Flights from the Middle East to Sri Lanka are very cheap. So we decided to tack this on to our trip last minute.
To greatly oversimplify things, although it is an independent country, Sri Lanka is basically "India Lite" in the way that Canada is "America Lite." The food is similar, the language is similar, the fashion is similar, and the head wobble is similar.
Sri Lanka is surprisingly developed. We didn't see any shanty towns or slums (also no mansions), it was cleaner and less crowded than how I envision India to be, and there was a big emphasis on education (all the locals we talked to had children who were doctors, engineers, computer programmers, etc.). Buddhism is the primary religion.
Given that the country's civil war that started in 1983 just ended in 2009, it's amazing how tourism is starting up again and how relatively safe it feels after that violent past. Tourism is still far from being fully developed and it was an adventure navigating through our plans. It has the potential to become the next Bali in the years to come as tourism continues to grow and the country starts to see the opportunities in the industry. Sri Lanka is beautiful and full of culture, wildlife, and beaches and made for a great spontaneous trip.
Colombo
We flew in to the capital city of Colombo and stayed for a day. Sinead was still catching up on work, so we didn't get to explore too much. Even just being in a new country, seeing the locals on the street, trying new foods, and being exposed to new cultures makes traveling worth it.
We went to the park where all the local families hang on a Friday night and watched as kids flew kites, sang, danced, and congregated around street food.
Generally the food in Sri Lanka is very similar to Indian food and tasted good. Rice and curry was the staple for almost every meal. There were samosas, sambol (flavorful coconut fluff), roti (flat bread), Kottu (hodgepodge of all the ingredients leftover from other foods combined into my favorite dish), and hoppers (rice pancake bowls filled with toppings) and we tried all of the mysterious street food without getting sick. The highlight of all the food was how delicious the pineapples were. They were far sweeter and juicier than any pineapple I've ever had and Sinead, who is not usually a fan, was even obsessed.
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| Kottu |
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| Hoppers |
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| Curry and samosas |
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| Curry, sambol, and roti |
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| Yummmmm |
Sri Lanka is also known for producing tons of tea. Sadly we didn't get to go to any of the plantations directly, but we got to drink plenty of it that came straight from the local planations.
The weather forecast was thunderstorms throughout the island for the whole week so swapped our original idea of going to the beach and diving for heading inland to the mountains.
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| Tuk tukking everywhere |
Kandy
To get inland, we took the train ride from hell. For a mere $1.25 you can take a 4 hour ride crammed into a jam packed train car with no air conditioning in 90° heat and 1,000,000% humidity. We couldn't sit down at during the entire 4 hours because there were too many people and there was no such thing as personal space. The woman standing next to us fainted within 30 minutes. When a few people finally got off 2.5 hours into it, I managed to sneak in an Asian squat. The little research I had done had multiple accounts saying that it was a scenic ride that was a "highlight of the trip." Oh how wrong that was! It was so miserable that it was comical and all we could do was laugh... once it was all over.
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| Before leaving the station. Still smiling. Still room to fit more people... |
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| We tried to stay by the door. Then 20 more people came and had the same idea. |
We stayed in a homestay with a mediation teacher and got our first taste of the crazy animals that inhabit the area. There are wild monkeys, wild boar, porcupines, water and land monitors (aka 4 foot long lizards!), colorful birds, and tons of mosquitos. I was minorly paranoid about getting dengue and doused myself in bug spray every day.
We explored the lake and town and went to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth where Buddha's supposed tooth is kept. We didn't get to actually see the tooth, but the building itself was impressive. To go into the Temple, we had to cover our knees and shoulders. We were unprepared and had to buy some local clothing. Might I say we blended in???
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| No tourists here! |
Habarana
Despite some reservations, we braved the public transportation again and took a bus to Habarana. The bus system is very efficient and the main form of transport throughout the country, although there is no information online or around anywhere, so the only way to know what you're doing to is ask random locals until someone helps you amongst the chaos of the streets.
The buses hurdle down the middle of the road, honking like mad, passing all of the tuk tuks and cars, and getting to the destination ASAP. It was a bit nerve wracking but it was a much better experience than the train.
We decided to treat ourselves to a 5 star hotel here (because now that we were back in Asia, 5 star hotels are cheaper than the worst motel you can stay in in San Francisco). There was a pool, so Sinead was back in her element and swam laps every day.
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| Yes, that's me reading a book while lounging in the kiddie pool. Dreamy. |
We worked poolside surrounded by more monkeys, land monitors, chameleons, and swarms of beautiful butterflies.
Added bonus: the hotel had the best breakfast spread of my life.
And when a thunderstorm rolled through with chest booming thunder (that came at the exact time as the lightning because it was so close), we had a good excuse to order room service. Treat yo'self!
The highlight of Sri Lanka was definitely the elephants. We got to go on a safari to see over 200 wild elephants in their natural habitat. The national park was thriving with herds of elephants that roamed the grasslands freely this time of year before following water onward to other parts of the country.
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| Does that elephant have 5 legs?! ;) |
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| Nerd alert! |
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| Water buffalo too |
The most thrilling part was being charged at by these giant creatures. Within 2 minutes of seeing our first elephant, we were being chased down without warning. It was scary and awesome.
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| Is that an elephant behind that bush? Cool, it is! Oh $h!t, we're being charged! (bodies violently knock around jeep as we were wildly unprepared to speed off) Phew, we're getting away. |
Check out this video of some of the creatures we saw including a lot of the elephants:
After a week in Sri Lanka, we were off to Vietnam.
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