When Claire and I decided to start travelling from Colombo to Dambulla, we missed out on travelling along the scenic Colombo-Kandy Road. Luckily though, we did get to see a part of the route, thanks to our trip to the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage from Kandy. The spectacular views of hills and valleys entertained us for the duration of the drive (about 90 minutes for 50km or so – yes, traffic moves slooooow here).

One of the most striking sights was the Batalegala Rock, standing solidly at nearly 800m tall, which is not unlike the Sigiriya Rock which we climbed just yesterday. Nicknamed the Bible Rock (something about resemblance to an open book), it was shrouded by thin layer of mist, giving it an aura of mystery and intrigue. I heard it could be scaled by those interested in mountaineering. Well, good luck!

I am torn between writing lengthy posts of my trip in Sri Lanka and keeping these daily Project 365 entries short as usual. Perhaps it would be best that I write on the trip fully as separate stand alone travel articles, where I would have more photos to go with the entries too. Sounds like an idea?

There are quite a lot of monkeys running around at the Dambulla Cave Temple complex where Claire and I spent our second afternoon in Sri Lanka. They are constantly on the move, some even involved in play (that looks more like fighting – they don’t play nice), and a few of them constantly checking out new food sources. By that, I mean the flowers offered by the visiting pilgrims. They keep sneaking in and out of the caves, and quickly swiped fresh flowers off the table to take away for a snack. Very cheeky indeed.

First, there was a technical error with our plane. Then I missed my connection flight. By the time I arrived in Colombo, I was about five hours behind the original schedule. My friend Claire flew in from London to meet me there. Luckily (sort of) she had her share of flight delay too. We ended up arriving less than an hour apart, pretty much adhering to our initial plan, except we both arrived in the afternoon instead of the morning.

It hard to believe that I’m in Sri Lanka. Hot and relatively humid weather hit me at once, not unlike the conditions in Malaysia. Eager to get going, we spotted our hired driver for the week and instructed him to start making our way to Dambulla, some 150km away. The journey would be taking us some 4 hours on the road, if not more. That’s just how things are. And we have this little elephant talisman on the van’s dashboard to keep us away from harm.

Let the week-long adventure begins!