Our Sri Lanka's where and what
- vathsanclan
- Jul 18, 2017
- 4 min read
Before I met Vathsan I did some traveling on my own and he did his decent few years of Asian backpacking as well. Over these few years of travel experience we've learned how to slow down, let go some destinations, not necessarily try to chase places but stay more focused on what is there to do in the area,try to fully explore it instead of trying to cover the whole country. With kids, we even took this whole " slow down process" to a higher level. But in Sri Lanka we were struggling. We knew, it's better to spend more time doing things than actually sitting on a train/ bus to reach places, but we were not that good in calculating properly time of travel + amounts of km. So first few times when we were trying to go from place A to B we were quite surprised how the journey was eating up majority of our days. It took us some time to figure out more efficient way of travel, shift departures more towards early mornings or evenings. try to cover shorter distances etc. Obviously, the most efficient way of fixing such a problem is to take a look at the map, pick up your guidebook and instead of listing highlights you want to visit, downsize your list a bit and start ticking boxes of where you shouldn't be going because is too far and you won't have enough time to make it. We did some compromises, there was more things that we wanted to do, and traveling kids free first time in 5 years was a great excuse, so we ended up chasing a bit. Here is a short list of places and highlights we managed to squeeze into that 10 days only adventure : - Colombo - we arrived here but did not explore the city, went straight to the train station - Ella - I chose this place because I really wanted to see the Hill -Country. Ella was a nice village and a good spot to visit tea plantations. We ended up not hiking much, we went there for only few walks. The nearest real hike was to climb Adam's Peak but it was significantly colder there and people whom I spoke to, all complained that they couldn't see much because of the fog... Taking train to get to and from Ella was really picturesque.
- Polonaruwa - ancient bricks and Buddhas. By default I am more into nature than monuments so we went there rather because Mira and Lukas were interested, which taught me a good lesson of always giving it a go, because exploring Polonaruwa turned out great! We got to rent our bikes for the whole day and slowly ( because it was really hot ) cycle around those spacious ruins. Around sunset we wondered off somewhere more towards national park and still saw many monkeys dears and even one or two elephants.
Trincomalee - Nilaveli - Because of the season, the east coast was the place to go. We wanted to get all lazy and try to catch some beach - dive - snorkel - play in water time. And drink that silly cocktail with a little umbrella in the nearest resort : ) We also tried our luck and hopped on a whale watching boat but only spotted some dolphins instead.
Sigiriya - Minneriya Park - Elephants!
I wanted to go on a jeep safari trip where you can see the animals in their environment. We decided to go to Sigriya because geographically it was already in the area and similar to Polonaruwa there was some historical sightseeing that you could explore on the bikes. It was a good way of spending time especially since the safari was only in the afternoon around 2pm. As we were finishing with the ruins and getting ready to head to national park, I saw an elephant being washed in the local river. Came closer to have a look and got invited to hop in to the water. Which I did! The elephant was being washed as he was about to attend soon some ceremony so he needed to be all squeaky clean for the event. Luckily for me I got to hang out with him, touch his incredibly soft trunk and even gave it a go by washing him with a piece of coconut shell! I was so happy I got a chance to come so close and interact with such a huge animal! Later on, safari was quite exciting as we were witnessing something called the gathering. This is when during the dry season from May to October, the water levels in the park's reservoir begin to drop exposing fresh shoots of grass on which the elephants like to feed. Huge amounts of wild elephants from all over the North Central Province of Sri Lanka ‘gather’ at the tank to socialize, bathe, feed and possibly mate.
Witnessing the gathering was absolutely great but it's always hard to judge how much such a jeep safari is eco friendly and ethical. There was quite few jeeps and people watching the gathering at the same time not to mention the general engine background noise that was always there during our visit.
Colombo - only few hours again! we were going to the airport and only had short time to see couple of temples like Gangaramaya. We did love the idea of a big tree growing in it.
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