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Published: January 4th 2017
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Our taxi driver family
Abey on the right with his Mum and Dad We had planned to head down the East Coast of Sri Lanka however the weather forecast didn't look promising for some beach time. The North East monsoon which normally occurs this time of the year was late and the long range forecast when we left Colombo was for fine weather for some inexplicit reason decided to start at exactly when we planned to head East. The forecast was for two days of rain.
We had been chatting to some people about other places and thought a place called Sigiriya, north of Kandy, where we had to catch a train back to Colombo in a few days, sounded interesting. This proved to be good advice and turned into one our highlights of the trip so far.
The train we had booked our ticket on carried on past our originally planned jump off point of Vavuniya, enroute to Trincolmalle on the east coast, and it looked like getting off at Anuradhapula, where we had stayed, would get us close to Sigiriya. We would have to take two buses from there for three hours but our bums are getting used to that now.
Our train got delayed half way along the
trip because a Auto rickshaw hit it. We didn't get out of the train as most of the other passengers did, blood and gore has never been a priority in our sightseeing!
Getting into Anuradhapula late we started talking to some taxi guys about getting across to the bus station but got offered a reasonable price to take a taxi direct to Sigiriya. Only provision was that the driver wanted to pay his respect at his friends place because his friends mother had recently passed away. Would we be happy spending 15 minutes at the taxi drivers mothers place for a cup of tea?. Suspicion is the first reaction when a plan takes a deviation that sounds odd but he seemed quite genuine and nice so we agreed. A good decision. The taxi drivers mother and father ( aged 83 and 86) were fantastic fun. We filled up on tea, fruit cake, fresh mangoes and worked our way through their family photos. His mother spoke good English but was a bit difficult to understand as she had no teeth. She had been an English teacher at a convent school in Colombo. The father had been a mayor of a local town. One of her 7 children had been a game keeper who got killed by a tiger. She was a touch emotional when she revealed this but she explained that he left a son who was studying in New York to be an engineer and she had a giggle about he will probably come home and build monasteries as he is a very committed Bhuddist. What a lovely couple!
Our trip down to Sigiriya took about two hours. The taxi driver was a font of knowledge and we had an enjoyable trip. The hotel we had booked was a bit upmarket (last minute bookings sometimes give good deals..this one proved to be excellent). The taxi driver was worried we would get fleeced by the hotel if we organised tours through them so just before we pulled into the drive he flagged down a local tuk tuk driver and checked the price of a return trip out to the Rock. We got a phone number and agreed if we wanted a ride we would call him ( this also proved valuable as the price was a third of the hotel).
A final negotiation with our Taxi driver to pick us up in three days to take us onward and we settled in to Paradise Resort and Spa.
A day which started with a change of plan ended being another great day. The prospect of maybe attempting a walk up to the top of Sigiriya Rock the next day was discussed over dinner and Shelley and I agreed it might be past our fitness levels based of some googling. The image we went to bed with is shown here ( not my photo but does show the path up the top third to the top).
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