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Published: June 26th 2015
After a long day of waiting around in Bangkok and the airport, we finally boarded our middle of the night flight to Sri Lanka. Despite boarding the plane at an hour when we felt we should be soundly tucked up in bed, we really enjoyed our Thai Airways flight to Colombo as they served up one of the tastiest in flight meals either of us could remember having and were so polite and smiley. Liz also appreciated the ample glass of good wine, which after five months of Asian beer, tasted wonderful.
Apparently Colombo airport is wonderfully tropical looking, fringed with palm trees with the turquoise blue sea in the distance, however, as it was still the middle of the night when we touched down in Sri Lanka, we just had to imagine this scene. Our main concern at this point was finding the tuk-tuk driver who had been sent to meet us by the guesthouse we had booked for our first night and getting some sleep. We finally found our tuk-tuk driver, with the help of a mug shot that the owner of the guesthouse had sent us in advance, hopped in the back of the three wheeled chariot
and made our way to the guesthouse through the incredibly thick, damp air.
The next morning we woke up to tropical blue skies and palm trees and were treated to a traditional Sri Lankan breakfast of rice hoppers (a sort of bowl shaped pancake/crumpet) with a spicy sauce. We managed a fair amount of the spicy sauce, before the guesthouse owner took pity on us and put a pot of jam on the table. Our guesthouse was actually in the beach town of Negombo, north of the capital city of Colombo, but very handy for the airport. Negombo was a good introduction to the hustle and bustle of Sri Lanka, a country similar in size to the Republic of Ireland but with a population of over twenty million. We hired a couple of bikes and remembering that this was once a British colony set off on the left hand side of the road to explore the busy little fishing town and its pretty seafront areas. One thing we became aware of immediately was that many Sri Lankans from all walks of life speak excellent and very polite English and are eager to have a chat, especially it seems about
cricket (Ross had to quickly brush up on his cricket knowledge).
As we wanted to see the city of Colombo, but didn't want to pay the high prices of the capital, we decided to stay an extra night in Negombo and simply caught the train down to the city for a day trip. We were glad we decided to do this as although there were some interesting old colonial buildings in Colombo, the city did not really float our boat, apart from the bargain traditional lunch of rice accompanied by about five different small curry dishes we got in a Sri Lankan version of a café which oddly enough they call a "hotel". The portions it seems are always huge and as long as you don't look too closely at the surroundings the food is delicious.
Moving on from Negombo we caught a packed train heading south along the coast to the town of Galle. There were no spare seats on the train but this did not matter to us as we were able to sit on the floor dangling our legs out of the wide open carriage door (health and safety legislation doesn't seem to have arrived
here yet) and enjoy the refreshing breeze as the train rumbled along the pretty, palm lined coast. We were also given some Sri Lankan travel tips by a very enthusiastic British drama teacher, who had spent the last four months following in his father's footsteps around the country. Four months he said had not been enough to see everything Sri Lanka has to offer.
Galle's old town area is a historic fort built originally by the Portuguese, but then seriously remodelled by the Dutch in the 17th Century after they booted out the Portuguese. We enjoyed a day wandering through the well preserved buildings and interesting little alleyways within the walls, as well as strolling around the top of the walls themselves and watching the sunset over the Indian ocean. Food was a little difficult to come by in the old town however as a number of restaurants closed for lunch. We couldn't quite understand the thinking behind this unusual business model, but we concluded that it must be a religious thing as lunch coincided with the call to prayer.
During the 2004 tsunami the old town of Galle was spared from a great deal of damage due
to its stout walls and still functioning, efficient Dutch designed drainage system. The rest of Galle, like many other towns and villages around Sri Lanka's coast, was not so fortunate. As we were walking out of the old town area towards our guesthouse, a fairly scruffy man came up to us and started chatting. Naturally we assumed the purpose of this would soon become clear and we would either be offered a tuk-tuk or a hotel or some such thing. But, as is often the way in Sri Lanka this chap just seemed to want a chat. He was so pleased when he found out we were British and proudly announced that the British people, more specifically the people of Liverpool, presumably through government or charitable donation, had paid for the rebuilding of his house following the tsunami. He now lived, as far as we could make out, on a street named The Liver Birds. The man walked along with us for quite a little way telling us his story and giving us some sound advice as to where to purchase the freshest fruit and the cheapest tea, before shaking our hands and disappearing off to go about his business.
What a nice guy we thought and it was pleasing to meet someone who had benefited from donations made by people or organisations in the UK.
Following another pretty amazing traditional Sri Lankan breakfast of slightly sticky, sweet, milk rice, fish curry, coconut sambol (minced, lightly spiced coconut) and fresh fruit, we set off further along the coast to the fantastically named village of Unawatuna. After some searching we finally found a nice guesthouse in the village with a very laid back owner and more importantly a lovely old mutt named Tsunami, named because the owner found him as a puppy wandering about lost in the first few days following the tsunami and took him in. We had a nice few days walking from the village and finding some other isolated local beaches for a swim.
On our final night in Unawatuna our guesthouse owner invited us to join him for a drink of the local hooch called Arrack. Ross had been keen to try some of this and was not disappointed thinking it tasted a bit like a cognac but with a bit less heat. Liz was not so convinced. Our generous host certainly thought it was
good stuff and kept on filling his and our glasses whilst we chatted about everything from the weather to the political situation in Sri Lanka. Interestingly, the guesthouse owner, like many other Sri Lankans, was very interested in the upcoming UK election and was embarrassingly much better informed about it than us. We had a memorable evening, but eventually decided we had better call it a night as it looked dangerously like our host was just going to keep on happily pouring until the bottle was empty and we both already had fuzzy heads. Besides, with each glass our host's accent was amusingly getting thicker and thicker and we were both having to really concentrate to keep up with the conversation, not an easy thing to do after a few glasses of Arrack.
Needless to say we both slept pretty well that night and awoke the next day not too worse for ware. We waved goodbye to our friendly host and the wagging Tsunami and jumped on a packed bus going a little further down the coast to another seaside village called Mirissa, where we only spent one night, deciding to move along a bit further the next day
to the small town of Tangalle.
Once again Tangalle is by the sea and has one of the nicest stretches of seemingly endless palm fringed, white sandy beach that we had come across so far. Fortunately, being out of peak season we could find a nice place to stay close to the beach. This place also came with a characterful smiling and wiggling hound who decided to adopt us as her people for the couple of nights we stayed there, even sleeping all night on the mat outside our door. The beach at Tangalle was spectacular but the sea, whilst turquoise, warm and inviting was a little dangerous with a really powerful undertow, so we had to choose our swimming spots carefully and stay well within our depth.
Deciding that we had now sampled a fair bit of beach life on the south coast, something Sri Lanka is famous for, we decided it was time to seek out something else that is famous on this island, Ceylon tea, probably Sri Lanka's most famous export. So we turned north towards the hill country and after changing between numerous beaten up busses, an overnight stop in Tissamaharama, fortunately known as
the much easier to pronounce Tissa, we arrived at the hill town of Ella.
The weather in Ella was a fair bit cooler than down on the coast which was refreshing and meant we could enjoy some long walks through the miles of tea plantations in the surrounding hills. We decided not to visit a tea factory here but instead travelled about an hour or so by train to the town of Haputale. From here we could catch a local bus up into the hills to visit the Dambatenne tea factory which was founded in the late eighteen hundreds by Sir Thomas Lipton. We were able to take a tour of the factory and see the fresh tea being brought in from the fields, going through a series of fascinating processes before eventually becoming what we recognise as tea. Interestingly, the processes result in several different grades of tea being produced. The finest of which go for export to many countries around the world. The roughest and strongest grade remains in Sri Lanka for home consumption, which may explain why Sri Lankans often drink their tea made with lots of milk and sugar. Ross has been getting some strange
looks when he tries to get this tea served without sugar, but thinks its a good brew either way.
Having now gotten a fuller appreciation of what goes into the humble cuppa and fully fuelled up we walked back down the narrow, winding road to the town passing through numerous tea estates and their respective colourful communities of workers and pickers along the way.
The following day we boarded an early train to the town of Kandy on the Ella to Kandy line, famous for its spectacular scenery as it winds through the hills passing through tea estates, forests and skirting the Horton Plains. The train ride did not disappoint with incredible scenery on both sides, fortunately the carriage was not full so we were able to flit from one side of the carriage to the other as the views opened up.
Eventually we arrived in Kandy having spent most of our journey with our heads stuck out of the windows and Liz's hair in particular now looking like something from the eighties. Kandy was the capital of the last Sinhalese kingdom, falling to the British in 1815 having previously managed to defy the Portuguese and the
Dutch. As such the city is both historically and culturally important to Sri Lanka. We did not stay long here, but enjoyed a stroll around the lake in the centre of town and some good food before moving onward the next morning.
Our next stop was the very small one horse town of Sigiriya. There is nothing to the village except a few guesthouses and the odd scruffy eatery dotted along a narrow road. However, we were not here to see the village but to climb up the whacking great lump of rock that rises straight up out of the plains. The rock formation has a flat topped summit thought to have been inhabited since prehistoric times. There are a number of theories as to the exact previous function of the ruins on the summit from royal palace to place of worship and some serious imagination was required when viewing the remains, but the views from the top were amazing and certainly worth the climb.
We decided that as we were not too far away we could absorb a bit more ancient history by spending a day or so in the town of Polonnaruwa, a once ancient royal
capital of both the Chola and Sinhalese peoples and therefore packed with various crumbling and not so crumbling sights. Being down on the plains the weather was just getting hotter and stickier. We thought the Sri Lankan people must be used to this weather, but we found our guesthouse owner lying on a sofa in the lobby in front of a fan moaning that it was to hot to move. To be honest he was right, but naturally we decided to hire two bikes and pedal our way around the sights for the day. We made it to about two o'clock in the afternoon and had seen most of the sights before we had to admit defeat and head back for a cold shower and a lie down in the shade.
That's it we decided, no more super heated days plodding around ancient historic sites we were off to see the east coast and sit in the ocean. So we made our way to the small fishing/beach town of Uppuveli just north of Trincomalee and China Bay. We didn't need much of an excuse to do very little here except relax on the beach, attempt to cool off in
the almost hot sea, watch the local fishermen haul in their catch each evening and have a chat with our very friendly security guard, Anthony, each evening. Once again, however, religion got in the way of us eating, as we sat down at a restaurant and choose our meals only to be told that the chef had gone to see the Buddha and wouldn't be back any time soon.
After a few days and with our time in Sri Lanka drawing close to an end we thought it wise to head at least vaguely in the direction of Colombo. So we hopped on another super heated, super crowded bus and rattled our way westwards to the town of Anuradhapura. Here we could hire a couple of bikes and spent the day ambling around the large reservoir and smaller roads checking out the views of ancient stupas poking out of the jungle.
All to soon our month in Sri Lanka was passed, so we took the train down to Colombo once more, then boarded a local bus to the airport where we whiled away a few hours before our flight, once again at midnight, back to Bangkok. We just
had a few days in Bangkok to pick up some souvenirs (mostly elephant themed) and enjoy some last tastes of Asia before heading once more back to the UK for a short interlude before embarking on the third and final leg of our slow amble around the globe in a month or two's time.
Looking back on our month in Sri Lanka we can understand why that drama teacher we met during our first few days in the country had fallen in love with the country. The Sri Lankan people warmly welcomed us throughout our time in their country, we ate some incredibly tasty curries (some of which were also incredibly spicy), rumbled through impressive countryside on a railway system that hasn't changed since the 50s, relaxed on beautiful beaches and enjoyed the buzz and craziness of the cities.
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
A great ending!
Great way to end--friendly people and curries, bits of history and beach, and fine relaxing before going home and visiting all your friends. A great, exotic ending.