Tutto il mondo è paese

Sri Lanka is the land of kind people surrounded by beautiful hills, warm ocean and endless tea plantations together with spices, curry, banana’s combined with monkeys, elephants and whales.  And not to forget all the history and beautiful temples

In October 2018 we spent just over 10 days with a group of friends in the beautiful country of Sri Lanka. Our itinerary unfortunately did not cover all highly recommended spots but we saw enough to want to go back!

Negombo:

A little town north of the airport famous for.. being close to the airport and much less hectic and traffic prone than Colombo. It is handy as a destination when you arrive or just when you’re about to leave; there is not too much to see but it is also much more relaxed than Colombo. Some tips: rent a bike for a couple of hours and cycle to the fish market and around town; check out Zen Cafe (great coffee and cake, cheap) and definitely go to the beach around sunset – those were some of the most beautiful sunset colours I’ve seen.

If you’re looking for a hotel, we liked ours: Christima Residence (low to midrange with a nice pool area; rooms are basic but clean).

Colombo

As most guides say, the city doesn’t offer a lot to do or see. Probably a day suffices. Check out the temples Seema Malakaya (beautiful temple on the lake) and Gangaramaya Temple (if you’re lucky, you can spot a praying elephant!). From there you can head to  Viharamahadevi Park and stroll a bit towards Galle Green. The Pettah area and market are worth seeing

From Colombo you can head inland north or head south to Galle. We started off with heading north to Dambulla 

Dambulla caves

We would highly recommend to visit the five caves with 150 Buddha statues. It’s really cool and probably one of the highlights of our trip! Plus there were lots of monkeys to observe 

Sigiriya rock is another top sight location, however it was raining a lot so we couldn’t visit. 

Polonnaruwa

Polonnaruwa offers ancient temples. It is good to rent bikes as the location is rather big (as always, try negotiating on price; we paid 2.5k for 4 bikes and probably we could have gotten it cheaper). Be careful for the monkeys in there – compared to other locations in Sri Lanka, these ones were bigger and more aggressive. Polonnaruwa itself was interesting, though not comparable to some similar sites – perhaps one of the issues was that there is simply not enough information on display to tell you what you’re seeing.

Village ‘safari’

Our driver then offered a touristy but nice experience – namely the village safari. We were first taken on a oxen carriage, then on a small boat through a beautiful lake to arrive in the jungle forest to a small ‘village’ where they showed us how they used to cook traditional meals. It’s not comparable to a cook class as you do practically nothing yourself (we do recommend during a separate cooking class – it’s offered in most touristy towns), but there was a specific charm to the village safari, not to mention that the food was simply delicious!

Elephants @ Jeep safari

If you’re also in the area of Dambulla, you can check out the jeep safari trips either at Kaudulla national park (which is what we did and we saw 100+ elephants!) or at Mineriya national park. Price for Kaudulla was 40 dollars pp for two or 30 dollars pp for four (incl jeep, driver, entrance and pickup; excl tip). I would definitely recommend this! However, I am not sure how these parks compare to the more famous Yala national park located in the south of Sri Lanka (though I doubt it could offer more sights of elephants)

In terms of what to use as your base of visiting the above mentioned locations, I am not sure where is the best place (ie Habarana, Sigiriya or Dambulla). We personally stayed at Habarana, ; the towns are more the location to get to, not really a place to sight-see (as there’s nothing to see 🙂

Herbal tour

Another one of the typical tourist ‘traps’. In our experience this was not something special and we would have easily skipped it. It seems most drivers need to stop you there for commission. The tour itself is ‘free’ but you are very highly encouraged to purchase some overpriced things from their store.

Kandy 

We stayed one night there up in the hills at the Skyloft hotel, which quite difficult to reach. Main attraction is Natha Devalaya, the so-called Temple of the Tooth.

In the city you can also attend a local dance show (recommend!); it’s around an hour for 1000 ruppes. This one finished off with the dancers walking on fire, which reminded me of the traditional Bulgarian nestinari

Train ride 

Many people then take the train from Kandy to Ella for the scenery (takes around 7hrs; second class was perfect, there’s a toilet and two rows of two seats each). We had a driver so on his advice we drove to Nuwara Eliya and from there took the train to Ella which took around 2.5hrs.

This allowed us to see the Ramboda waterfalls (beautiful), stop at a tea plantation, stop and eat at Hela Bojun (traditional food court with lots of traditional delicious meals sold at very cheap prices), visit Nuwara Eliya (interesting to see the huge influence of the Brits / Scots – part of the city has old traditional Scottish cottages and English style parks and the rest is typical chaotic Sri Lankan style).

Ella

Ella is a rather touristic destination (the most touristic from all we’ve seen) with a main street full of bars and restaurants targeting Westerners. We stayed at the Ella Nature View hotel, basic hotel with the best view you can imagine across the tropical/tea hills and an amazing waterfall. You can eat curd with honey (definitely do so!), go to the Nine Arch Bridge or find a spot to observe it when a train is coming by (eg we stayed at Asanka caffee). Little Adam’s Peak is also close by which offers beautiful views after a light hike as well as the Ravana Falls where next to the waterfall, it is also very interesting to observe all the monkeys eating their breakfast and locals taking a shower at the waterfall.

You can also take part in a cooking class (this is offered not only at Ella, but in most touristy towns). We paid 2000 pp for seven curries after some negotiating. It was super tasty and I even bought a coconut machine to try to do this at home (hmm..)

Mirissa

Mirissa is a nice little beach town, famous for wheel watching (not something we did). It is quite touristy (though we were just in the start of the tourist season). We suggest you try to stay close to the beach, there are plenty of guesthouses in the neighbourhood. As mentioned, we were just before the tourist season so I am not sure if it doesn’t get too crowded

We ate at Zephyr, probably one of the nicer ones and the most Western hipster restaurants (which after 10 days in Sri Lanka was refreshing). Ask for the catch of the day or wait until 6pm when they put it outside for you to see.

Galle

One of the last places we visited was Galle, a charming ‘Western’ city in the south part of the island. It is famous for its Dutch port and cute European-style small streets. However, if you’re looking for true Sri Lankan experience, best to focus on other parts of the country.

On our way from Galle to Colombo we also visited a turtle rescue center (apparently there are many of these rescue centers for turtles and elephants), as well as an interesting mask museum (where as with many other similar places you get a free tour and you’re highly encouraged to buy something; check out the bottles on the working tables). There are also many ayurvedic massage spots. We actually had a massage in Ella and we’d definitely recommend trying it out somewhere in the country.

Food is super tasty!

The most traditional thing is rice & curry (eg coconut sambal, aubergine, green beans, pumpkin, daal, mango curry, bamia). After our cooking class I might have gotten overenthusiastic and purchased quite some spices as well as a coconut machine, let’s see if I’ll ever get to use them.

Some other popular treats are rotti (with coconut); kotthu (broken rotti with food); curd with ‘honey’; devilish chicken (didn’t try but we heard it’s quite devilish); rise flour pancakes; dosa; aluwa.

General observations:

• There are stray dogs everywhere though they appear somewhat lazy (perhaps because of the heat). At some point we even played a game of who will not spot a stray dog for 5 seconds first (it took some time before someone won). Next to that there are lots of monkeys, most of which are uninterested in humans. At some locations however they are 
• Internet is unreliable but you will always find a place with wifi (just often not strong enough); some tourists get a 
• Going with a driver: recommend it; we used A4 tours with Susanta as a driver. We got a very big car seating 10 plus driver which made the trip very comfortable as we did a lot in a week. Price was 350 dollars for 5 nights, 6 days excl tip; we added an extra day and night for 80
• Negotiating for prices: don’t shy away from negotiating the prices; use common sense – for some things you can half the price, for many things you can get around 15-20% off
• PickMe: very useful app comparable to uber especially for Colombo or Negombo. We drove in a mini car for 2200 ruppes from Negombo to Colombo (plus 300 toll road) while for example another driver asked 25 dollars (or around 4250)
• Visas: you would need a visa to enter Sri Lanka; it’s super easy to arrange; check out this link  

And to finish off this post, here are some more photos from the beautiful land