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Trekking Sigiriya

We had it all coordinated. Claire and I would be arriving in Colombo in the morning, her from Dublin via London and I from Paris via Dubai, with less than 1 hour difference between our arrivals. We would then meet our driver and began our 7-day roadtrip around Sri Lanka before arriving back in Colombo for our friends’ wedding.

However, Fate had it for both of us to be delayed due to technical difficulties. Things got slightly complicated here. Her delay was in London, mine outright in Paris. Having no idea how long each our delays could be, not to mention if I’d be able to catch my original connection flight, our best solution then was to contact each other after landing (while praying that our phones actually worked on roaming!). Whoever got there first would wait for the other – the wait could have been up to 3-4 hours. In the mean time, we had to wake Eve and Pras up in the middle of the night so they could contact and inform the driver in the morning (while we were airborne) that we were not a pair of no-shows, merely late.

Our flights still came in with about an hour difference, although in reverse order. Nonetheless, we had lost approximately 5 hours of time – that was half a day wasted. After withdrawing some money from the ATM (nope, we didn’t have any local currency with us) we bought ourselves a local mobile SIM card to use and tracked down our driver to truly kickstart our tour.

Our first base would be Dambulla, some 130km away from Colombo. While that distance didn’t seem all that far, it still took us about 3.5 hours to get there! By then (about 5.30pm) it has also started to get dark. There was nothing else we could do. We checked in to a hotel, grabbed some dinner at the hotel’s restaurant after a failed exploration walk along the main road near the hotel to find something appetising, and called it a night.

An early start the next morning was on the card. After breakfast, we were on the road for Sigiriya aka the Lion’s Rock, site of an ancient palace and rock fortress. It’s essentially a smaller version of Ayer’s Rock. I won’t bore you with the historical details of this site (here’s the Wiki) but back then, we needed some help. We were introduced to a guide (it’s terrible but I can’t recall his name now) who informed us that there were a couple of thousand steps to climb to get to the top of the rock, but first, we’d need tickets.

As we were not visiting the other two main ancient sites to really benefit from the Cultural Triangle pass, we paid for individual site entry fee. It was a whooping US$25 per person. No such thing as a couple of thousand rupees entry fee for us. This would not be an unique experience since we would encounter this practice one place after another. While we understood the premise of charging foreign visitors a price they could afford (I mean, if you’re going to fly all the way to Sri Lanka, then you are relatively well-off in comparison to most locals), we felt the prices could be made somewhat more reasonable. Afterall, plenty of (young) travellers nowadays would still have to scrimp and save to get there.

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Ceylonese Tales

When Eve announced that she was getting married and the wedding would be held in Sri Lanka, I was all one big ball of excitement. A chance to see a new country, a chance to indulge in Sri Lankan cuisine, a chance to experience traditional Sri Lankan wedding not to mention other cultural gems – what else can a girl ask for? Travel partner? Check – Claire has agreed to go on a roadtrip with me. Oh yes, we were all set.

Errr, let’s paddle back a little.

Honestly, we were not terrible well-prepared. Sure, we coordinated our dates, we roughly planned our route and we booked our flights. That was about it. Even on the day prior to departure, we had not a clue how we were going to get around (there was vague idea to hire a car) nor have we any accommodation booked, save for the few nights in Colombo when the wedding was due to take place. You know at this rate, we were in for an adventure.

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Luckily, Pras came to our rescue. As we had only about a week on the road before settling in Colombo, our best bet for travelling would not be on the mercy of public transports that might take us forever to get from one place to another. At the same time, driving some place where the rules of the road were unfamiliar to us (well, mostly Claire, since I don’t drive although I could read map!) was not a good idea either. Pras contacted a driver with a van for us, so for our trip, we now have a chauffeured vehicle. Super handy. No slugging bags everywhere, no jumping onto oncoming buses, just freedom to go anywhere we wanted.

We managed to cover quite a good part of the island despite the chronically sluggish driving speed. What distance that could normally be reached within an hour in developped country would take 2-3 times longer here. Not that we were in great hurry, since that gave us a chance to enjoy the view along the route, but it did make time estimation rather tricky. Especially when we were aiming to be in certain city at certain time. We were pretty much always arriving later than we thought we would be.

We toured the southern half of the island, although I wish we had had more time so we could have explored more. Two most notable sites that we couldn’t fit in our schedule are the ancient cities of Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura. They lie just too far up north for our schedule and time constraint. We also missed Adam’s Peak further south…

In the next few posts, I’ll try my best to relive my Ceylonese Odyssey, the good and the bad. Well, not exactly bad, but definitely a small few misadventures here and there. For now, I leave you with a set of “portraits” I’ve shot during my trip. Have a good weekend y’all!

 

All posts in this series:
Sri Lanka: Ceylonese Tales
Sri Lanka: Trekking Sigiriya | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Cave temples of Dambulla | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Cultural evening in Kandy | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: We sort of saw Nuwara Eliya… | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Morning hike at Horton Plains | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: A room with a view in Ella | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Tissa, Yala and safari | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: The southern coast | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: The old fort of Galle | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Roadtrip ended in Colombo | Flickr Photoset


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