Hello all, just about getting used to Sri Lankan life so we thought we better let you know what we’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks:

Colombo
We arrived at the Airport at about 12.30am – possibly the worst time to arrive as all of the buses had stopped running so we had to pay a fortune to get to Colombo. As it turned out we decided we didn’t like Colombo after spending 7 hours there (6 of which we were sleeping!!) so we left first thing in the morning on the next bus to Kandy. I would try and make it sound interesting but it wasn’t!

Kandy
Trying to do as the locals do we got on a government bus for our first journey inland – if you think the buses at home are bad you should try these things, about 50 people crammed onto a 20 seater bus, not good! But after a turbulent 4 hours we arrived in Kandy.

To be honest we didn’t do very much in Kandy except apply for our Indian Visa and climb a hill to see the big Buddha on top. There was a great snack bar though, pretty much what we lived off for our entire stay there!!!

We got conned into going to watch a Kandyan Dance performance – I say conned as the guy said there were going to be baby elephants all dressed up and for some daft reason we believed him! Doing what any good traveller does we started listening to what people were saying about their time in Sri Lanka and one guy was saying how Anuradhapura was the most amazing place on the island, so we decided to head up there and have a look!

Anuradhapura
Public transport was starting to make a bit more sense now, basically run on and dive onto a seat or you’ll be stood up for 6 hours with a heavy backpack – with this knowledge in mind we decided to treat ourselves and get a private air conditioned minibus for this 6 hour journey (costing the whole of about £1.20) and away we went.

After a good nights sleep we decided to take a few tuk tuk’s around all of the temples and Dagoba’s because we figured we’d more than likely get lost, but as it turned out we were in no better position as the ‘drivers’ didn’t have much clue either!! Our first stop was the holiest tree in Sri Lanka (It was a cutting from the tree where Buddha found enlightenment), but as always me and Jon turn up as they are doing construction work (happened loads on honeymoon!) – Not the most exciting of places if you weren’t Buddhist… Ah well.

From here we decided it would be a good idea to walk to the next Dagoba, it was not. As you all probably know, me and walking in the heat don’t mix to well and after half an hour of trying to find out where the hell we were going I was not in the best of moods! To make matters worse after all this buggering around we sat down to have a fag, looked up and the damn Dagoba was on the other side of the field!!!

The Dagoba was pretty cool and had some really good statues dotted around at the front, plus life sized elephant statues the whole way round the outside wall (would have taken a picture to show you all but funnily enough they were stripping and re-painting them!!! Grrr…)

The last stop was another temple, a guy showed us around and explained the significance of the carvings and statues, for a small fee of course, and we basically just wandered around for a while trying to understand what he was saying!

All in all, Anuradhapura was not the most exciting of places and the next time we hear someone saying they have found the most amazing place in a Country, we’ll read up on it first!!

Sigiriya
This was something we were both looking forward to when we were reading up on Sri Lanka at home. It’s a huge rock in the middle of nowhere which was used, amongst other things, as a sort of palace/defence. Getting to Sigiriya was easy on the wonderful Government buses and we arrived just in time for some lunch – still being cheap we walked across the road to where the locals seem to eat and met a really nice group of blokes who were playing a board game, almost like pool, where you flicked plastic and wooden chips to get them into the side pockets. This may not sound very interesting but after a week and a bit of not doing very much it was like Disney Land for a 3 year old! They invited Jon to have a few games with them and he actually managed to get four of the little chips in (mind you, only two were for his team!! he he). Anyway, fun-time was over and we had a big old rock to climb so off we set (in the wrong direction of course, so we had to get a tuk tuk back to the right place!)

It was mid-afternoon by the time we had found the entrance, paid, dodged the touts and started to climb – should say it’s probably not the best time of day as it’s till really hot (most people climb in the morning to avoid this!) but determined to make it we started the ascent! As I have already said I don’t like walking around in the heat so you can imagine what it was like climbing up a great big rock, but luckily we found a few shaded shots to relax and cool down in every now and again.

There were a couple of spiral staircases that took you up the side of the rock to where the ancient cave paintings of the King’s concubines were (the one’s you see in all of the Sri Lankan travel guides) – There were originally about 500 of them but after a few centuries of wear and tear and then some maniac ruining a load of them there are only about 6 left…

After more climbing we reached the famous Lion’s Gate, 2 rocks that had been carved into the shape of Lion’s paws, but due to our usual luck one of them was being repaired so no photos!

Once you went through the Lion’s paws you go up some dodgy steps bolted onto the edge of the rock face, it didn’t take much longer to reach the top where there were the remains of the Palace’s Gardens which looked really cool in the late afternoon sun. We stayed up there for about half an hour admiring the views and relaxing before making our way back down again just before the sun set.

Adam’s Peak
After advice from some other travellers we’d met we made the decision to climb Adam’s Peak – not a decision to be taken lightly as you’ll see from the photos! (Thankfully we didn’t know quite how big this climb was until afterwards otherwise I would have chickened out!)

We started the walk at 2am, got blessed by a monk and the got a spot in the middle of our heads from another guy (as one does!). At first it didn’t seem too bad, that was until you looked at the lights showing you the way to the top, and after seeing that we decided to stop for the most sugary tea ever created. I won’t bore you with the many stops we had to take or how difficult the climb got, but after 3 and a half hours of climbing ridiculously steep steps we made it to the top before sunrise.

Unfortunately it is the middle of the pilgrimage season so you could barely more at the ‘peak’ so we decided to start walking back down and watch the sunrise from a less crowded spot!

For some reason I had it in my head that we were only climbing up this mountain and the thought of climbing back down had never occurred to me – needless to say I did not enjoy it… Jon, a fantastic husband as always, tried to comfort me during my continuous paddy and we eventually made it back down. My legs were f’ed, if you’ll excuse my French; I couldn’t even walk let alone carry a great big backpack so poor Jon offered to carry two!

Kandy
My legs recovered after two whole days of doing nothing in Kandy… We left Kandy as soon as we got our Indian Visa as there’s not that much to do there!

Nuwara Eliya
A few people told us not to go to Nuwara Eliya as it was probably the grottiest little town in Sri Lanka – but kind of essential if you wanted to see the tea plantations in the hill country so we didn’t have much choice!

That night was utter hell… The hotel next to us were throwing a Valentines Party, which doesn’t sound like a bad thing until you’ve heard ‘Red, red wine’ on loop for about 20 minutes with some half assed DJ trying to scratch over the top of it – I used to like that tune but I’d be happy if I never heard it ever again!!

To cut a long, and not very interesting, story short we went to a plantation which was cool and then left on the first bus to the south coast!

Matara
After another horrible 7 hour bus journey we decided to get Matara over and done with in one day so hired a driver to take us to a temple we had seen on TV, the one reason we had come here. The sculptures were really interesting but as the guide book suggests it is more like an airport terminal than a temple!

The guesthouse we stayed in cooked us the best meal we’d had in Sri Lanka – Calamari with tomatoes and onion with vegetable fried rice – absolutely beautiful. Not enough to keep us in Matara though so we set of for the beach the next morning (during the final day of the local government elections, which if you know much about what goes on here, not the best time to leave your hotel!!)

Mirissa
Our current position on the map; Mirissa is a tiny village but is classed as having one of the best beaches in Sri Lanka, so we’ve been sitting on it for a couple of days! Jon, as always, is getting a ridiculous tan and I am a strange off pink colour, mainly because I can’t handle the heat and sit under bushes all day!

Well guys, hopefully that didn’t bore you all too much and hope you enjoy the piccies. Will post another blog in a couple of weeks and then we’re off to India!!!

Lots of love,
Kim and Jon