Tangalle —> Udawalawe National Park

Loudly awoken by the sound of a watery plop from next door... oh the joys of thin walls and shared hatched roofs! Sounds like the Spanish girl had the shits! Some more funny noises and a deep sigh and it was over. We managed to grab an hour or so more sleep and then got up and ready so we could head to Udalalawe National Park. We got on the road and decided to take a more scenic less main road route to Udawalawe, turned out to be a good call and we went through some beautiful scenery in the lowlands...mainly rice paddies. We were trying to get to a couple of waterfalls and ended up driving into the arse end of nowhere only to not find them or anyone who spoke a word of English to help us find them. We managed to attract a weird group of people who didn’t want to leave us alone and perused us in their Tuktuk. Just a few kilometres outside of Udalalawe we decided to grab a bit of lunch, we wanted something small so we got rice and dhal. The place we went said we could have bowls of dhal for 35 rupees each (14p) so we got one each and some rice. When leaving, Tom also wanted a roti for 30. So we were expecting a bill of around 120 rupees all included (50p). But they tried it on and wanted to charge 450 rupees as apparently rice cost 200 each!!! We flat out refused that logic and tried to hand over 120, but this was met with disgust and they told us to leave...so we did. Free lunch then :)

Fortunately we got to Udawalawe without anyone chasing us with, Tom doing a stellar job of driving. We got to Greenwood Safari Accommodation which was right on the border of the national park and we’d heard good things from Sophia the previous day about the safari and the owner of the accommodation. The ‘rooms’ in this place were cool as they were just large beds outside under a sheet metal roof with a mozzy net to cover you...it was amazing to hear all the sounds grow and grow through the night. We immediately confirmed the safari booking for the following morning and then we got a short history lesson on pretty much everything to do with Sri Lanka from the owner...he was such a patriot and also a researcher so knew a lot. We asked him if there were any other things to do, he suggested a temple and sent us on a treasure hunt for some ‘artefacts’. However he didn’t give us any clue but he asked us to bring back pics. We found nothing he talked about and ended up just climbing a boiling hot black rock. He seemed surprised when we couldn’t find the buddhas foot or some other stuff. He then started on about some Sri Lankan conspiracy about a mercury powered vortex plane from 8000 years ago. We were a bit sceptical so did some googling, turns out that he was so convinced that this existed but it was some myth...unbelievable.

Anyway, It was time to have a look at our plan, turns out we’d heard mixed things about Aragum Bay, so we moved some other things around so we could have a bit more time in Ella and also add in Polonnaurawa, an ancient city near Sigiriya. After shifting some things around, we needed to get some sleep as we had to be up early for the safari!Read more