I often marvel at the fact that I’m only a year and a handful of months away from turning 50 and I’ve barely scratched the surface on what I want to see and do with my life.
But I know travel is something that needs to feature heavily in the next few decades, as my wandering feet didn’t wander too far when I was younger.
Sri Lanka has marked the start of this, and although our travels have been definitely more luxiourous than younger me experienced. It’s also given me a huge confidence boost that I can go more off road, replace my suitcase with a backpack and travel more like a local in the countries I visit.
My memory seems to get worse with every passing year, so writing down these trips allows future me the joy of reliving them.
Week One in Sri Lanka has been exceptional; where we have moved from Sigriya, to the beach at Trinco, through to ancient architecture in Polonnaruwa, over to the city heights (literally) of Kandy and now as I write; we are climbing a sprawling mountain towards Nanuoya to board a train to head to our mountain designation of Ella.
We have a driver, which is good because no way on earth could I navigate the Sri Lanka roads. The general etiquette seems to be to overtake at every opportunity, beep your horn and pray nothing is on the other side.
Each town and village we have driven through looks different to the next, but all are marked with makeshift homes, street side stalls and an air of poverty but not misery. The crime rate seems to be low, even the stray dogs which are plentiful, are looked after under the strong Buddhist faith (and my leftover scraps.). Everyone we have encountered has been nothing but overwhelmingly lovely. (Except for one prat of a security guard – but that’s a story for another day.)
Each hotel that we have stayed in has been prepped for us, regardless of whether we arrive at 9am or 6pm. Our rooms are immaculately made up, we are greeted with cold towels and differing local fruit juices and forbidden from carrying any of own luggage.
And the food…..
The food is out of this world, coming home to a beans on toast breakfast sounds dreary after my hoppers and curry morning delight.
In Sigiriya, we stayed in Hotel Sigiriya , where the views of the famous Rock were exceptional. I ran out on the streets weaving through the festival of the full moon and monkeys. We climbed the rock at 6am and were treated to views across the land with a heavy dollop of history. The rest of our Sigriya exploits can be found here.
Our first stay was quite full on, we we headed down the coast to Trinco, sprawling beaches and glistening still waters. We adventured with sharks (read here) and saw hundreds of Dolphins in the sea. Libby luxuriated in our in room Jacuzzi bath; and I found some pretty epic Mojitos in the hotel bar.
In an evening, Fernados bar was a hub of activity with some gorgeous food to be found at the 18th Hole. Yet my favourite meal to date has to be the tuna steak I found at Be Cool….
We left Trinco after a morning on the beach and headed to Lake Polonnaruwa for some history….
This was a one night stay where we nestled into the Lake Echo hotel; a hotel which delights in the fact that Queen Elizabeth resided in one of the suites. We had a guided tour of the room, quipped with a Golden bathtub before headed back to our own four poster bedded room. An infinity pool overlooked Sri Lanka’s largest man made lake, and as the sunset that evening, we swam in the pool, looked out over the lake and watched a herd of elephants gather at the watering hole. Not often nights like that happen, and one to never forget.
In the day we hired Sri Lanka bicycles, older than both us, with no real braking system & in my case a flat tyre. With these wheels we explored Polonnaruwa – an archeological dream. Buddha’s and statues of kings loiter between ruins and street sellers trading their wares.
Monkeys, herds of cows and stray dogs walk the roads between bikes and tuc tucs and as an additional treat, we saw a rare Malabar Pied Hornbill that flew across our path, magnificent with its large hooked beak.
(To be clear – I had to google to find out what we had actually seen!)
Then onwards, from Polonnaruwa we traveled onto Kandy – our first real city. We stopped first at Dambullas Cave, enriched with over 150 Buddhas. Here we learnt the story of how Buddha came to be, the story that we would later read in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth in Kandy.
The steps to Dambullas cave were steep and the temperature hit somewhere close to boiling point, for me it was worth the climb, for my teenage companion we were approaching the point of seen one Temple, seen them all….
Kandy was louder, vibrant with a 100 cars and Tuk Tuks on the road intermingling between the various wildlife. The city was submerged between rolling hills and we climbed onwards and upwards to The Grand Senenbib – our hotel for the evening.
That night we drank wine and chocolate milkshakes by the back drop of the city.
Another good day.
And then to now, the middle of our stay. We have climbed high into the mountains, the temperature has dropped to a reasonable 25 degrees. We stopped at a Tea Factory, adorned traditional dress and picked leaves whilst learning how tea is made.
I’ll never look at my Yorkshire tea bag in the same way again!
And where this story ends for today’s in the railway station of Nanuoya; where we are exchanging our driver for a train to take us through the mountains on what is reputation ro be a visual delight of scenery and mountains to Ella, our home for the next couple of days.
So far, it’s been an incredible 7 days living culturally in a land so different to home.
Can’t wait for the next 7…..