more stains!! My co-ordination wasn't helped by the fact we were eating late in the evening so it was dark, and I'd already had a few beers and at that point we
Sigiriya
Chris and I before we began to climb up had a lovely bottle of dark rum on the go between the four of us!! It ended up with a bare chested, slightly pissed Mark unsuccessfully attacking this crab and frequently having to head down to the sea to wash the chilli sauce off my chest arms and fingers!! Not one of the most successful meals I've ever had, but certainly one of the most memorable and the funniest (especially for the other 3 guys around the table!!).
Moving on from Galle we spent a couple of amazing days in Mirissa, at the Secret Guesthouse that had been recommended by our friend Jessica (and yes we did have trouble finding it!).
http://thesecret.yolasite.com/.
Mirissa is a very chilled out beach resort where there is nothing much to do except wander and relax on the beach, eat amazing seafood for very little outlay and potentially surf (at a very low standard judging by the girls that we got chatting to who were learning!!). This is where I got introduced to the Sri Lankan jumbo prawn which is an incredible thing. Bigger and tastier than anything I had seen before, it became the staple dinner wherever it was available. The prawns
Tea plantations
Hopefully some idea of the steepness comes across were made even more exceptional in Mirissa as when night fell the various little beach restaurants brought out their catch from that morning and laid it out, so you got to pick your exact prawn and negotiate its price!!
The second test match was starting in Colombo, and although we didn't have any tickets/accommodation planned we decided that we should get ourselves up there and see another day of cricket. Unsurprisingly, on the eve of a hugely popular test match that only comes around once every 4/5 years rooms were pretty hard to come by. Every guesthouse that I e-mailed or called said they were full. Every guesthouse, that was, until one kindly soul said they were full but had a basic spare room they could let us have at a discounted price. I jumped at the chance thinking it was a roof over our heads and the chance to watch another day of test cricket. When we arrived the "spare room" took us a little by surprise. It was actually a laundry room in which the owner had managed to squeeze two camp beds... At 6'5'' Chris did not look too happy at the "luxury" accommodation I had
found him. I tried to placate him that we were staying in the nicest part of the city - the Kensington of Colombo if you will - and it was only a minor issue that we had to sleep on camp beds among a string of broken washing machines. Chris didn't immediately seem to see the funny side....
We finally got to see England dominate a day of test cricket (even if the pace of batting was glacial) and then Chris and I moved inland. As we were on holiday we had decided to negotiate fares for private transfers rather than use public buses. The cost was very reasonable and the time savings were enormous. Generally we had 3-4 hours journeys between places so we'd often spend a whole day sightseeing, grab an early dinner (having pre booked our accommodation in the next place) and arrive there late at night. This was best illustrated when a couple of friends who were taking a bus to the same location as us, left first thing in the morning and it took them the whole of a frustrating, uncomfortable day to get to their destination. We had left in late-afternoon and arrived
just after them for a conciliatory beer!!
However, there was also a downside as we experienced on our trip from Colombo up into the highlands. The well meaning hostel booked us a taxi, but it seemed that the taxi driver couldn't make it, so instead he sent his hooligan mate to do the job who had obviously gained his license doing hand-brake turns in car parks!! He drove like a maniac round the twisting mountain roads, andgiven there was no seatbelt in the back I was being thrown around like a hamster in a washing machine!!
I've had to put my life in the hands of a lot of bad drivers, but this one was definitely one of the scariest! I managed to get him to slow down, and then it transpired that not only did he not know the way to our destination, he had driven so recklessly that as we approached journey's end he figured we didn't have enough petrol to make it (our destination had no petrol stations) so we had to double back 20 minutes each way to a bigger town to find one!! When we finally arrived he even had the cheek to ask for more money as it had cost him more than expected!!
Up in the central highlands one of the things I convinced Chris we should do is climb Sri Pada (Adam's peak). Its a sacred place for four different religions, but for Buddhists it was said to contain an imprint of the Buddha's footprint. As with all these types of climbs, the aim is to climb through the night to arrive for sunrise. The route is long, steep and stepped, but there are plenty of tea shops along the way as this is a major pilgrimage site (it must be an incredibly tough commute to work for those tea shop owners near the top!!).
Chris and I made good progress and actually made the top in good time before sunrise – along with the hundreds of other pilgrims that had made the journey that day!! Like when we climbed Kota Kinabalu I had to contrast my South American experiences of having a summit completely to myself, with these Asian experiences where the peak is just so much more crowded – it certainly does detract from the experience a little!! It was cold up at the top so it was a blessing when the sun rose – although the sunrise was partially obscured by cloud. We waited around for the mountain to reveal its party piece – once the Sun is high and strong enough the mountain casts a perfect pyramid shadow out across the surrounding plains. This was very impressive to see and I hope the photos give some idea!!
The other thing I'll remember about Adam's Peak is meeting "Mr Creepy Man" as he was known. He was the owner of the worst guest house/market stall in the town, and we somehow became his new best friends when Chris donated a random Caribbean dollar of some sort to add to his collection of notes from around the world. We had to walk past his guesthouse to get to anywhere in the town and he was ALWAYS waiting there with his creepy smile and his overbearing desire to have us move into his guesthouse. It was safe to say that even though his taxi to our next destination was the cheapest, we didn't take him up on his offer as we expected never to be seen again if we stepped inside!!!
Sri Lanka is famous worldwide for its tea, and it seemed almost obligatory to visit a plantation to understand a bit more!! Before arriving I had no idea, nor had given any thought, to what goes into making a cuppa, and I was amazed at just how sturdy the tree plant/bush was. The main stem is very thick, and if you try and shake it it hardly sways an inch. The roots penetrate incredibly deep into the soil and I guess all of these things combine to ensure that it can be grown on the very steepest of hillsides, like the one at the plantation we visited!! However, the life of a tea picker does seem to be a hard one, with the pickers working in 3 shifts a day and being paid by the bag, so they need to keep on picking!!
Elsewhere in the highlands we visited Ella, a great base for walks into the surrounding mountains, although Chris and I were still pretty sore after our climb of Adam's peak and so we only did a couple of short forays!! With its mild climate, Ella is known as a place you intend to stay a day or two but end up staying a week or more. Part of that is the village's great reputation for cooking and cooking schools, and Chris and I paid to be taught how to cook a 10 course vegetarian tasting menu at the guesthouse we were staying in (selected because of its reputation for amazing food!). It was superb to watch and participate in the cooking process – my favourite had to be the garlic curry which was out of this world. The only problem was that they didn't e-mail us the recipes as they'd promised they would. Grrrr!!
Coming to the end of our trip, we were visiting Sri Lanka's “golden triangle”, the highlight of which is certainly the incredible rock citadel of Sigiriya. Basically there is a huge monolith in the middle of the plains, and a complex fortress and citadel was built around and on top of this giant rock. The site is well preserved and many of the remains of the original workmanship can still be clearly seen today.
The most incredible thing to me is that the citadel dates from 475 – 495 AD and so is over 1,500 years old. I was really bowled over by this, especially as a lot of the features we were seeing were genuinely original (unlike say some of the Mayan temples where they have had to be extensively restored).
King Kashyapa and his subjects has mastered moving water around the complex in gutters, so we could still see these criss-crossing the site, with the aim being to move water from say an area that would have been a hut, to an area used as a swimming pool. It may sound underwhelming to be impressed by some small canals hewn into the rock, but the fact that I was seeing the original work of people who lived over 1,500 years ago, combined with the sheer scale of the monolith and the incredible views that we enjoyed from the top of it made this an absolute highlight of the trip. Its also a place where Chris and I paid for an actual guide to show us around, and his explanations really did bring everything to life (although if I’m honest I've now pretty much forgotten everything he told us!!).
One of the final big highlights of the trip was the Pinnawalla Elephant Orphanage. I've always been slightly unsure about my views on these types of places – especially when they grow so large to become tourist attractions in their own rights thus moving away from the original intention of the founder. Also I've been lucky enough to go on safari in Africa and I guess all my wildlife experiences struggle to measure up by that yardstick! (Also I recognise the irony of noting that it is a commercial enterprise and then paying my entrance fee along with everyone else – just making the point that I don't know whether I truly feel its the right thing for me to have done...!)
The first impressions of the sanctuary weren't all that great as conditions didn't look all that wonderful, but we had deliberately timed our visit to ensure we were there for the elephants going for their daily swim in the nearby river. This was great fun to watch as the elephants jostled and cavorted about. An especially likeable pair were one elephant who clearly didn't want to go in the water, and their “partner” who kept nudging, bumping and shoving to try (unsuccessfully as it turned out!!) to get them in there!!
It pretty much brought the curtain down on a fantastic 3 weeks. Sri Lanka must be right up there with some of the most enjoyable places I've visited. The friendliness of the people, the variety of the things to see and do, the INCREDIBLE food, the cheapness of the country and the (relative) ease of travel there all enhance the visit so much. The main thing I enjoyed is that although the culture is so very different to the UK, the fact there is a common language makes it feel so much more accessible. Sri Lanka is definitely somewhere I'd go back to (most likely coinciding with another cricket tour!!)
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