Blogs from Kandy, Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 4

we had arranged for our driver Albey to take us on to Kandy with a bit of sightseeing along the way. True to form it wasn't that straight forward. His car turned up with a different driver. He had bought with him a wedding invitation that showed Albey had other plans! The replacement driver was nice, a retired school bus driver and very cautious. Our first stop was Dambulla. We hadn't expected to find such a great place and it turned in to another highlight of the trip. Situated up a hill behind a Bhudda built in 2000, complete with neon lights, were 5 cave temples of varying size. The detail and scale of them was impressive. They dated from 100BC and construction on them started by the same King who established Sigiriya. Next on our ... read more

Day 5 Breakfast was not buffet today, and I think i missed it really, not as much choice and my scrambled egg came on a soggy piece of white bread. It was simply that there werent enough people at the hotel to make it worth while. Not an elephant in sight to brighten the day, as we packed up our cases. The first stop was unscheduled, and we had mixed feelings about doing it, but our thoughts were that if you don't support these things sometimes, the suffering as a result is worse. An elephant eats 250 kilos of food a day, so at least the entry fee was going to help with what must be a considerable bill! We called at an elephant safari place and waited for a big group to return to we ... read more

Sri Lanka family road trip 18/03/16 meet up with Tom & Amy after their delayed arrival; get our drivers licence permit visit the attractive Buddhist temple complex 7k from town, stroll the national museum and later tuck into a finger licking crab & prawn supper @ "ministry of crab" restaurant. 19/03/16 catch our pre booked 9am train to Kandy; 3 hours of scenic mountain track through forest. Clock into Kandy and tuk to a guest house near the lake, grab a tasty curry lunch and whip around town struggling to find self drive car hire, lots of shaky heads and thumbs down due to a holiday weekend but eventually track down a winner and loosely arrange a mystery car for the following morning. 20/03/16 Visit the impressive botanical gardens in the morning and fetch our Nissan ... read more

Geo: 7.28446, 80.6375This was a beautiful first stay for 2 nights, with time to appreciate a tastefully renovated house that an Indian earning good money overseas had restored with his parents. I had a swim every morning, we had breakfast in thr garden and supper each night in the living room. Our bed was at the top of a tall look out tower, reached by a dangerously steep flight of stairs, but beautifully breezy,with a good view of garden and pool, when you got there.The first thing to get used to is the warmth. For the most part this is an attractive summer temperature, with cool early mornings and warm evenings, but walking around between 12.00 and 4.00 can be a lttle sweaty. Having an air con car helps. Our driver Christopher is a nice guy ... read more

Geo: 7.28446, 80.6375Stunning train rides through tea plantations, gorgeous beaches, whale watching, diving and extremely friendly people! That's just a start to this amazing country, this got us excited! We didn't even know what Sri Lanka had to offer until about a week or two before arriving. We only stayed one night in the outskirts of Colombo and took the train to Kandy first thing the next morning. Kandy is in the hills and is a nice place to base oneself for day excursions. Unfortunately it was cloudy the whole time but it didn't stop us from doing a tuk tuk tour which was great! The botanical gardens were really nice and also the tea factory was quite interesting.We stayed in a nice homestay up above the city which offered nice views and quiet surroundings. We ... read more