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Published: January 30th 2014
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Sri Lanka
D3
After flying to Heathrow from Manchester and the normal laborious queuing the Sri Lankan Airways flight set off 90 mins late, for no indicated reason, which meant we were late into Colombo. After being met by our agent Ivan we had a meal on the way to the hotel in Nebongo and arrived in the dark for another meal before rebuilding our bikes. Not a good move when you have missed a full night’s sleep. Eventually got to bed at midnight and after fighting with the air conditioning temperature, and fan, I kicked it into touch at 3am and then took some pain killers for my headache at 3.40, which seemed just before my alarm at 7.15 for breakfast. Away we go at last after a great breakfast of everything you could want from curry with rice and noodles to omelettes and yoghurt to fruit salad, not forgetting green salad. Carbo’d up we sewhen t off at 9.20 after a couple of puncture repairs. How do you get a puncture when you have not put a wheel down? It must have been the fear of the roads.
We set off heading North on
the A28 for most of the way and luckily the traffic was not too bad, certainly by British standards, and we ambled our way to our first tea break at somewhere in Sri Lanka, followed by lunch somewhere else even further North. All very good, by the way, especially if you like samosas and savoury doughnuts – try selling those to the Yanks. Amazingly, we saw loads of wildlife alongside this trunk road, primarily because we skirted many lakes and swamplands which are a haven for birds. I have only seen one kingfisher n my life before today and
now saw five
white breasted models on the telephone wires waiting for a meal to show its face in the water below – amazing. Also on offer were two rough necked storks and an ibis and loads of egrets, which spend their time next to cows, which must disturb the delicious bugs it thrives on. Later we saw what we thing was an Asian Stork, which flew into a far away tree when it saw my camera. After much stopping and starting taking photos we arrived at the hotel Randiya at 4pm, just in time for a 14 mile spin with
Peter around the lake at Anuradhapura before dark at approximately 6.08pm. We saw the fuselage of an aircraft in a local Air Force compound. We were stopped taking a photo by a plain clothed sergeant and a guard with a fierce looking gun. When the gun walked away we took one anyway. We saw the army doing their exercises on the road with all the traffic going around them - amazing. The meals, so far, are excellent to my mind, noodles, rice, all meats, prawns, eggs and vegetables. We have been offered cold drinks when we arrive, which is nice, crushed orange or smoothies with bananas and pineapple. Love it. As in all of Asia you see an abundance of Tuk Tuks and the old style roadster cycles with single speed and 28 inch wheels. Occasionally you see a heavy mountain bike, like the one ridden by a youth as we rode around the lake tonight. He was making a good pace riding in his flip flops pedalling with his instep, as they do, as we passed him. He draughted me for a mile or so and then he thought he would have a challenge and passed me at a
decent speed only to blow himself up and was left in our wake in little time. They often seem amazed at the speed we ride over long distances – if only they had the machinery. The Sri Lankans come across as very nice people and are most welcoming to us.
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