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George Fisher
George Fisher

George Fisher

traveled in 3 countries Read more
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  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    11

    Dolphin Watching in Kalpitiya

    February 3, 2020, Gulf of Mannar ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    We awoke at 630, and we still hadn’t heard anything from the guy who was going to be taking us on the dolphin trip today...as we only had today to do it we were starting to get a little anxious that we may miss our chance to do it. By 7 o’clock we were speaking to the owner of the guesthouse about arranging it with another person, but it was almost as if he could hear us saying this as he turned up just after this conversation. He apologised for not responding to our messages as he was night fishing- even though I sent him 3 messages throughout the day yesterday...? A little annoyed at the shocking communication we eventually got onto the boat with 2 crew members, (because in Sri Lanka they have to have double the number of staff to do a job) and set off for the trip, making a stop off at a very unofficial looking office to pay for the park tickets of $9. The sea was a little rough and our driver was hitting pretty much every wave hard! Tom was sat on the right of the boat and I was on the left. Each wave splashed Tom with water, so he was soaked whilst I remained nice and dry! We eventually saw in the distance a few boats and our driver told us that this is where the dolphins were, and then we started to be able to see all the splashes that the dolphins were making and I got very excited to see them up close! Before long our boat was in the area where a pod of 10,000 spinner dolphins were!! 10,000!!! Different groups of dolphins would surface, play around and then dive back down to get more food so we didn’t move our boat too much we just waited for dolphins to come to us, which wasn’t exactly difficult with so many around. It’s difficult to put it into words how incredible the experience was. Tom and I both sat at the front of the boat with our legs in the water as dolphins swam just feet away from us, we could almost touch them they were that close.

    We stayed for around 2 hours, having seen a crazy amount of dolphin before heading back to our place. We were pretty hungry so decided to take the push-bikes that the guesthouse allowed us to take for free and went on the hunt to find some food. We found some little snacks and I even grabbed some instant noodles to have back at the place and we had a stupid argument over literally nothing....perhaps we had spent too much time together coupled with some early starts, so we decided to have a few hours separate and have some solo time to ourselves on the beach. I went across to a deserted beach which was cut off by the incoming sea, so had to walk through deep water to get to it I chilled here for a bit reading my book which I was eager to finish before heading to India. After a few hours we come back together, showered and got ready and made our way into town in Greta. However, Greta was struggling as she didn’t have much fuel left at all. We found the fuel station and literally as we were pulling in the engine cut out! Talk about perfect timing and place to run out of fuel! We filled up on fuel and went deeper into the town where we found a local restaurant. We both got a Kottu, which was great and then we made our way back where we chilled out and packed our stuff up to leave tomorrow.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Flip flop disaster

    Day in Kalpitiya

    February 2, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    I was up nice and early to take the Danish guy to the bus station. The accommodation owner had said that he would organise the lift but as usual, they were totally out of contact. We set off and he was asking questions about the tuktuk, if it was difficult to drive, any mechanical issues, etc etc. I dropped him off and he wished us well for India as he has travelled there extensively in the past and had given us some great tips. I got back to the accommodation to find Tom up and brushing his teeth, kindly opening the gates for me. As we were both up early, we decided that we would go and check out Kalpitiya town, about 8km away. Today was Sunday - not that we had any idea - and there was loads of church goers near our accommodation, we got through them and headed to town. When we got there we discovered everything was shut...even the bakeries. We couldn’t believe it, so we went to check out the old Dutch fort. However, this was now part of the army barracks so we couldn’t even get close to it. As there wasn’t anything going on, we decided to head to a separate part of the coast and went for Kudawa Beach.

    Compared to yesterday, this was a big long beach with larger waves. We set up camp and chilled out for a bit with the occasional dip in the ocean. After an hour or so, we went for a long walk on the beach taking in the scenery and thinking of our next trip to India and how we’d had a fair bit of beach time in Sri Lanka that we’d maybe re-look at how much time we’d spend in Goa. Anyway, we turned back and went back to our stuff. On the way back we looked ahead, and it looked like a group of people were going through all our stuff - we had our phones and wallets with us - but we were now walking back much quicker. We got closer and closer and it did look like they were at our stuff, but it turned out to be one of the group crouching down to undo her sandals...we now both felt bad about judging them. We went for a little snorkel around and found a few big crabs, but it wasn’t that good for snorkelling here. Tom wanted to go and get a drink and a roti at one of the nearby kitesurfing resorts, as we looked around we saw that CocaCola was 200 rupees!! We left and went a bit inland for a better deal, but the next place we asked they were still 150 rupees, we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it as we got one he other night for 50 rupees. We left disappointed and went back to the Tuktuk to go back to our place for a chill, via a local shop where we got a massive bottle of CocaCola for 150 rupees...bargain!! We then decided to go back to our dinner place from last night to see if they had any roti, but no luck. Instead they sent us down the road to another woman (who was so moody and didn’t have change for the equivalent of 10 pence) to get the roti. On the way we were in a standoff with an aggressive looking dog which was barking at us...but it soon backed off when I aimed the Tuktuk at it to scare it...Tom was also ready with the bottle. We spend most of the afternoon chilling out, reading and listening to music in the peaceful surroundings of our Wadiya.

    Just before sunset we wanted to try and get further west onto, what looked like, an untouched beach. We took the cycle bikes from the accommodation to get there. What we didn’t think through was that we had to go the same way as the aggressive dog from earlier. We got close to where it was before and it was there, stood in the middle of the road barking like a lunatic at us even though we were a good 50 yards away. I said to Tom that we would just have to go through it, but with feet at the ready to kick out if needed, but best to just cycle through fast. I went first as the dog went down an alley to the right, still making a load of noise. As I went past I looked down the alley, this thing was sprinting back up with its mates all as aggressive as the instigator. Tom was about 15 yards behind and by the time he was opposite the alley the dogs burst out onto the main road and were snapping at his heels - truly a scary moment, but we got though unscathed. We carried on for a bit until reaching the end of the track and due to the tide being high, we couldn’t get to our sunset point. We tried to go round and somehow ended up going past a set of kids who began to throw cow poo at us...the little shits...and kind of a pointless thing to do as they now had cow shit on their hands and we had none on us. Our quest for the sunset had been a disaster and we still had to go back through the dog zone! Tom was certain we were getting attacked because we were white, I thought that was ridiculous but it could be true - who knew, maybe they were racist dogs. Anyway, we were lucky and got back without another attack and we just decided to go to the boardwalk for the sunset, which actually turned out to be quite nice.

    Earlier in the day we had a message from Jennie. It was three years to the day that I lost my flip flop off a pier in Port Lincoln in north east Australia and a fisherman got it out with his line and hook. On this boardwalk in Sri Lanka I dropped on flip flop and the wind took it right off into the water. I then put the other down to go into the water, I put the other one down to get the other and that blew off too!! February 2nd must be cursed for me and my footwear. I went in and it was the same slimy sludge as the day before when we crossed to the beach, not a good sensation, but I managed to get them both back. After the sunset, we needed food, so we headed up to last nights spot but disaster, it was shut. With nothing else around, we had to jump in the Tuktuk for a search. Like at lunch, everything was way overpriced (wanting 600 rupees for veggie rice). Instead, we went to the local shop from earlier and got a range of things, noodles, spicy sweet potato crisps, biscuits and a sweet cake. We took it back to our place and had a little picnic accompanied by a cup of tea. We organised some stuff and sent some messages to the dolphin watching man to confirm about our trip tomorrow morning, but we didn’t get an answer so we went to bed hoping to see dolphins in the morning.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    1
    11

    Mihintale —> Kalpitiya

    February 1, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    Up and out by 730, today we were going to check out the Mihinthale ruins, which we had heard were for the most part free of charge, apart from the main ones where it was 500. We parked our TukTuk at the parking area at the top and the man from the shop last night who tried to sell us a tour popped his head through the TukTuk...to get rid of him last night I had told him we were coming up for sunrise, he obviously knew now we were lying. We politely got rid of him again and walked to the big pagoda that sat on the top of a huge boulder that you could see from the town. On our walk there we were being whistled at, the whistles were of course coming from the direction of a ticket office. After checking out the map, we went over to the ticket office where they demanded 1,000 (not 500), we contemplated whether or not we actually wanted to see the ruins all that much (we would be in Hampi, India in 2 weeks time), and we decided not really, however as we were chatting a few Sri Lankan tourists walked in completely free of charge... this infuriated me as I said why don’t they need a ticket, the guy said that they would make a donation at the top. I asked if I could make a donation and he said it wasn’t allowed, so we left. We checked out one of the ruins that was free to enter on the way back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel we were met by the owner, who looked a bit confused at how quickly we had done the ruins, so we just told him a white lie that we were going to do them on the way out of town and we’re just grabbing some breakfast..

    We packed up and checked out, and said goodbye our host who asked where we were staying tonight. The place in Kalpitiya was called Dolphin Wadiya. He promptly gave us a definition of what Wadiya meant - it describes an old fashioned fishermen’s hut made up of sticks and palm leaves for the walls and roof. We thought that was quite cool, so we we made our way to the West coast excited to stay at our Wadiya in Kalpitiya! I was driving today and it was 140km to our accommodation. About half an hour in I catapulted Tom forwards in the Tuktuk as I slammed the brakes on...I’d spotted a food stall at the side of the road that appeared to be selling donuts. Tom got out an asked the lady for 2 of the “donuts”, they were 15 rupees each! We ate them and they were delicious, not sweet but instead filled with vegetables and chilli...shortly after finishing them Tom went back to the lady and got 2 more...she found it funny how quickly we’d decided to get more! After about 100km we reached the coastal town of Puttalam, where we stopped and grabbed some lunch. We shared a Kottu and a veggie fried rice, was delicious and only 300, total!

    We eventually arrived at our accommodation at midday where we would be spending the next three nights. The check-in process was unusual, and by unusual I mean there wasn’t one really....we ended up milling around for 20 minutes chatting to a Danish and Canadian guy who were staying at our place, but after nobody turned up to check us in we left our stuff in the TukTuk and walked to the beach. Our accommodation was positioned on the edge of a lagoon and a shortcut for us to get to the beach was to walk through the shallow waters of the lagoon...after taking about 3 steps we discovered it was not sand under our feet but silty sludge - erghhh! We even tried to put our flip flops back on to walk through without feeling the disgusting slime oozing between our toes, but that didn’t quite work as the sludge became thicker and our flip flops started to get stuck! I took my flip flops off and made a run for it, Tom tried to do the same but one of his was wedged into the sludge and all of a sudden he felt a nibble on his ankle...after the story the Danish guy had just told us about him getting stung by some creature in the lagoon earlier on, Tom made a run for it, abandoning the flip flop in the sludge. When he got to the sand, it floated back up to the surface and he now had to retrieve it as I pointed out it was actually my flip flop I was wearing!

    We enjoyed the beach for a few hours, playing around in the waves and sand and watching the kite surfers do their thing (Kalpitiya was a hot spot for kite surfing). We then thought we would head back to try and check-in, it was around 4pm now so surely somebody would be back...wrong. Nobody was there still so Tom made a few phone calls and eventually one of the managers turned up and made up our room. We showered and chilled out for a little while and then went to watch the sunset at the bottom of the garden at the guesthouse that was right on the lagoon, the sunset was okay so we made our way back to our room to get ready to go for dinner. Twenty minutes later I shouted for Tom to come back outside, the sky had turned a deep shade of red as the sun was fully setting now. We made our way round the back of the property where the fishermen kept their boats and watch the sun completely disappear until we were surrounded by darkness. It was now time for food! The Danish guy had told us about a little place just a 2 minute walk away, so we decided to check that out.... we arrived and were greeted by a friendly middle aged man and woman, they owned this very local restaurant that doubled up as a shop. We ordered two vegetable curry and rice and waited for them to finish making the curry before the woman served us with a HUGE portion of rice and 4 curries. Tom and I are very similar with how we eat our food, always starting with the dish that looks worse and finishing with what looks best...we started off eating the green bean curry and the dhal and when we had both finished those two curries the woman took the bowls away and filled them up! This was amazing, it was all you can eat for 250, and it was amazing food too! Completely stuffed, we paid up and waddled back to Dolphin Wadiya where we played cards (shithead obviously), and also counted how much money we had left and knew that we would be fine for the rest of Sri Lanka with the amount of money we had...which shows how cheap Sri Lanka is as we only would have £14 left after accommodation and the dolphin watching tour we had planned was paid for. I had agreed to take the Danish guy who was staying at our place to the bus stop tomorrow early, as his TukTuk has let him down so we decided to get an early night.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler

    Nilaveli —> Mihintale

    January 31, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    As it was our last day in Nilaveli we both decided last night that we were going to wake up and see the sunrise over the ocean, as the east coast is perfect for that. We crawled out of our beach cabana at 6:15, still half asleep and there it was...the sun rising, almost creeping over the horizon and lighting up the sky. We watched as it became completely visible and then made our way swiftly back to bed to try and get some more sleep. However, we didn’t get back to sleep...instead we were looking into the Coronovirus: the virus that started in China which has spread globally, killing over 200 people thus far... oh the joys to hear that Sri Lanka and India were two of the countries it had spread to. At around 730 we got up and made our way to have an earlier than normal breakfast...we wanted to beat the Russians who checked in yesterday!

    After breakfast we chilled out on the beds, I finished the book I’d been working on - a crime thriller - after only starting it yesterday. I went to go and pack up our stuff as it was an unusually early check out at this place, 10am. Accommodation was paid up, room was empty, Tuktuk was fully loaded, so we were good to go whenever we wanted. This little place in paradise only cost us 5000 rupees each for 4 nights. Incredible value at just £5.20 a night!! A few more hours had passed and we were still on the resort beach...just because we checked out didn’t mean we were going to leave this place! Nor did it mean we weren’t going to occasionally use our shower either. However, sadly we eventually decided to make a move.

    Tom was driving the whole way to Mihinthale today, we made our way through crazy Trincomalee traffic and found a local place to stop and grab some lunch! After we broke down the language barrier, we think we ordered a large portion of vegetable fried rice for 250 to share...he came over with two plates of fried rice, I guess he just divided the large portion onto two plates? We dug in, and it was very tasty! He approached when we had finished, “Country?” he asked, to which we obviously responded and then the conversation come to an end there. We then asked for a sweet roll and a 5L bottle of water to take away which he got and then asked us for 210 rupees.... that’s just less than 90p, that was by far the cheapest lunch we had so far, but we sped off in our TukTuk before he realised he had maybe made a mistake and not charged us enough, or at least we tried to speed off, the front wheel of the TukTuk was stuck in a hole! Eventually out of the hole, Tom slammed the throttle and off we went!

    50 kilometres had passed, the scenery was gorgeous, we passed rice paddy after rice paddy and lake after lake...but unfortunately it was all very samey and the road was just straight. So it made for a very boring drive in fact. I could see Tom fidgeting and stretching - obviously tired - so I offered tk drive but he refused, instead asking that I blast how the music and we have a good singalong to make the journey go faster.
    Thankfully, Tom didn’t fall asleep in the TukTuk and I got us to the hotel in Mihintale safely! The hotel was called Afenta Hotel, it was only recently opened, still unfinished in parts, but was run by a really nice young guy who kept apologising for his poor English...funny, as his was probably close to the best we’d come across. We checked into to our large double room, with private bathroom, it was very clean and stunk of Dettol...I think my mum would have even been okay staying here!

    Shortly after arriving we asked the owner for some good food places for dinner, I stood with him and he pinned two on his maps and we made our way to check them out. The first was ‘P&S’, we pulled up outside...it looked like a fancy Greggs at the front with a seated area that felt very local with plastic table and chairs and a glass counter top filled with different types of curry. We saw on the menu that potato curry and dhal curry were 70 and 60 rupee, “great” we thought, “today’s dinner is going to be super cheap”! We then asked him how much a plate of rice would cost to eat the curry with, to which he replied after doing some bullshit maths 320 rupees...nearly 5 times as much as the bloody curry!! Obviously he was related to the man in Kandy! Tom gave up at that point, patience for scamming at rock bottom and wanted to leave, whilst I was trying to get through to him that it’s impossible to charge so much for a single plate of plain rice - I was determined to get a sensible answer in the region of 50 rupees for a plate of rice, but it never happened. Eventually I gave up too and we left P&S completely baffled, we went to check out the second place. From the outside it looked like a shell of a building that had been burned down 20 years ago, with some fancy lights around the doors and windows...however, this didn’t put us off as some of the worse looking places we’ve eaten at before have had the best food! We went inside and they had veggie curry and rice for 170, sold! We ate, the food was pretty good...and then came the bill. Our maths calculated 170 x 2 = 340, however in Sri Lanka 170 x 2 = 480. We weren’t having any of this and after some awkward standing around at the till, the guy reluctantly gave us a fresh bill with 340 on it...we gave him a 500 and then waited for our change...which just as reluctantly as the second bill did arrive.

    Feeling pleased at ourselves for paying the right price for dinner, we decided to “splash” and treat ourselves to a nice cold Coca Cola at a grubby little cafe...boy, we know how to treat ourselves! We were approached by various people whilst we were trying to enjoy our drinks, one guy chanting “UK, OKAY” repeatedly, another guy trying to sell us a private tour around Mihinthale ruins and another talking about deer...very random! Tom thought the deer man worked at the cafe and tried to pay him for the cokes, he took the money and very honestly gave us the money back. We paid up and went back to our room where to our complete pleasure we found hidden away in the bottom of my day bag a couple of biscuits that we didn’t eat last night! We inhaled these and then hit they hay!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    1
    11

    Trincomalee and Nilaveli beach day #3

    January 30, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    Again, we had a fantastic nights sleep courtesy of the sound of the sea. We rose early as usual and went to the table and chairs to await our breakfast, again it was eggs, break, jam and roti but it was as good as previous days.

    Today we had decided that we’d got toTrincomalee to check out a few of the sights we had heard about. We hopped in the Tuktuk and saw that it was really empty on fuel. I spun the knob to switch us to reserve fuel just to be safe and we headed to Trincomalee. On the way we stopped to get fuel and the fill up cost us just over 1,000 rupees...our biggest one yet but still only £4.20. One of the guys said our tyre was needing some air, so he filled it up, not sure if he wanted money or not. When he had done he then said “money”, he tried to get 100 rupees from us... we said we had no cash only card and drove away saying we’d come back later, oops we forgot! Trincomalee was a town with not too much going on, so we went to the tip of the headland where there was an old temple (Hindu) and the old Dutch Fort.

    We parked up and began our walk to the temple, harassed along the way by a couple of beggars and cafe people wanting some money. We got to the entrance of the temple and once again there was a charge for leaving your flip flops which we always take exception to. We stuffed them in the bag but the guard still wasn’t happy. I ran up to see if the temple was worth a visit and it was to be fair. We both went back to the Tuktuk and dumped our flip flops, being harassed there and back by the same beggars and cafe people - got to give them one thing, they’re persistent. We walked barefoot in smug as you like and had a look round. The temple was perched high on the rocky headland with steep cliffs easing down to the ocean. It was a very colourful temple, made more so by, what we guessed was, a wedding. Lots of drums being sounded and people milling around gave it quite a buzz. By this time it was getting pretty hot so we decided that we’d check out Trincomalee beach, however it was no where near as nice as ours at Nilaveli, so we headed back via our bakery man - now a best friend. Instead of us asking what we wanted, this time he just said for us to come into the back room where it’s all made and and go through everything and pick out what we wanted. With the prices of everything firmly in our minds from the last three days of buying things we got ourselves 100 rupees of baked goods and headed back for a chill, swim and a read of our books.

    We headed out for dinner to the local Kottu man at the main road, which was nice and easy for us. As we’d done some maths earlier in the day, we realised that we comfortably had enough cash to see us through the rest of Sri Lanka, so on the way back we went and bought even more baked stuff from our guy - we were slightly obsessed and was probably a good job we were leaving the following day. We got back via the beach and it was a dark clear night, so the stars were out in full force. We had to sort out a plan for the tomorrow, would we try and get to the west coast in one chunk, or would we break it across an afternoon and following morning? We decided on the latter and that we’d stay a night in Mihintale - a temple/ruin filled town much like Anuradhapura. With that decided we headed back for our final sleep in the beach cabana. I went to do my teeth and came back to Tom saying “don’t panic” whilst sat in the room. Immediately I guessed what it could be...a cockroach!!! Tom thought he had trapped it under a big bottle cap, but it had somehow escaped and was now with all our stuff in the corner. We thought that it must have gone out through one of the cracks in the floorboards, so we safely went to bed under our big mozzy net. About half an hour later we were both reading and I looked up to see the same cockroach climbing up the mozzy net, but couldn’t see if it was inside or outside the net. I got up with a massive exhale and quickly got out the net leaving Tom behind (sorry). He promptly thanked me for the quick escape and we saw that it was inside the net! I got a big empty 5 litre bottle and fed it inside the net trapping the cockroach, and Tom craftily went in and screwed the lid on, we’d triumphed and could now sleep easy.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    1

    Nilaveli Beach Day #2

    January 29, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    It was about 1am when today started. I was up with my torch on in bed trying to kill mosquitos that had managed to sneak through the holes in our net - much to the displeasure of Tom who I’d woken up with the ruckus. Feeling like he’d had a full night sleep, Tom asked what time it was. “It’s only bloody 1am” he cried back in disbelief. He now had the task of getting back to sleep whilst my Mosquito swatting operation was in fill swing. However, surprisingly we both fell back to sleep pretty quickly and slept through till 745, woke up and had our free breakfast which was the same as yesterday, with the addition of a cup of tea. Great way to start another day in paradise!

    You can probably guess what we did first thing...read our books on the sun loungers and then went for a nice dip in the sea. We repeated this for a few hours and it was bliss. The weather was perfect and again we had the beach to ourselves. A few blissful hours had passed and we decided to go for a walk up the beach, Tom made a slight detour to get some baked food whilst I sat and looked out over the sea and went for a swim. He very kindly picked up some baked goods for me after I missed out on the bakery man last night...a nice little surprise when Tom returned to the beach. We ate our food and then continued to walk further along the beach, dodging the thousands of crabs on the sand beneath us. After walking to the end of the beach we walked all the way back to our hotel, getting quite hot by the time we got back so we jumped in the sea to cool down. A bit more chill time followed and then we went to get showered, ready and made our way to get dinner.

    Tonight we thought we would drive a bit further north the a town with a bridge we’d been to the previous to get food at a local place, already having done a price check the previous night. It wasn’t a glamorous place, next to a pretty station and with cows seemingly guarding our Tuktuk, but the guy running it was really friendly. We both had fried rice with “gravy” and oh my god it was so good! The gravy was essentially curry sauce and it was amazing, we even asked for seconds of the sauce as we got through it so quickly! After food we made our way to the bridge and sat and watched the sunset over the river, it was a great sunset again tonight! After the sun had set we went back and had another chilled evening at the beach and in our cabana reading our book and watching some documentaries - super chilled day!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
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    1111

    Nilaveli Beach Day #1

    January 28, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    We had decided last night that we were going to get up for sunrise, and that we’d enjoy a lie in within the walls of our beach cabana. I had an amazing night sleep with only the sound of crashing waves to put me to sleep. Breakfast was included at this place and started from 7:30. I went out a bit earlier and left Tom asleep to go watch the ocean on the daybed...what a way to wake yourself up. At 8am we both went for breakfast, and as it was only £5 a night each, we weren’t expecting much. It turned out to be a right spread with Jam, bread, eggs, banana pancake and a roti, all topped off with freshly squeezed papaya juice all of which was delicious!!

    We came up with a plan for the day over breakfast. We would head to Nilaveli village and try and get on a boat to Pigeon Island - a national park 1 kilometre off the coast which had some decent snorkelling. We had read that it shouldn’t really cost too much - £8 per boat regardless of numbers of passengers and an undisclosed entrance fee. We turned up at the beach and were heading for the government office when we were descended on by about 10 men offering boat trips etc and throwing prices at us. There was no way we were going to take the first offer and certainly not going to the national park without an official ticket from the office. However, when we got there the office was shut and various locals were trying their best at impersonating official park staff - no Oscars were going to be won today. We were told that the office would open soon, but it was after 9am so we smelt a rat, as this office should be open early morning. One of the boat men had offered us a ‘deal’ of 11,000 rupees (£45) which we just thought was ridiculous. We waited around for a bit with Tom going for a swim until we decided that we’d call it a day. On our way off the beach, the same boat man approached us and we started to barter the price down and managed to get it down to 7,000...still too much for us for a snorkelling trip, so we headed off back to our place to chill out on the beach.

    We got back to our resort, that we practically had all to ourselves including the beach loungers and hammocks and we knew that wherever we went next, the chances of it being this peaceful and relaxing we’re slim...so we decided to just enjoy the tranquility whilst we had it and just chill out after what had been a hectic few weeks on the road. We set up camp on the beach, each taking a sun lounger directly in the sun and a daybed in the shade and would switch around depending on how hot we were, both getting into our books and the frequent dip in the sea. It was paradise, thank god we didn’t listen to people recommending for us to skip this place as it was “out of season”.

    A few hours had passed and Tom started to feel a little hungry, so he decided to venture away from the beach to get himself a Kottu. I didn’t want any food so this would be the first time for Tom driving the TukTuk alone! He found a Kottu for take away for 200 rupees, brought it back and ate it on the beach...which made me have immediate food envy. After Tom finished his food we chilled out some more, read our books and (you guessed it) played more silly games in the sea. After a little while we both decided to go and get showered and ready to go and get some food, upon going back to the room. Whilst I was showering, Tom found the two 5litre bottles of water unopened in the hut...he was confused by this as I had refilled our bottles this morning. We both looked at each other and the look of regret on my face meant it could have only one explanation...I had filled our bottles of water up with the other 5 litre bottle of shower water we were using to wash our feet before entering the hut... what a silly move! As we had been drinking it all day and were both fine, we saw the funny side of it...but we still awaited the dodgy stomachs!

    After getting our outdoor showers we got ready and walked along the beach to find somewhere for me to get Kottu. Along the way we were stopped by a few groups of cheeky kids, one of them even asking if they could have Toms’ ‘slippers’, his bracelet and then some rupees...piss off kid! We got to the local place and I ordered my veggie Kottu, and before it arrived I heard the music from the bread man getting closer and closer...Tom jumped out of his seat and ran outside to coincide with him as we had missed him the previous night. On his way outside Tom asked me if I wanted anything, I said yes with a nod looking forward to whatever came back. Unfortunately it seemed Tom didn’t hear or see me say yes or nod. So he came back with just baked stuff for him! I even sent him a load of messages to ensure I got something, but Tom was obviously not looking at his phone. We agreed that from now on we would just assume that the other person wanted something so they didn’t miss out on the best baked food ever!

    However, it wasn’t all bad news for me, as on the walk back to our place we stopped at various little shops (more like front rooms) for snacks and ended up having a feast back at the place all for around 120 rupees. Bargain! We saved some of the snacks to watch another film in bed and listen to the sound of the ocean as we fell to sleep.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Kalkudah beach at sunrise
    Locals with the catch1Brekkie on the go1Marble beach1The Beach CabanaNilaveli Sunset

    Polonaruwa —> Marble Beach —> Nilaveli

    January 27, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    I woke up at 5:45 and it was beginning to get light outside. We had heard that at sunrise you can go and watch the local fishermen bring in their catch. They are obviously up much earlier than us. I rose Tom and we headed to Kalkudah beach where the sun was beginning to rise. We stood on the old Kalkudah Jetty, built by the British in 1901, and watched as a fisherman came to shore. We didn’t think he’d been successful as his pile of netting looked empty, but as he and all his mates on the beach began to unravel the net there were loads of fish in there! It was pretty cool to see all the locals pitch in and it seemed that they all took a share of the catch. We headed back to our ‘Inn on the Bay’ to pack up our stuff as we thought it best to get going as the drive north to Nilaveli was about 120km.

    We hit the road via the petrol station for some fuel and oil for Greta and some veggie roti, other baked goods and 5 bananas for the price of 4 for us. The weather was perfect, wall to wall sunshine which made for easy motoring. After nearly three hours of driving we got to Marble beach, still 30km from Nilaveli, as we had been recommended this beach by the guy who ran the hostel in Sigiriya. It was 30 rupees each to get in and it was a nice beach...small low breakers and you could walk out miles. We chilled here for a bit and enjoyed the waves, messing around as usual trying to kick and punch holes in the breakers...such kids. On the way back to the Tuktuk, I noticed a big monkey running around. We immediately realised that we hadn’t put the sides down on the Tuktuk again! Then I realised that I still had a banana left which I put on the back shelf...safe to say that was long gone - the cheeky monkeys!!

    Anyway, we hopped back in for the last bit of the journey and we eventually got to Nilaveli. The maps.me app took us a weird route so it seemed our accommodation was miles from the road, but it actually wasn’t. When we got to the aptly named ‘Nilaveli Sand Life’, it was like paradise. Sand roads, palm trees, little beach huts and a place where it felt there was a no shoe policy. We were shown to our beach cabana, right on the beach front and we could hear the waves crashing. It had an outside shower, a small wooden table and chairs and best of all, a hammock for the full beach vibe. We both immediately relaxed and I went to set myself up on the beach with my book. Tom did the same in the hammock and we spent a couple of hours just taking a break from the dirty smelly part of travelling.

    After a few hours we both got ready and headed out for some food. On the way for food, we got stopped by the police. I was driving, so got my licence ready. They looked impressed that we had the right documents and asked us where we were from etc and asked if we liked Sri Lanka - of course we said yes...they were armed. They gave my licence back and we parted with a handshake - another nice encounter with police who seemed happy that western people haven’t been put off coming to Sri Lanka after the trouble last year.

    We were a few kilometres from Nilaveli town so we hopped in the Tuktuk and set off in search of food. Not too far in we found this little place, N.K. Family Restaurant. It was a tiny little place, but the prices were good and we were hungry, obviously we ordered veggie rice and curry. It came and I can honestly say it was the best tasting food I’d had since my send off dinner by the Beck Bottom Gang. Everything was so tasty!!! We finished up and the lady took our plates away and then immediately said the cost to us...she wasn’t being rude though as there is quite a big language barrier here in the north and the people are very different to other parts of Sri Lanka. We paid and went on the hunt for a little bakery to satisfy our sweet tooth. Whilst we were having dinner we saw the bakery man go last playing his tune, so we started investigating with locals which way he had gone. We ended up not finding him but instead finding a brilliant sunset on a bridge...the randomness of travelling never gets old. We ended up getting some stuff from the local shop instead and then came back to our beach for a long walk and a chill on the daybeds. What a long day it had seemed, but we were now set for 4 nights at Nilaveli Sand Life to have a recharge.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    The posse of cats
    Finally back at the beachBack to paradiseOur outdoor showerGorgeous sunset over Kalkudah beach

    Polonaruwa —> Kalkudah

    January 26, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    We woke up for an 8 o’clock breakfast, an assortment of baked goods, a simple breakfast but a free one! We were getting our things together and suddenly we were joined by five cats! Two adults, two young cats and a tiny kitten. I enticed them further into the room, but the little posse didn’t come much closer. We paid up for the night (after awkwardly disputing the cost) and made our way to Kalkudah in the TukTuk.

    We had decided to not take the B502 road (which was famous for elephants) to Kalkudah as it was massively out of our way and we had seen an elephant on the road yesterday anyway. Tom drove today and we got there in good time, arriving at our place ‘Inn on the Bay’ just before midday. Naturally, we dumped our bags and made our way straight to the sea! We were a 5 minute walk either side from two different beaches, either Kalkudah beach or Pasikuda beach. We decided to check out Pasikuda beach for a few hours first. It was a beautiful, a long stretch of beach full of local people and a few fishing boats scattered along the shore. We found a spot and chilled out for little while before heading over to Kalkudah beach. There was no litter on this beach and the water was gorgeous here, plus we had the beach all to ourselves. We did our usual by playing around in the waves for a little while as a few locals looked on in amusement (or so we hoped).

    We made our way back to the hotel made use of the outdoor shower and then went in hunt of food. We had been warned that the east coast was pretty dead as it was out of season, so a lot of restaurants would be closed...we found this out first hand after we drove around the local area and couldn’t find anything open or at least any local food place that were charging reasonable prices. We decided to drive into the bigger towns nearby in hunt of the local places because whether it is in season or not for tourists, the local have to eat! We drove to a small town and our logic paid off, we pulled into a very local looking place, and when I say local I mean plastic table and chairs, no menu and lots of local people sat around enjoying their food. Tom got out the TukTuk and asked the guy how much for Kottu, he said 250...I assumed that this was a western price he was charging but as it was much better than the other places near our hotel we accepted and sat down at the plastic tables as they cooked our Kottus fresh (with the loudest Kottu making yet)! The food came and it was delicious and the spice was killing me today, I think I went a bit overboard with the chilli! When it came to paying the man actually only charged us 125 each, so half the price he quoted! I presume he had reduced the price from the western price and actually accepted local price from us... finally an honest man in the north!

    Before heading back to our hotel we went on the hunt for something sweet and it wasn’t long before we rocked up to a place that was pinned on maps.me as “the Muslim Place”, that had a jam packed bakery section that had Tom and I drooling! We ordered a bag full of sweet baked goods and were happy now to head back! We thought we would enjoy our sweet food outside as we could hear the ocean but there were lots of bugs so we settled for under the mosquito net in bed with a film on!

    Midway through the film (Bridesmaids of course) we heard a scratching noise on the roof, coming from what we thought was a bird or a monkey. To our surprise we then saw four little footprints on the canopy that was draped just beneath the ceiling held up at each end by some string... what the hell was this about to join us in the room!? It slowly walked closer and closer to the wall until we could see, it was a rat! It then went from the canopy, tightrope walked across the string that was holding it up to the other side of the wall and back out... relieved that it didn’t join us in the room but hey it was still a god damn rat, albeit quite a clean looking one. We thought we had seen the last of it so got back into our film but then another scratching noise about 20 minutes later was followed by the rat running across the top of the wall much quicker than last time - Tom and I were in stitches at the acrobatic/tight roping rat and finally got to sleep, it was like some sort of guessing game whether we would wake up with company in the bed!!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler

    Sigiriya —> Polonaruwa

    January 25, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    I slept amazingly with the air con set at a perfect 23°C. Tom on the other hand didn’t, he said that he woke up in the middle of the night freezing cold, as his bed was situated directly underneath the air conditioning that was blasting away....he even had to switch it off for a little while to allow himself to warm up. I woke him up by tickling his feet as it was getting warm due to the air con being off because of the now familiar power cuts. We got up brushed our teeth, ended up brushing for about 15 minutes as there was only one bathroom and it was in use. We checked out said goodbyes to people in the hostel and hit the road, stopping the Tuktuk “bread man” (who was playing a different tune this morning) for a sweet pastry filled with jam for 30rupee to eat on our way to Polonnaruwa. On the drive we saw our first wild elephant on the road that we stopped for a minute for as we weren’t sure how to handle the situation and then slowly drove past him with no problems. We got to our guesthouse in Polonnaruwa at around 10:45 but we’re allowed to check into our room straight away. We ended up having a “deluxe villa” that had 3 double beds in it...not sure how but it was for the same price as a double room so we weren’t complaining. We chilled for a while and tried to get a plan of action for the day as we didn’t really want to pay the £20 to enter the ancient sites and we had heard that there was a large section of the area that we could enter for free.

    We got in our TukTuk and headed to the archeological centre where there were some ruins just behind for free. They were quite cool and were from nearly 1000 years ago, as was the reservoir next to the town. We walked around this part for a bit and some local lads wanted a selfie with us, so we obliged. We heard of a back entrance where you could gain access to the park, so we headed a few kilometres north and wiggled round before finding the secret entrance. It wasn’t really for vehicles, but we went down anyway trying our luck. Eventually we got to a massive puddle, and turned the Tuktuk into a temporary boat and we were in!!! Immediately we were on edge...we had no idea if there would be ticket checks or not. We headed to a couple of the big monuments, the second of which a monkey was banging on the roof scaring eveyone inside the ruin, and then we came back out to the Tuktuk to find we had been mugged by the monkeys again!!! After this we called it quits. It was far too much to handle, especially knowing how dodgy Asian police could be. We were on our way out (the same way we came in - through the bog) when we got a bit stuck and then low and behold a bloody police car drives behind us. We must have looked ridiculous, two white guys stuck in a bog in a Tuktuk. The police didn’t stop though and we eventually got free and raced back down this path to freedom and a proper road. We saw a big monkey, one we hadn’t seen before, sat on a post. We tried to get it’s attention by clicking at it...aggressively it turned to us and showed it’s enormous fangs followed by a hissing noise, we thought it was another dog episode like at Sigiriya, so I gunned the throttle and got us out of there. After all this we had seen enough ruins and monkeys so headed back to the guesthouse to chill out and look at some things for our upcoming trip to India.

    We went out for some dinner and along the river there were steps where all the locals we either having a swim, having a shower or doing their laundry. For dinner there wasn’t much around, so we walked until we found the cheapest place, Kottu again but it was amazing as usual. We headed up to the reservoir for the sunset, which actually turned out to be amazing. We were both scared that the rocks we sat on had snakes and other creatures living under them, so we couldn’t fully relax during the sunset. After what seemed like a long day, we headed back and as we were going to the coast tomorrow we had decided to get good nights sleep before the long drive.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Dambulla Cave Temple
    Buddha SquadThe view of both rocksSunset over Lion Rock

    Dambulla Cave Temple and Sigiriya Rock

    January 24, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    After having an awful night sleep in our room that stank of bus emission, was hotter than the sun and about as clean as an Eastern European brothel, we were up and out pretty early. The Dambulla Cave Temple is 160m above the surrounding plains so we had to walk up to it and we got in by 7:15, paid our 1,500 (£6) each, and stuck our shoes in the paid shoe hold area with no intention of paying for them and then head into the temple. It was a cool temple that had been built into the cave and preserved very well, apparently the best preserved cave temple in the whole of Sri Lanka. As we had got there early we were the first in (apart from a few locals) so it was nice and peaceful. We admired some of the sculptures of Buddha and the murals before relaxing in the courtyard until a herd of Chinese and Russian tourists arrived - our worse nightmare! Shortly after they arrived we left, retrieved our shoes (without paying of course) and made our way back to the TukTuk to find that monkeys had ransacked it. They had stolen our after sun, Vaseline and hand sanitiser- strange! We got it back though after a temple guide come running over to return them. We previously ignored him as we thought he was trying to charge us for parking...oops. We then briefly checked out the Golden temple that was just behind the cave temple and was a little underwhelmed by this so didn’t stay long before heading to pay up and checking out.

    After moaning about the place, it was only £2 each per night...so decent value to be fair. We got in Greta and made our way to Sigiriya, of course stopping along the way at a bakery for a veggie roll and sweet bun and then drove 5 minutes down the road to stop and eat it out of the busy town centre. In the time we had stopped we had decided to change our travel plans slightly (again) and added another night onto the east coast after removing one previously as people were saying it wasn’t the season up there, however the weather looked fantastic! We got to Sigiriya and found the hostel, aptly named ‘One More Night hostel’ and were welcomed with a British girl shouting from the balcony of the hostel/restaurant in amazement of our a TukTuk and how we had rented it. We were bombarded with questions before we could even get our stuff out! We did manage to get checked in and actually spoke to the loud British girl for about an hour, she turned out to be really nice and from Coventry! After dumping our bags in our room we drove to find a viewpoint of both Sigiriya and Pidurangala rocks from a lake that the British girl had just told us about, we manage to find a different lake with views of both lakes which was down a dirt track, the view was awesome but we continued to the next one which was equally as amazing, a little further away from the rocks so could see them both which seemed closer together. We chilled at the second viewpoint, we even saw a water snake and about 2 minutes later asked by a local guy why we weren’t swimming... after enjoying the view of both rocks for a while we decided that we should get back to the hostel and get ready to climb Pidurangala rock for sunset this evening. On the drive back I must have looked at a dog in the wrong way, as the dog jumped up howling at the TukTuk and started sprinting towards it with a gang of his friends joining him! I twisted the throttle as far as it would go, catapulting us down this dirt track until we were clear of the dogs...thank God the road didn’t have any potholes in like the previous road otherwise the dogs would’ve definitely caught up with us. Nevertheless, Tom was ready with a bottle waiting to smack any dog in the nose if it came close to the TukTuk! Rabies jabs narrowly avoided for another

    We had been to’ing and fro’ing whether or not to climb Lion Rock and we finally decided against it. We would save ourselves a decent amount of money and also from Pidurangala we could enjoy a view of Lions rock and the sunset, or so we’d heard. We got there and parked up, getting stuck in a huge pothole in the process, a bit of pushing from me and some revving got Greta free. We paid our 500 rupees entrance to the temple where you could gain access tk the top of the rock. The climb up was pretty easy over big boulders, and we finally made it to the top. The view was really something and got even better as the sun began to set. We both gave home a quick FaceTime for the first time in a few days and then we sat in prime position and enjoyed the sun dipping below the horizon. Safe to say this was one of the most scenic/iconic sunsets we’d get in Sri Lanka. We headed down the rock (now in pitch black) guided by Tom’s torch.

    We got back to the town and stopped at a local place and ordered Veggie Kottu, the place we went to was nice and definitely had a local feel about it. You could see into the kitchen where it appeared the entire family were preparing the food and customer reviews were handwritten on the walls in marker pen. With our meal we got a free Coca Cola which went down a treat for both of us, however we wanted to save some of the drink for the food...which was difficult as the food took forever to arrive! However; when it did arrive it was a bloody good Kottu, so we let him off and accepted that it was just “Sri Lankan time”. We made our way back to the hostel and chatted to a German girl, Indian guy, Dutch girl and 2 Swiss guys who had been waiting for their taxi to arrive for the last hour and a half... we chatted about various different topics mainly relating to systems in each other’s countries. After a while we went to bed and enjoyed the air conditioned room, our first taste of AC since Colombo!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Kandy Temple of the Tooth
    Big white BuddhaBalaji Dosai brunchThe massive corn on the cob

    Kandy —> Dambulla

    January 23, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C

    I got up, or rather got woken up, early by the other two guys in our room. Yet again we had managed to be put in rooms with some snorers, why does this keep happening?!?!? As we’d decided the night before to abandon Kandy as neither of us liked it, we packed up our stuff. Seeing as we weren’t allowed to have a refund on the second night, we assumed that we could just come back, after exploring what we wanted of Kandy in the morning, and grab showers etc. However, the European girl running the hostel had other ideas. Even though we’d technically paid for the beds for tonight, she said we weren’t allowed to keep our bags in the room as they needed the room free for cleaning...slightly confusing and we’ve never come across such logic at any other hostel. We just said that we’re leaving our bags in the room and went out for the morning. We walked from the hostel, which is at the top of an enormous hill...made harder by our legs still aching from Adams Peak the other morning. First stop was Arthur’s Seat (not Edinburgh) which is a viewpoint which looks over all of Kandy. It was a good view, but a bit of a tourist trap, so we promptly left, still being harassed by every single Tuktuk driver asking for us to get in, all such requests being met with a “no thank you” which was getting shorter and sharper as we lost our patience.

    We made it to the city centre, and then went up the hill at the other side to the big white Buddha (Bahirawakanda Temple). The closer we got, the less amazing it looked to be honest. It was big, but when we got there it was 200 rupees to just store your shoes rather than an entrance fee. We kept walking round the road and saw a side entrance to the big Buddha. We quickly whipped our shoes and socks off and stuffed them in the bag and casually walked in...confidence is key. When we were in, we were so happy we hadn’t paid for this as we’d both seen much more impressive temples/buddhas elsewhere. We snuck out and went back to Kandy centre where, after the disappointment of last nights food, we went to Balaji Dosai for brunch. We both had Kara podi dosa which was incredible and we managed to pay on MasterCard, so it was basically free. After our food this local bloke sat down next to us and for whatever reason, he kept staring at me...looking right through my soul. As we were up in good time it was only 10am when we left the restaurant. We made our way back to the hotel, which unfortunately meant back up the worlds steepest hill. At the hostel we both used the toilet in the fancy double room that had not been locked and hit the road.

    The traffic getting out of Kandy was awful and the pollution was probably the worst yet. We eventually got out of the city and before long, at the side of the road we saw a woman selling corn on the cob! Of course we turned around to go back to her and buy one each - it was massive and delicious, however we were both paranoid as she dunked them in cold water which we only assumed was tap water....would we get ill? Possibly, but it would have been worth it. For the next mile or two, men were shouting at us to pull over and go to their spice gardens...we were not interested. We eventually got to our place in Dambulla, and without being too harsh let’s just say it wasn’t our best accommodate yet...but hey it was cheap and had pretty good WiFi! The bedding smelt like the fumes from the awful buses and the bed itself smelt as if a million people had slept on it...we decided to leave the room pretty much as soon as we arrived so we dumped our bags to go for a walk and check out the Dambulla cave temple and make sure we were at the right place and weren’t going to get ripped off...we were now very wary of everyone.

    We walked around for a bit, but then decided to go grab an early dinner from this local bakery place. We got two massive portions of rice and sauce and noodles and sauce....all for 80p each. We headed back to our ‘lovely’ room, shoved a film on the iPad and we both passed out.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Fools bridgeSmiling but scaredThis would never pass health and safetyThe view from the top was insaneAmbuluwawa temple1Greta getting her service

    Hatton —> Ambuluwaawa Tower —> Kandy

    January 22, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    I woke up early as usual and went into the bathroom and saw that there was a light on on the electric shower system, tested it for hot water and absolute result - there was hot water! I capitalised on this and after I shouted to Tom to get up to make the most of it too, I’ve never seen him get up so quickly...we both badly needed a hot shower after he climb the previous morning. We were showered and in the lounge area of the guesthouse by half 8, the agreed time we would have breakfast, and we waited ages for breakfast however they kept a constant supply of toast to the dining table behind us for a group of Sri Lankan “laaads”. We eventually got our mountain of toast, an omelette and jam, and it was pretty good actually. When we finished breakfast we played our equivalent of rock, paper, scissors, “squirtle, charmander, bulbasaur” to see who was going to drive today, Tom won for once so that meant that I would be doing the driving!

    We set off for Kandy via Ambuluwawa temple which we had wanted to visit for a while now! On the way to the temple Tom found a viewpoint for us to checkout, 2km out of our way we found Ulupane bridge, or as the locals call it “Fools Bridge”. It was built in the British colony era, and gets its nickname due to its upside down look...we thought we would be able to drive over it but it turned out to only be a footbridge, so we drove over the adjacent bridge and got a cool view of it. Cool detour, but now back on the road to Ambuluwaawa temple, after almost getting our heads taken off by a guy chopping grass with a blade at the side of the road...if we were on a scooter we’d have lost our heads as this guy was swinging this machete blade thing all over the place!!

    The famous spire at the top of Ambuluwaawa became visible from the road and I began to feel a little nervous about climbing it. It is essentially a temple, with a huge spire on top that you can climb up using sketchy spiral staircases. We drove up the steep hill to the entrance, paid 300rupees each and 100 for Greta (the woman at the till was eyeing up the change in Tom’s wallet that he avoided paying with) and before we knew it we were at the bottom of the temple parked up. It was a crazy experience climbing up this tower, the hand rails were low, the steps uneven and there were gaps in between each step allowing you to see the drop beneath, the occasional brass hand grip gave you a false sense of security and on top of all that each time somebody was coming the opposite way you had to manoeuvre round each other, hopefully you would go wall side but on the occasion where you had to go on the outside you were practically hanging off this tower! If you were lucky one of the ‘resting stops’ would be nearby so one of you could just slip inside and let the other pass, bad thing is these rooms stunk of rotten piss and we could’ve swore there were poo marks on the walls...*hand sanitiser*. Luckily there weren’t too many people climbing so we didn’t have to do this too often. Nevertheless, we made it to the top, enjoyed the view and started to climb back down before we realised we didn’t get any GoPro videos, so back up we went for that, and then went down passing an annoying American vlogger who practically interviewed us at the top and at the bottom of the tower (I’m hoping that footage never hits the internet).

    On the drive to Kandy we stopped at a mechanics who TukTuk rental had recommended and got Greta greased. This was something you had to do each 1,000km and although we hadn’t hit 1,000 just yet, we didn’t know when the next good place to do it would be, so we got it done. We rocked up to a recommended garage where they pumped Greta up on some massive jacks. It took about 5 minutes and she was all greased up again. Whilst waiting to pay we met a man who said (or so we thought he said) was a doctor. After a bit more awkward conversation it turned out he was a dog trainer...or we think he was, he then asked for our emails...an oddball. We got through the crazy Kandy traffic and made it to our hostel at the top of an enormous hill through monsoon rain!! It was quite a cool hostel, and at just £2 a night great value. We stood around at check in for about 10 minutes, obviously wondering how we actually check in as two people were sat around very close. Turned out to be that one of them worked at the hostel...good start. We dumped our stuff in the room and headed our to explore Kandy. We walked down to the lake and were almost immediately confronted by an elderly man pointing out a water snake in the lake. He started on and on and on about how he was a teacher in a school and showed us his ID card which clearly stated he was born in 1959 but he somehow said he was 59...interesting. He then went on about The candy dancing started reading of millions of types of dancing including Peacock dancing, water dancing, Buffalo dancing, the list went on and on. He then tried to make us come and look at the brochure for the Kandy dance, at this point we realised this was an absolute scam and tried to get rid of him but, it was harder than it seemed. We had to walk fast and as he had an umbrella we were now wary of anyone with an umbrella trying to scam us, and there were lots of people now trying to drag us into this Kandy dance show...which just sounded awful. We walked round the lake and both of us got a pretty bad vibe from Kandy and weren’t sold at all...but we had already seen that food near our hostel was cheap so that’s a silver lining. We went to an old British cemetery of people who had died during the colonised years (usually died of tropical diseases) and we both decided that we’d go back to the restaurant we’d seen earlier for dinner. We got there and wanted simple rice and curry. They said that it wasn’t possible, but there were curries on the menu that we could have, and they were cheap. So I asked him how much rice was to which he said 150 rupees...somehow the same as rice and curry. I said that wasn’t possible for rice to cost as much as both rice and curry, but this guy was persistent. Nothing about the place made sense, so we got up and walked out to go next door. Even though this guy was more of a local place he still ripped us off as we got a minuscule piece of potato and a bit of dhal and rice. After this episode we were both done with Kandy...such a shame as it was quite a cool city. We walked back up to hill to he hostel and came up with a plan to leave Kandy the following morning and sacrifice a night here as it was only £2 lost.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Sunrise at Adams Peak
    The bell at Sri PadaWe look happy, but we're exhaustedSunrise at Adams PeakAppreciating thr decentLooking back at the beastLaxapana FallsLaxapana Falls

    Adams Peak Climb —> Hatton

    January 21, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Our 2am alarms woke us both us but Tom had not had a great sleep at all...maybe 2 hours so he felt shattered. Today was the day we were going to climb Adams peak, a mountain that’s summit was 2,243 metres above sea leave as is well known for having the Sri Pada, or the sacred footprint of Buddha at the top that Buddhists come from all over the world to worship. Tom has been periodically checking the weather outside throughout the night to see if we could see Adams peak from our hotel room window or if it had been covered by clouds as it was when we arrived to Nallathanniya. The weather looked great, clear skies and dry and you could see the temple on Adams peak lit by hundreds of painfully bright white lights. We got our clothes on, long trousers and a thermal for Tom as it was quite chilly out, but I braved it wearing shorts the whole way, even with the threat of leeches.

    We made our way through the streets of Nallathanniya with the Buddhist prayer music blasting out (despite it not even being 2:30 yet) and the blinding white lights guiding us to the start of the Adams peak track. We arrived at the entrance and were welcomed by 2 monks asking for donations by asking us to sign our names in along with a donation amount and you would then put you money into a perspex box so they could see exactly how much you had donated. George and I filled the book and wrote we would be donating 100 rupee each but when it come to it I couldn’t find my wallet and Tom hadn’t bought his with him...so we said we would come back later to pay (like that was ever going to happen). We started the walk along the track and as the lights become less insulting we could properly see the night sky, and as it was such a clear night we could see thousands of stars in the night sky and could even see the dark part of the moon. The walk up Adams peak was challenging, but not at all as hard as we thought it would be after all we had heard about it, maybe we weren’t as unfit as we thought we were. It was mostly Buddhist people climbing to worship the Sri Pada with a small percentage of tourists mainly there for the awesome sunrise. A lot of the locals were actually elderly people in their 80s or even in their 90s! We got up in pretty good time so we thought we would check out the Buddhas footprint, which was officially at the summit of the mountain on top of a huge boulder. It was pretty cool, but for some reason was covered in giant moths! We both then rang the bell to symbolise this was the one and only time we had reached the summit and then went to find a spot to sit for the next 2 hours waiting for the sunrise. We seemed to be some of the first people up so had a choice of where we wanted to go, we decided to sit at the top step infront of the office building as it had a really cool view over the lake to the right and the mountains the the left. We waited there for an hour and a half as it got busier and busier but no where near as busy as we had heard it could get, and to our disgust some guy sat around us kept letting out deadly and toxic farts!

    All of a sudden at around 5:30 the sun started to let some light through and changed the colour of the sky, and gradually the sun rose over the horizon. It was an incredible sunrise. When the sun had risen some Buddhist procession begun which we watch for a while before making the descent. The way down seemed much busier than the ascent due to the bottleneck of the older people taking their time to go down the steps. We both kept hopping over the barriers to get down quickly as the sun was blazing in the sky now it was actually getting quite warm. We were both talking about the amazing sunrise we had just seen and then all of a sudden Tom felt the sudden desire to go to the toilet, and not for a wee...this lead to us practically sprinting down the mountain and as we didn’t have a wallet with us, Tom couldn’t go to any of the toilets on the trail so would have to make it to the room...still 3 kilometres away. Near he bottom Tom had to throw in the towel and ran to a toilet near a large white pagoda as I scrambled around for 30 rupees...I magically found my wallet in the depths of my bag so saved Tom from the stress. The toilet was being manned by an old guy who seemed to live in the outhouse next to the toilet as he demanded the 30 rupees. Tom paid up and did his business in the squat toilet, to his horror...again, no bloody toilet paper!!! Safe to say the rest of the walk was much more enjoyable! We got back to our room just before 8 and Tom went back to sleep for just over an hour whilst I watched the film that I fell asleep to last night.

    When Tom woke up we packed our stuff up and check out and drove to Laxapana falls, a waterfall we saw en route to Hatton, the town we would be sleeping in tonight. We drove a few kilometres out of our way to get there, parked up at the start of a sketchy walkway and tried to follow the sound of water...problem was we couldn’t hear any? We were both thinking that we had wasted our time getting here, but we might as well go and check it out as we hade come this way. We reached the end of the trail and saw a huge expanse of flat rock with various streams of water leading what we assumed was the waterfall...this was looking up! We walked in direction of the waterfall, I gave Tom a geography lesson from what I could remember from A-Levels, showing Tom the eddies that had formed in the rock, we ventured closer to the edge and were absolutely blown away by the waterfall that these various streams lead to. It was enormous, with absolutely incredible views. Of course the drop was sheer, 126 metres down and it gave us both jelly legs, but the adrenaline kicked in and we wanted to get as close to the edge as possible to see the full extent of the falls. Tom stood in one of the eddies that allowed him to look down the entire falls and I just lay on the floor with his head over the edge and we were both completely in awe of this place, better still, we had the whole place to ourselves. This was possibly one of the most amazing waterfalls we’d ever seen and definitely a travelling highlight.

    On the way back to the TukTuk, I almost kicked a viper - one of the most venomous snakes in Sri Lanka...Tom saw it slither away as I passed, inches away from the snake! Tom took over the driving and got us to our guesthouse in Hatton a working town with very friendly people and cheap food! Our room had a balcony that looked out onto tea plantations which was nice, but funny as we were joking on the way here that we would be happy to never see tea plantations again! We met the German girls staying next door and had a quick chat with them before heading out into Hatton, it appeared that we were the only white people walking around and we got a complete mix of reactions; some people happy to see us, some confused and others perhaps not best pleased to see white people walking around. We got a 5L from Cargills and got a Kottu from a place called ‘Kevin’s food corner’ for 150 rupee. When we got back we sorted out some accommodation for the next few days before going to sleep super early because of the early start this morning. Tomorrow we would head to Kandy    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Single Tree Hill
    Above the clouds and Nuwara EliyaThe Blue TrainWeird Spanish ChurchHindu temple - Adams Peak in the background

    Nuwara Eliya —> Adams Peak

    January 20, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    I struggled to get any sleep last night as there was a symphony of snoring being played to the left of the room...the Aussie guy and the Chinese person that had weirdly taken pictures of us yesterday were snoring away like two pigs having a conversation ensuring there wasn’t a silent second... I did however manage to get some sleep and woke up at 8 for the free breakfast which was very good actually, eggs, toast and woodapple jam. We met Jasmine at breakfast as we invited her to come for an outing in the TukTuk before we needed to check out.

    We headed off in the Tuktuk looking for a tree...sounds weird but this was a single tree on top of a round hill in the middle of a tea plantation. Intrigued, we had look on Google maps to find this place and took a hunch from the satellite view. We drove for a few kilometres before turning off the main road and heading up into the middle of nowhere. We winded up and up before spotting this tree! We pretty much abandoned the Tuktuk and set off on foot. It was a cloudy morning in Nuwara Eliya, but as we had climbed we had broken through the cloud and were now totally inappropriately dressed in jeans and jumpers as the sun blazed down upon us. Stripping off as much as we could, we made our way up the tracks until we were just below the tree. We had to then walk though the plantation getting covered in spiders and other creatures. We made it!! It was a full 360° view of the surrounding area which was incredible, and we were the only ones there. We chilled out for a bit until I felt the terrifying urge to go to the toilet! Not a good place for it...must have been Sri Ambaals from the previous day announcing itself. We headed down - a little slow for my liking - and we went straight back to the guesthouse. I took care of my business then we checked out as we were heading to Nallathanniya, the town at the base of Adams Peak.

    We grabbed some fuel on the way out of Nuwara Eliya, but we pulled up and the pump guy immediately started putting in the expensive fuel! Livid we paid him and said that in the future he should ask - in all honesty the difference was only about £0.30 so we got over this pretty quick. Tom was driving the first stint on the very windy roads out of town. After a couple of hours I took over after we stopped at this Spanish looking church. When we pulled over we saw the train we had been on a few days earlier pass by beneath us. We continued onwards with me now driving round the lake and up towards Adams peak. The town where you stay to climb the peak is at the end of the line, in all senses of the phrase.

    When we got there it was pretty much deserted and we needed somewhere to park. The guy running the guesthouse was pretty much the most unhelpful guy we’d met so far, so we just left the tuktuk behind the police post and okayed it with the police...official enough for us. We checked in, and grabbed some Kottu from the place next door. This was the cheapest we’d found it at just 150 rupees (£0.60) and it was massive. The whole town had a power cut whilst we were out, again confirming this was the end of the line. We scouted out the start of the trail to Adams peak and Tom was stunned when it was signposted as the trail for the “Holy Buddha Footprint” and exclaimed some level of shock not believing that people make the pilgrimage from all over the world to the top of his mountain for a footprint. We both laughed about how ridiculous that actually sounds then checked out a sweet shop for some snacks for the climb. Eventually the power came back on and we headed to bed super early with a film as it was a 2am alarm to get ready to start the climb.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Sunrise at Tomorrowland Hostel
    'Secret' waterfallsViews on the way to Nuwara EliyaDhal Vada snackThe famous post officeMessy food ordealParty buses near lake Gregory

    Ella —> Nuwara Eliya

    January 19, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    After an amazing nights sleep in the tent at Tomorrowland we got up at 05:45 to go up to the little viewpoint for a 360° view of sunrise. It was quite a nice sunrise, but a bit cloudy so we headed back down to get another hour or so of sleep. We both woke up just before 8 absolutely boiling as the sun was beating down on our tent...time to get up. We brushed teeth with an amazing view over the valleys above Ella. We hopped in the Tuktuk to go the ‘secret waterfalls’. Again, it wasn’t such a secret spot unfortunately with some locals obviously not particularly caring and leaving lots of litter about the place. Still, the falls were quite nice and I climbed up to have a good view of them, immediately stubbing my toe on a rock!! After I got out, I needed a wee and exclaimed “It’s a really pretty waterfall, I might piss in it” to the amusement of Tom.

    We headed back to Tomorrowland to pack up our stuff after a very chilled 24 hours. We were heading to Nuwara Eliya, the pronunciation still a mystery as all locals said it differently. We popped back down through Ella and out onto the open road, quite sad to leave the little backpacker town behind. It was a couple of hours on windy roads to get to our next stop. We climbed up and up and the temperature dropped quite drastically...we’re talking 20°C instead of 30°C - what a disaster!! We drove round lake Gregory to get to the town of Nuwara Eliya. We eventually found our guesthouse, a colonial looking building with a nice lawn overlooking the hills and town. We headed out for a walk starting with a national park which Tom said was full of birds, however we heard no bird calls as we assumed this was a morning job. Onwards to Victoria Park, we got to the entrance and shock horror you had to pay 300 rupees to go in...skip that, especially as none of the locals have to pay. We went to the local market in the centre of town and found a little food court where they sold Dhal Vada, a kind of deep fried Dhal snack - amazing! We then went to the famous post office - one of the oldest in Sri Lanka. It was quite cool and had a old fashioned English post box outside, a little slice of home. We chilled out on the lawn for a bit, then went to the highly recommended Sri Ambaals restaurant where it was an all you could eat meal for £0.65. It was a strange ordering system, we just pointed and this naan bread thing arrived on a plate with some sort of filling. The guy then brought over big metal buckets of curry and filled our plates. He left the buckets for us to just keep going!! Without a single piece of cutlery in sight, we dug in with our hands...messy, very messy - Uncle Bob would have needed a few changes of clothing 😀

    We were stuffed, so headed back to the guesthouse to grab a hot shower (a rarity in Sri Lanka) and sit out on the lawn with our books, I promptly fell asleep on the swing chair. Tom wanted to go down to the lake as we may get a sign of the party buses we’d heard about. Sure enough they were there, the locals having a dance next to this bus with enormous speakers. We went to this little carnival and watched the locals play an impossible to win dice game, regardless they were all chucking loads of money into the ring. This woman then randomly approached Tom and and threw her baby into his arms and started videoing us...all a bit strange as she didn’t seem to want the baby back. Anyway, we hopped back in the Tuktuk and went back to the guesthouse and spent a couple of hours chatting to Dominic, an Aussie, and Jasmina, a German girl - we all shared a few laughs and a few cups of tea before heading to bed.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Goodbye Filipa!
    View from Ella RockObligatory picEdge of the world!Happy Birthday Jennie!!Arriving at Tomorrowland HostelNice place to chill outOur dinner shack

    Ella Rock Hike and Tomorrowland Hostel

    January 18, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    None of us got good sleep because of the deafening noise coming from outside our room. A load of drunk brits had decided they were going to carry on the party from their night in town back at the hostel...at 3am! We got up without our well needed rest and had our free breakfast at 07:30 with a few people from the hostel and then headed to climb Ella Rock, with Filipa joining. We jumped in the TukTuk, de-leeched it, and made our way to a point that looked as though we could park the TukTuk and walk up, we were correct. We parked the TukTuk in front of an old ladies house and begun the walk. The first 3 minutes we were joined by said old lady who owned the house, she was guiding us and it wasn’t until I said to her we were okay on our own she stopped walking and began to ask for money...we brutally just walked on saying “sorry, we have no money”... blatantly lying but oh well. We walked through tea plantations and a small forest on our way up, the walk was relatively easy and enjoyable...but Filipa started to consider turning back as her taxi driver text her (because that’s a thing in Sri Lanka) saying that she should leave about 09:30 from the hostel to get to the airport in time for her flight. Tom wanted to get to a nice viewpoint to say our goodbyes and get a picture. We eventually found a viewpoint, wasn’t the greatest view but we thought we would settle as Filipa really needed to head back. We said our goodbye got a “family pic” and she left us. Literally 1 minute of walking onwards we found an amazing viewpoint, typical! Tom tried to get in contact with her via different platforms - each of them not working so he sent her a message to turn back if she could and we decided to continue... 30 seconds had passed and Tom got a FaceTime call from her, fuzzy and we couldn’t really see her face or hear her as she was clearly running back to us... we reunited and enjoyed the view for a little while before saying our humorous goodbyes, again. As soon as she was out of sight I realised that I didn’t remind her to leave my charger that I lent her on my bag back at the hostel...I messaged her and Tom reminded me that there was nothing I could do about it if she forgot and if she did we would just get another one. It’s funny how little things can worry you when you’re travelling and actually have no worries in the world and this was one of those times, but hey we all have them.

    We made it up Ella Rock, it was a beautiful view over the whole area and we a lot higher than Little Adams peak, where we were the morning previous. We found a spot where there were no people and sat down and enjoyed the view for a little while, where we realised it was Jennie birthday today! We thought we’d be cute and write her a Happy Birthday sign and get a picture at the top of Ella Rock. So we used the TukTuk rental booklet (as that was all we had) and made Jennie a make shift birthday card and sent it to her - we knew she’d love that! After enjoying the view for a little longer we made our way back to Greta, on the way we had a funny encounter with a Ukrainian guy(?) - “you’re never going to get there” to which he howled with laughter.

    We got back to our hostel checked out and drove our TukTuk maybe 100m to the Kottu stall we had driven past a few times and ordered a veggie Kottu to takeaway. Whilst waiting for our Kottu we got to speaking to an older English couple who loved the fact we were driving a TukTuk round the country, they were even more impressed when we knew all about the different birds we had seen in Uduwalawe NP as they were bird spotters on their way to a bird watching tour. With our red hot Kottu in hand, we drove through the hills to Tomorrowland hostel, where we didn’t have a reservation but asked for a bed for this night...they didn’t have any beds but we could take a tent for 1,000 rupee each. The hostel was a stereotypical backpacker hostel...peace signs and motivational quotes about enjoying life and taking things slow were plastered over the walls with the stench of weed in the air, DJ decks and a chill out zone. It was a real mix of people, ordinary people like us, a white French guy with dreadlocks who smelt a little because he probably refuses to use deodorant or body wash and Natalie, a woman who left the UK 25 years ago had been living in Sri Lanka for the last 4 years and gives massages for a living nowadays. However, we quite liked the relaxed vibe here but we didn’t want to sit and do nothing all day so we ate our Kottu at the 360° view area and I found a route on maps.me that should have taken us full circle via local villages back to the hostel. Instead, we walked through local villages but were stopped in our tracks when we come across a dead-end and were also being howled at by a massive black dog in the house whose land we were clearly strayed into. We tried to find a way back to the hostel that didn’t take us back the same route and we then noticed that lots of leeches were on our flip flops and legs so we literally ran out of the leech zone back onto the main road.

    On the walk back to our hostel we saw a hut on stilts perched on the hillside at the side of the road serving up food, we thought we’d check it out. We both fancied rice and curry but as we were seated they practically forced us into having fried rice as that was all they were cooking at the moment. The view was insane and all the local guys were coming here so it must be good, so we decided to have the fried rice. We watched the guy prepare the food, using the same plank of wood to do everything and then cook the rice in a huge wok that shook the hut as he mixed it all together. Over dinner we discovered that I was still on the same pair of boxers he I was wearing when I left the UK (albeit we’d had a week in swim shorts) and Tom was only on his second...disgusting! Full and satisfied we went back to the hostel chilled out for a bit longer and then got into our tent and fell asleep to a film hoping for a better nights sleep than the last.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    We all made it!
    Sunrise goalsTrying not to fall outI was quite suspicious of how big her ears wereTom got attackedSelfies are much harder than they look

    Little Adams Peak and Ella train ride

    January 17, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    We had an early start as we wanted to climb Little Adams Peak this morning. We met some cool people in our hostel the night before and we all decided that we’d meet outside at 5:30am to start the walk. From looking at Maps.me it would only take about 45 minutes so we’d be just in time for the sunrise at about 06:20. It was me, Tom, Meredyth, Christophe and Filipa (the girl who stole my bed yesterday) who got up and got hiking. Me, Filipa and Christophe at the front exchanging stories and talking about our own counties, Tom and Meredyth at the back as they are both brummies presumably talking about Peaky Blinders. We made it up to the top of Little Adams Peak in really good time and we had been told to go to the third hill along for the best view. It was very undulating so we went down and up and down and finally back up to our sunrise spot with nobody else around except a couple of dogs. We waited for the sun to rise. It was a little cloudy, which actually made it more spectacular! We tried to get a few group pics with a timer but it didn’t really work. So I had a go...timer set to 10 seconds and I ran back on top of the rock we were getting the pic on. It was a heart stopping moment when I lost my footing and nearly plummeted down a couple of thousand feet! It made for a good picture, and made everyone else laugh except Tom who I grabbed onto to save myself!

    After appreciating the sunrise it was time to head down for our free breakfast at the hostel, some simple eggs and toast would do. A few people were going to get the train to Nuwara Eliya, however as we were going there in a few days we decided to still get he train but get off randomly and see what was what. We got to the train station with Filipa and Meredyth and got some second class tickets for just 165 rupees (70p) to a stop called Ambewela. The German couple Jen and Matthias were also on the platform so we all piled on the train getting various seats and Filipa and Meredyth got the classic door view where you could hand out and enjoy the fresh air. I basically became Filipa’s private photographer as she dared to hang far out of the train, she did the same in return for me, however it’s so awkward getting these pictures when there’s a thousand tourists and locals watching. Tom would have taken part but he was trapped behind this large Sri Lankan man who’d swapped seats with him so he could look out the window. Filipa and Meredyth hopped off at Haputhale to go and do the Diyaluma Falls we’d done previously and we stayed on with Jen and Matthias to Ambewela. We got off at this station in the middle of nowhere to go to this farm. We bartered down a ride to what we thought was the right farm...turned out it wasn’t the one Jen thought. It was called New Zealand Farms, and was a massive dairy farm. Predictably there was a ticket counter, I spotted it was 100 rupees from afar so confidently put the money through the hole to the man. He pointed to a separate sign in tiny writing saying that it was 200 for foreigners...outrageous!! We went in and walked into the first shed where there were loads of goats...we were so excited as you could pet them all and there were baby goats all over! From here we went to see the milking station, the calves, pregnant cows, bulls and rabbits (which were being sold for either meat 😕). By this time we’d seen everything there and headed back to the entrance to try and get the same cab back to the station only 3km away. However, the number he gave us didn’t work so we got someone else to take us. We got back to the station to wait for the train. Awkwardly, the man who took us there was waiting and kept following us around...really weird. We grabbed some bits from the little bakery which was amazing and got our third class tickets back to Ella for just 65 rupees (27p).

    The train was jam packed of people coming from Nuwara Eliya so we had to stand, which was ok as we were near the door so had some air. The locals near us at the door whooped and whistled each time the train went through a tunnel. As it was so full we all had to just manoeuvre ourselves at each stop to let the locals either on or off. Eventually we made it back to Ella and said goodbye to Jen and Matthias whose Tuktuk had been moved from where they left it, they offered a lift but we felt like a walk so made it back to the hostel. Once back we freshened up as we were still in the same clothes as climbing Little Adams Peak. Filipa made it back and was keen to go get dinner with us, so we got ready and went up to the part of town we were the previous night. We had fried rice, Filipa and Juliette (a French/German girl) shared a rice and curry and whilst eating Tom and I realised that it was 3 years ago today we met, HAPPY FRIENDAVERSARY.

    We all went to 360 bar where we heard some live music from some people in the hostel. We saw the most disgusting thing, a leech full of blood on the floor wriggling around and leaking the host blood. It was awful and it was massive!! We headed back to the hostel as we were getting up in good time tomorrow to climb Ella rock. Filipa who was trying to do Ella in 24 hours was coming with us, but had a flight out of Colombo tomorrow at 6pm, we’d see how far she’d get...    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Sunrise on the way up to Lipton's Seat
    High spirits at firstWill Greta make it?Incredible views over south Sri LankaWe made it!!Our first tarmac of the dayView from Lipton's Seat9 Arch bridge - we counted, there are 9

    Koslanda —> Lipton’s Seat —> Ella

    January 16, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    We woke up earlier than planned today so decided to hit the road sharpish, by 630 we were out. Today we were going to drive up to Lipton’s Seat and finish the journey in Ella, a place that both of us had heard great things about so we were really excited. We had previously been told to go to Lipton’s Seat via a town in the hills called Haputhale, however we thought we would take the more direct route which turned out to be directly up the hill that Lipton’s Seat sat on...we found out pretty quickly that this may have been a mistake! The “road” condition was horrendous, it would have actually made a pretty rough walking route so not suitable for a TukTuk. However we had invested time in this route so we powered through and insisted that we would make it. Each kilometre took around half an hour and the road condition seemed to get worse. The locals who lived in the small villages in the hills that we passed through looked at us as we passed with both humour and confusion...I’m pretty sure they’d never seen a Tuktuk go past their house, let alone white people driving one past. Regardless of the road conditions, the scenery was gorgeous on the way up, passing through tea plantations and eventually we reached a section of road that was actually tarmac!! We celebrated the tarmac as Greta (our TukTuk) seemed to be struggling however it was short lived as the bumpy roads shortly returned. We got up to Liptons seat at 9am, and it was a really cool viewpoint! You could see over the tea plantations that we just drove through and could see miles ahead of that into the distance, we tried to identify the Dam in Udalalawe. After enjoying the view we decided to get a cup of tea at the make-do cafe at the top which had a beautiful view of the scenery. We paid up and made our way down to Ella via beautiful, tarmac roads!

    We got to Haputhale, a busy town in the hills and we stopped to get some grub at Sunrise restaurant. We ordered Veggie Kottu and agreed a price, 250 for the portion with the young guy working there and waited for our takeout in the TukTuk after checking out the view out of the kitchen window at the restaurant. Our Kottu arrived and surprise surprise when it come to paying they tried to rip us off and charge a different price...we obviously disagreed and then an older guy came (presumably the young guys dad?) over to us but we did not back down. Through principle we argued for that 100 rupees (40p) and walked away with our huge Kottu for £1! We stopped our TukTuk at a viewpoint spot on the road and ate the Kottu with our hands, and gave some leftovers to a stray dog that had been following us for a while.

    Eventually, we arrived in Ella and got to our hostel, Bunk Station. It was a relatively new hostel, only being opened 6 months ago so was very clean and tidy but the guy who worked behind the front desk seemed to be a bit of an arse...anyhow, we threw our bags on our beds and went straight to Nine Arch bridge, a popular tourist spot in Ella. The bridge was constructed by British engineers in 1921 and was situated about a 30 minute walk from our hostel. It was beautiful, pretty busy and very very hot! We stayed there for a bit watching the tourists doing their thing and then decided to try and climb to the bottom of the bridge as we could see and hear water down there...due to the density of the bush we failed our mission and decided to head back to our hostel, however as we were about to leave a train passed over the bridge which was really cool to see!

    On the way back to the hostel we went on the hunt for a cold bottle of Coca Cola to enjoy back at the hostel. We could of either had 250ml for 280 rupees or 1.5l for 250 rupees, I’ll leave it to your imagination as to which one we got. We got back to the hostel chilled out with our cold coke on the bean bags they had in the common area and FaceTimed home. We then ventured into Ella and got dinner at City Cafe Ella, I got the veggie fried rice and Tom got veggie noodles...it was probably the first meal in Sri Lanka Tom wasn’t too fond of so decided he probably wouldn’t have the noodles again. After a quick dinner we went back to the hostel and chilled out in our room, I got back to find my bed had been nicked by some girl called Filipa, so I picked up all of her stuff and placed it on her suitcase. We chatted to the people in our room for a bit and decided we would join them for a sunrise hike to Little Adams peak in the morning... Filipa also joined us in the room and laughed about the check in man sending her to the wrong room - hence my bed being stolen earlier on. In good spirits we all went to bed to get up bright and early tomorrow.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Sunrise at Udalalawe
    Apparantly there are crocs in this picWater buffalo going for a swimSri Lankan ElephantThis gal was very interestedDiyaluma falls make the tuktuk look tiny230m down!!Sorry mumInfinity pools higher than Diyaluma

    Udawalawe Safari —> Diyaluma Falls

    January 15, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    We got up at just after 5 so we could get ready for the safari pick up. Straight away we were glad that we’d put jeans and a jumper on as the jeep sped towards the park entrance we were getting pelted with dirt and cold air! We went to the park entrance and our driver went to get the pass. He took ages and ages and pretty much all the trucks left, so I went to enquire with him what was going on. He said that he had to wait for another driver who had money! Another example of Asia never making sense. We were keen to get going as this was a sunrise safari and it was rising quickly!! Finally we got on our way into Udalalawe.

    Pretty much as soon as we got in we saw an elephant and it’s baby. We knew that we’d see them but not that quick! The next hour was spent bumping around seeing Serpent Eagles, owls, water buffalo, foxes, kingfishers, storks, a rare wild cat, and bee eater birds...not to mention the thousands of peacocks. I was thinking that maybe we wouldn’t see any more elephants, but then we saw a massive herd just ahead. Round about 10 of them just grazing. It was our jeep and one other which was, unfortunately, full of Russians who wouldn’t stay quiet and were trying to touch and stroke the elephants as they came closer...stupid. We had about 40 minutes with the herd and just observed them grazing. They eventually moved on and so did we. The rest of the time was spent just looking at some amazing birds and listening to the dawn chorus.

    We got taken back to the accommodation for some hoppers for breakfast from our host. Even though we had two nights booked, we had decided to leave Uduwalawa today and find accommodation on the way to Liptons seat to spare the huge journey (plus there wasn’t much else to do here). Tom sorted it out with the host and booking.com and just after midday we were on our way, Tom drove today and smashed it as usual! We got to near where we thought we could get Liptons Seat from and there was Diyaluma Falls, a 230m high waterfall. We found some accommodation and tried to barter down the price with the woman. She said 2750 we wanted to pay 2000. We settled on 2500, still a free dinner! We met Jen and Matthias who said the waterfall was amazing so we decided to get straight up it. A short drive and some free parking later and we were off walking to Diyaluma falls. It was a nice walk up but when we got there it was even better than we thought. A huge drop and we had to get some risky pictures...sorry mum.

    There were some higher falls which we’d been told about and apparently were like infinity pools so we climbed up and they were also really nice so we went for a swim with the locals. With the falls all explored we went down to the Tuktuk and this little girl demanded 100 rupees for parking, nice try but it was free. We headed to Koslanda for dinner at this really good little restaurant and then chilled back at the accommodation chatting to Jen and Matthias about our Tuktuk adventures as they had also rented one. Time to hit the hay as a long day was ahead on our journey to Liptons Seat, we set up the iPad on a table between both of our beds and watched a film to fall to sleep to.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Tom smashing the driving
    Beautiful lowlands on the way to UdawalaweDid I spot an Elephant?Our stop for bananasAncient Pagoda in Sankhapala Rajamaha Viharaya

    Tangalle —> Udawalawe National Park

    January 14, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    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

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Blue Island Beach
    The green turtle layingOff she goes!!

    Dikwella —> Tangalle

    January 13, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    I still woke up feeling awful and had convinced myself it was Dengue, but Tom said that I was being ridiculous and it was obviously the amount of sun we’d had. We’d decided the night before that we weren’t in a rush, so we were having a leisurely day. Over a game of shithead we met Sophia, a yoga instructor from Swindon but living in Bristol. She recommended that we go to a secret beach (unlike Heriketiya) which wasn’t too far away. It looked really nice on her pictures so we gave it a go. Abandoning the game of shithead, we fired up the Tuktuk and set off for Blue Island beach - it was gorgeous. A little beach bridging a little island to the mainland. We saw the locals bring in a massive tuna fish, taking three of them to carry it to the scales they were all exlaiming ‘big fish’ with their arms open wide! We chilled here for a bit watching the waves crash on the rocks and then headed back to the dinner place of last night to grab a veggie roti.

    We saw Sophia walking along the road, she was heading to the blow hole so offered her a lift. We had to quickly check out and pay (not that the host was bothered or precious about our checkout time) and then we all headed to the blowhole, our first passenger!! After a quick fill up of fuel, we were at the blowhole...well, nearly. A guy tried to stop us and makes it for parking but we politley declined and parked up the road...RS50 saved (20p). We walked along the trail until we reached the blowhole visitor centre. Obviously this was not a free attraction, 250 rupees...and the man said it wasn’t great today because of the calm sea so we gave it a miss and went to a nearby beach for a swim...completely secluded apart from a few local men. We all had a nice dip in the beautiful sea and chatted for a while. We dropped Sophia half way back and then made our way to Tangalle and the Sun Star Homestay a few kilometres from Tangalle town, down a questionable road. Turned out to be a really nice little place albeit in the arse end of nowhere. We dumped our bags and decided we’d go get some cash from Tangalle town. ATM 1 didn’t work, ATM 2 took some finding but we got cash and stocked up on water. We headed back to the guesthouse and straight to the beach as it was really close. We chilled out and read our books for a couple of hours as the sea wasn’t the best to swim in.

    Back to the homestay and it was time for dinner, as we hadn’t asked earlier it took some time to come, but when it did it was the best Sri Lankan food we’ve had, and the quantity was insane. We shared dinner and stories with a Swiss couple and a Spanish/German couple, getting tips for ourselves for later in Sri Lanka and other places and dishing out a few ourselves. At 20:30 our host had said we could all go with him to see if any turtles were on the shore laying eggs, we all jumped on this great little perk to this homestay. We all set off and we walked for what seemed like ages away from all civilisation until we came across a small green turtle digging a hole with her fins to lay. This is something we’d both wanted to see for ages and for the second time this week nature amazed us! We sat near the turtle for about 40 minutes until our host said it was ok to go closer and take a look. The turtle was patting down and covering up the eggs, the body making a deep thudding sound and vibrations felt through the sand a few meters away! Job done and she span round and made her way back to the ocean. Truly amazing! With it being 11pm now we all headed back to the homestay for a good nights sleep so grateful to have seen nature at work this evening.    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Wewurukannala Raja Maha Viharaya temple
    Tallala beachOur dog squad for thr day at TallalaDikwella Beach

    Tallala beach and local Kottu dinner

    January 12, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    After a comfortable night sleep we woke up around 8, and were straight out. We stopped off briefly at a temple near to our homestay, but quickly left after a man started signalling to us something that we couldn’t understand...could’ve been saying good morning for all we knew, but he was probably asking for payment. We then made our way to Talalla beach that we had heard from as being beautiful and secluded beach. It was around 10km from our home stay but was so worth the drive. It was a long stretch of gorgeous white sand and the water was the perfect temperature, however it was pretty rough and very very hot with not many shaded spots. We found a palm tree to base ourselves under and we chilled out for a bit reading and listening to some music.

    After a while we both got really hot so decided to go for a dip in the rough see and basically be children in the waves....I came up with a great idea (sarcasm) for a game that was essentially chicken for going under the waves before they hit you...a huge wave came and Tom lasted longer than me on this one occasion, but it completely sent Tom flying all the way back to shore and ‘scorpioning’ on the sea bed. Technically Tom won that round, but did he really? After all that sun and being battered by the waves we really worked up an appetite, so Tom went for a walk to the shop we saw when we parked up to get 2 veggie Rotis for us to eat on the beach... in the shop the locals were looking at Tom as if he was an alien just landed on earth, rather than just a hungry human being.

    At 2pm we both decided that was enough sun for one day! We went back to the home stay for some chill time, stopping off at the bakery and Cargills for a 5L water. I wasn’t feeling too good so we just stuck the Greatest Showman on and lounged around in our beautiful homestay for a few hours. The film eventually finished and I had started to feel better, so we both got showered and found a small local restaurant on the corner of the road into Heriketiya. We sat on plastic chairs and the whole family at one point passed by doing their part in preparing our meal...we had order vegetable Kottu and it was delicious, all for 250...around £1! We had a quick look on Dikwella beach which wasn’t as nice as Tallala, but we still got a good sunset. Thoroughly satisfied we made our way back to the home stay to get some sleep!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Sunrise on our whale watching catamaran
    Our first view of the blue whaleHeading down for a deep diveInsta hotspot at coconut tree hill

    Whale Watching —> Dikwella/Heriketiya

    January 11, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    *bang bang*. Disoriented and dazed we both woke up wondered who the hell was trying to smash our door down at 430am... we soon realised it was the cute old man waking us up to tea...an hour early! We got up had tea, said our goodbyes and packed up the TukTuk and made our way to Mirissa for the whale watching tour. It was a clear, chilly morning and the morning light was starting to break through lighting up the road. We arrived paid our 7,000 (£30) and made our way across to the harbour where we got on our modern catamaran with first pick of seats...we went for the front two obviously! We were welcomed onboard with a cup of tea and a sea-sickness pill...however were reassured that the sea was rather clam today which was great for spotting the giant blue whales!

    We set out to sea into the sunrise and before we knew it the boat stopped and the crew pointed out two turtles in the water...”making babies”. Shortly after that the boat stopped again as we were joined in the water by a pod of Spinner Dolphins...we guessed up to about 10 of them! We noticed there was a huge group of boats in the distance and a plane hovering above it...the captain of our ship explained to us that there is a blue whale over there and that they had this info all morning...however he doesn’t like to chase the whales nor join the crowd, rather he prefers to wait till the crowds are gone and then find another whale rather than crowding or chasing. We both really liked that so enjoyed the boat ride. Shortly after our conversation with the captain he had intel of a whale up ahead that was only joined by 2 boats so we made our way over there. Eager and excited we stood at the front of the boat waiting for a spotting... with a blast of water into the air we saw it! A blue whale surfaced revealing its HUGE body and then dorsal fin, before smashing down its huge tail to take a deep dive. We stayed at this location for the rest of the morning, with slight relocations based on the whereabouts of the whale. We saw the 18 metre female surface between 10-15 times. One time in particular we were positioned away from the other boats based on a gut-feeling by the captain...and out of nowhere the huge blue whale shot out of the water with its huge mouth wide open engulfing hundreds of krill, and preceded to come closer and closer to the boat, surfacing 3-4 times en route. It passed the boat directly in front underwater and started the blow bubbles and it was then where you could see her sheer size! It was genuinely a moment neither of us would ever forget - where you feel completely insignificant. The captain wanted one more viewing of her before heading back to shore - she surfaced again not too far from the boat but this time she was swimming away from the boat, she gave us an awesome display of her huge tail as she went down for her deep dive.

    On a total high from what we had just experienced we got into our TukTuk and drove to Coconut Hill; an Instagram hotspot that we wanted to checkout, to see if it was all that it was made up to be. In all honestly it was very nice, a hill overlooking the ocean with an abundance of palm trees. We even saw a turtle in the water from the top of the hill. We both wanted to get a picture together with the nice view and a Sri Lankan man insisted on taking our picture, ensuring that he got all the angles before giving Tom his phone back with much less memory than before due to the quantity of pictures taken!

    Back to our TukTuks and we drove to Dikwella. We were actually staying nearer to Heriketiya beach in a beautiful home stay calm Cinnamon House. Beautifully maintained gardens and the host was a lovely lady who straight away wanted to give Tom remedies for his sunburnt arm and me for my neck. It was VERY hot, so shortly after checking in we went to check out Heriketiya beach. We grabbed a Roti from “Roti Hut” on the way and meandered through the streets to find the beach. A small beach which was certainly beautiful, but rather busy.

    After a few hours of chilling out there we went back, showered and then went out for dinner. We tried to find somewhere in Dikwella for food, but there wasn’t any places that were tickling our fancy so we went back to Heriketiya and found a nice place that did buffet style curry for 450 each. With full bellies we went back to the homestay and got some good sleep!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Medigama Beach
    Post surfing picLittle island off Weligama beachSunset over WeligamaOur curries with the boiled egg!

    Medigama beach and Weligama Surfing

    January 10, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 31 °C

    The homestay room was boiling hot overnight, so neither of us got the best sleep. Amazing how it can be hotter inside than out! We went to Mirissa to check out whale watching place and then went back had a big breakfast courtesy of our host which immediately gave me the shits. Whilst I was out of action Tom capitalised and did some clothes washing. When I came back round we went to Medigama beach which I’d seen the previous day on the journey to Weligama, it was only about 7km away.

    Tom parked up Tuktuk and we went over the banking by the road and the amazing beach awaited. We spotted a palm tree at the far end of the beach and went to camp up. Gorgeous weather and the best beach we’d been on so far. We played around in the waves, had a little snorkel and generally chilled out. We got to grips with the new bat and ball but not the new shuttle cocks. We chilled for another hour or so nipping in and out of the sea thinking about how everyone at home was getting to the office!

    We headed back to Weligama to the beach. We camped out again and decided to get a Coca Cola at a beach hut. Tom went to order and we awaited them to arrive and looked forward to them. We watched as the waiter brought two cokes and put them on the table next to us to a family with two kids. They necked them and we were left thirsty. No more cokes arrived so we duly got up and left to find a surfing rental. We went to Elephant Surfing and paid RS 250 (£1.10) for an hour on the boards. We signed them out and went on our way. The bay at weligama is perfect for surfing, so we looked spectacularly amateur compared to all the Assies who’d travelled here especially for the surf. About 10 mins in I noticed a slice in my board done by a previous pilot and realised that they would probably say it was me...anyway we attempted to surf. Tom got up on the first wave and I thought he was actually good. Took him a while to get another and stay up :) we both managed to catch some wave but also performed some spectacular wipeouts. The hour was up and with ears and eyes full of water we returned the boards. They accused me of damaging the board, shock horror, but we said it was already like that, paid and left.

    On our way back into Weligama, we were treated to the best sunset so far, so we went into the beach to soak it all in. Even after the previous nights’ toilet episode, we went for dinner again at Day Long Restaurant, but this time got egg rice and curry. We assumed it was egg fried rice, but no. It was the same as the previous night, white rice but this time we got a side dish of a boiled egg! Not quite what we had in mind but Tom said it was delicious to which I coined a new phrase of Dhal - icious referencing Dhal Curry. Stuffed, we walked back to the guesthouse and packed up for the early start to find blue whales tomorrow!    Read more

  • George FisherTravel 2020 - TBCTraveler
    Famous Galle Lighthouse
    Oldest cafe in GalleSneaky cricket ground viewSecret Jungle BeachDalawella BeachMassive dinner at Day Long

    Unawatuna —> Galle —> Weligama

    January 9, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C

    I didn’t sleep at all last night. Woke up at 2am and didn’t get back to sleep. Kept going outside to see the stars and to see if it was getting light. I woke Tom at 6am as we’re planned to go to Galle for the morning. We drove to town as the sun came up and got some petrol, our first fill up and it cost 800 rupees (£3). We parked up in some random spot and walked through and archway into the old city of Galle. We went up on the fort walls and saw the classic lighthouse. It was getting very hot so we decided to go down from the walls and go through the shaded streets in pursuit of some breakfast. We found the National Tea Rooms which was the oldest cafe In Galle...since 1932 and got dhal and bread and hoppers for brekkie which cost us a grand total of just £0.65 each. We made our way back up to the walls as the cafe owner had said that when the cricket is on you can see into the stand, which was pretty cool....free tickets!!! We went back to the Tuktuk and headed to the Jungle beach which was meant to be secluded and quite secret. Turned out it wasn’t so secret, but it was still very nice with warm waters and soft sand - what more could we want at 9am? We chilled here for a bit and then climbed round the headland to a second jungle beach. We’d seen on our maps that there was a viewpoint, but we weren’t able to get round in flip flops - so we found a point where we could jump off into the sea. We trekked back uphill to the Tuktuk and went to check out of our hostel, and grabbed our bags.

    Tom drove us to Dalawella Beach, stalling on the train tracks near the hostel which put us both into an induced panic, but we made it to the famous beach with the swing. The waves were enormous and the currents strong, so it was only dipping for us. We found a tiny little shaded spot on the back of the beach to set up our stuff, then UK Amanda cane up to me and asked if I could put some sun cream on her back. We all chatted and exchanged travel stories about Sri Lanka and various other places for about two hours, enjoying the sun and the occasional dip in the sea. We left Amanda behind and went to our new place in Weligama about 25 km away. We were met by tea and biscuits upon arrival by our lovely new host. We went straight to the beach, a nice little walk away from our homestay. This beach was completely different to the others, a wide open beach with long gentle breakers. Weligama was a surfers hotspot because of this. We went body surfing in the waves and played like big kids, nothing new there. We got dinner at this tiny little restaurant called Day Long, Just set back from the Weligama main strip. It was cheap, huge and delicious - our three favourite words when describing food. We had what we thought was sweet potato curry, but we asked and it was pumpkin!

    After dinner Tom took a risky toilet break at the restaurant...it was a squatter with no toilet paper, his classic finger technique was back in use just 2 days in. He described what had happened and I was nearly in stitches as we left the restaurant. We grabbed some stuff from Cargills and then walked back to the homestay where we saw an elephant on the back of a lorry. We asked the driver what was going on, turned out it was going to a festival in Galle tomorrow. Anyway, back to the homestay for a night sleep before more exploration tomorrow.    Read more

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