Beaches, Curries and Elephants

Everything about Arugam Bay was lovely. We stayed in a Cabana (bamboo hut) for a few days, enjoyed swimming in the sea, walks along a near empty beach and I even gave surfing another go after our first lesson nearly a year ago in Bali!

After our days of relaxation and tiring myself out surfing we moved onto Ella in the hill country of Sri Lanka. Ella is a small crossroads of a town but very popular with tourists as it has an excellent combination of a cooler climate, tea plantations, good walks, and the locals grow lots of fresh fruit and veg which go into delicious curries. Whilst in Ella we did a great walk along train tracks, through vegetable fields and up into forest to get to Ella Rock, one of the tallest points in the area where we had an uninterrupted view of the surrounding hills.

Uda Walawe national park was out next stop to see wild elephants and it certainly did not disappoint! The park has just over 400 elephants and we think we saw about 40-50 of them mostly in small herds of 5 or 6. Little baby elephants staying close by their mothers greeted us when we entered the park and we knew it was going to be a good day. Everywhere we went in the jeep elephants weren’t far away, it was so nice to be on a safari where we saw a lot of animals and we could watch the elephants for a long time without them disappearing instantly. We also saw 2 rarely sighted leopard cats (normal cat size but leopards!) as well as monkeys, deer, eagles and lizards. We nearly had too much of a close encounter with one lone male elephant who we were watching graze meters away from us when suddenly he decided he didn’t like us being there and made a move to charge, luckily a loud noise from our guide soon put him off!

The south coast was definitely the busiest we’d seen Sri Lanka but the beaches were still nice and it was easy to find empty spots of sand away from the resorts. Mirissa was a laid back beach town fringed with coconut trees, not much happens there except for whale watching in season (too choppy for us to go) but we had some good food and enjoyed watching the sea at night with a beer on the beach.

In Unawatuna from our balcony at some point in the day we could normally see monkeys playing in the trees. We did a cooking school as we’ve been enjoying the local specialty of rice and curry so much throughout Sri Lanka. We prepared a feast of dishes; fish curry, pumpkin curry, green bean curry, Dhal (curried lentils) with crispy onions and devilled potatoes and were really lucky that it was just the two of us booked on so we had our own personal chef guiding us! What we really loved about the cooking school was that we did everything, chopped every vegetable, grinded coconut flesh from the coconut and made the coconut cream and milk by hand. It tasted amazing!

For the rest of our time in Unawatuna we had a swim most days, the best Sri Lankan curry of the trip at ‘One Love’ and we took a trip into Galle 4km away and wandered about the Dutch Fort admiring some of the colonial architecture in the old town. Now we’re back in Negombo for the night so we can catch our flight to India tomorrow!

Sri Lanka has definitely been one of the highlights of the trip so far and a really pleasant surprise. With so much packed into a tiny island it’s one of the places we can see ourselves going back to in the future.

Love Chris & Kat xxx

Beautiful Sri Lanka

Negombo Fishing Boats

We were all prepared for harassment, touts, pulling and pushing of drivers and hotel reps, we got off the plane expecting a battle, perhaps the hustle and bustle of Nepal or the constant sales pitch of India...but there is none of that and it is wonderful!  Very few touts, tuk tuk drivers accept it when you say ‘no thank you’, the drivers and the hotel owners will agree to lower prices with laid back bartering – it’s just so very relaxed, perhaps because it’s not peak tourist season, and people seem very friendly...and keen to inform us that England keep losing the cricket (an international tournament is currently being held in Sri Lanka). 

Kandy Cultural Dance Show

So, slightly stunned that we could look around the hotels in Negombo without any hassle, we picked ourselves a lovely place on the beach front, basked in the ocean breeze under the shade of the palm trees, watched the canoe sail boats float past and had our first (and currently best) Sri Lankan curry.  The food has been great, the curry comes as several small curry dishes to share, popadoms and a mountain of rice; we often have to order at midday for tea time as they spend most of the day preparing the fresh ingredients and cooking the dishes.  We also visited the Negombo fresh fish market, you see the fishermen arriving on the beach, everyone sorting out the fish, then either carrying it into the bustling market, chopping and gutting it or laying it out to dry out on the beach.  The crows are there in vast numbers, scavenging the unwanted fish!

Kat & Chris Sigiriya

Our next stop was to the hills of Kandy.  Here we spent a lovely afternoon wandering around the lake.  We were excited to see monkeys, storks, turtles, kingfishers, a pelican and a monitor lizard.  That evening we went to a cultural dance show, the drumming was excellent and the dances really entertaining and nice to see the traditional outfits.  At the end of the show they took us outside to watch them do fire-walking; as we stepped outside lots of bats were heading over to the lake – it was amazing sight as they were HUGE bats – Dracula sized!



View from Sigiriya Summit



The next day we caught the bus to Sigiriya.  The buses have been fine so far, all daytime and fairly short (3-4 hours).  They have been crowded occasionally, but normally they squeeze us and our bags in somewhere!  And they are super cheap – on average about £1.50 for a 3 hour journey.  Sigiriya is a UNESCO historic sight.  A huge rock on a fairly flat landscape, it was once a monastery and palace, speculated to date back from the 5^th Century.  Now only ruins remain, you walk through where the Royal Gardens once where, still the Boulder Arch remains, then climb up the rock to see the frescoes (rock art) literally half way up the sheer cliff face – no idea how anyone got up there to paint!  There is then the Mirror Wall which contains centuries worth of graffiti, most of which is now translated and in the museum.  Then through the stone Lion’s Paws and up again to the summit, where more building foundations have been excavated.  It is a beautiful view up there, vast greenery in every direction.  Then as we were sat admiring the view we realised we were not alone – surrounded by monkeys with bowl hair cuts!  It felt like we were in the Jungle Book!

Monkey

Our next stop was Anuradhapura, a historic town, famed for its religious structures.  The bus dumped us somewhere which was not the bus station and it took us a fair while to figure out where we were...we started to walk towards where we thought we might stay and met Berlin on the way, he had a homestay and offered us a very cheap price for the room, we accepted and stayed at his family home that night.  We hired bikes from Berlin, sadly they weren’t in the best condition, mine had one pedal and Chris got a flat tyre half way round, but they did get us around the sights and we enjoyed seeing the big stupas and sacred Bondhi Tree (2000 yrs old).  Again there were monkeys to watch – I nearly got weed on when we went under some trees – these monkeys are pretty looking, not like the slightly scabby South East Asian monkeys, these are grey, with black beards and loooong tails.  That evening Berlin’s wife cooked us curry and the next morning we ate coconut rotis in Berlin’s garden and watched a Mongoose scamper by!

 Chris at Uppuveli

From there we headed further North, to Uppuveli on the East Coast.  The North was heavily attacked during the civil war, consequently this is still a fairly new tourist destination.  It is no longer untouched, but it is very quiet up here as we approach the end of the season (Monsoon is due next month).  The isolation is definitely part of its charm, not sharing the beach with anyone, just listening to the lapping of the waves but it can be a little off putting...as we couldn’t find anywhere to eat initially, the hotels appeared closed and glimmers of the Civil War remain with all the properties being fenced off with barbed wire and guards on the entrances to the roads down to the beach.  However, we’ve come to love the palm lined beach and really have done very little but relax for the past 3 days.

We move on tomorrow, heading further down the coast to Arugam Bay, a surf town.  Enjoying it so far!

Lots of love – just over 2 months till we’re home!

Kat & Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx