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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    111111
    Dia 34

    Kochi —> Hampi

    8 de fevereiro de 2020, Índia ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    We were up and out of our hotel room, despite not wanting to get out of the comfy bed, by 440 and arrived at the check-in desk at Kochi international airport just after 5. It was interesting being at the airport with the worry of Coronovirus pretty much global now. People were walking round with masks on and there was definitely a lot of measures being taken to ensure it didn’t spread. We checked into our flight and compared food prices in the airport. To both of our discomfort we ended up sharing a meal from KFC with additional loaded chicken fries, our first western food of the trip and of course it was our most expensive yet (still only like £3.50 total). We boarded our flight to Hubli, it was a propella plane and was probably the smallest plane I have ever been on! The flight took off into the smoggy air that hovered above Kochi and we could see the final stages of the sun rising over the horizon.

    I managed to get some sleep on the plane, my head swinging around in the aisle like a pendulum. After I woke up, we listened to some music and before we knew it the seatbelt lights come back on as we begun our descent into Hubli. It was such a short flight, but had cut out a lot of hassle with trains and buses, all for just £20 too. We got off the plane, walked towards the airport terminal - just a single building - and we were pleasantly surprised that the air was cool...a welcome change from the stifling air in Alleppey. Our bags were first off, so we grabbed them and headed out to grab a Tuktuk to Hubli train station with the intention of going to another town called Hospet where we could then get to Hampi. Unfortunately when we got there at 9am we discovered the only train that day to Hospet was at 13:30! As it was still early and cool enough, we walked to the bus staying a few kilometres away to see if a bus was a better option. We’d been warned about not taking this journey by bus as the road was shocking and it takes over 5 hours. We also found the bus was 120 rupees each compared to the train at 65. We thought we better get the train as it would save money and be pretty similar in time overall. On the way back we grabbed some street food which was amazing - a mix of rice and dhal and raita! This killed plenty of time, along with looking for an ATM (which we didn’t find) so the wait for the train was ok.

    We got our general class tickets and attempted to get on. As it was our first train experience we had no idea, but we got onto general class which was jam packed full of locals and went on the hunt for some seats. We eventually found some, and got sat down, but not even a minute later a man came back and started shouting at us that these were his seats (even though there are no reservations). We were so British about it all and just got up with only a small resistance. We then got on a different carriage which had loads of space, but was a sleeper so our tickets weren’t valid. Oh well, we’d risk it...we got sat down and could have a little relax. We were quickly joined by a bunch of Indian guys who took great interest in us asking loads of questions etc etc. It was basically a three hour train ride/ interview. One of the group was a bit odd and decided to FaceTime his friends and showing he was sat with two white guys clearly saying in Hindi that we were from London over and over again. Anyway, we made it nearly to Hospet when the ticket conductor came round and busted us for being in the wrong carriage - the fine was just the difference between the two tickets, but we just said we’d stand by the door and not pay the extra £0.80 each.

    We got off in Hospet and were met with a barrage of Tuktuk offers, at the same time a tiny woman in a face mask pounced on me demanding information, I asked what fit and she just repeated “INFORMATION!!” I told her I wasn’t giving out information without a reason and we started to haggle for a Tuktuk. She then started video recording us and was on the phone to someone. We assumed it was all to do with Coronavirus, but it was all a bit unofficial. We managed to get a Tuktuk for 175 rupees, down from an initial 1200 and went in search of an ATM. It was a nightmare, none were open or they didn’t have cash, and our Monzo cards didn’t work. I was trying all cards in one ATM and eventually managed to use my trusty NatWest card to get money...as Hampi didn’t have any ATMs it was panic stations for about half an hour. After a short drive we arrived in Hampi, a town famous for its vast expanses of boulder mountains and temples. We got dropped at the south side of the river and we’d heard about the ferry across - but this was not a ferry, it was a tiny rowing boat with a motor on the back and it wasn’t more than 30 meters across the river. To take this, a 40 rupee charge was in place, 20 for the person and 20 for the backpack. After a long day this felt like a bit of a kick in the teeth, but oh well. We got to the other side and actually had a free pickup from the hostel...happy to get our stuff of our backs, we immediately went to a sunset spot near the hostel and chilled for a bit before deciding where we’d go for dinner.
    We didn’t venture far, maybe 50 meters to Nayana hotel, A tiny kitchen shack, but it was well reviewed. We shared a veg thali, masala dosa and poori to try a few things. They were all amazing and we decided there and then that this family would feed us for the next three days as it was also very cheap!

    Exhausted, we chilled in the hostel and met a few cool people including Tobias, a German guy who had been travelling for the last two years. He had already been to Central America and some other places we were interested in, so we just chilled and picked his brains for a bit. Eventually it was time to head to bed as we were going to have a few long days ahead seeing Hampi and the surrounding areas.    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    1111
    Dia 33

    Alleppey —> Fort Kochi —> Kochi Airport

    7 de fevereiro de 2020, Índia ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Up at 730, we left the hostel in good time and walked the 2.5km to the bus station. On the journey it started spitting with rain, but we thought we would not get a Tuktuk we would just carry on...with the bus station in sight it started to pour so we made a run for it. In the train station there was a very small shop called “bakery and cool juice bar”, they were also selling naan/chapati bread with some curry, and it was jam packed with locals which is only ever a god sign. We squeeze into the shop putting out big bags underneath the table and sat whilst the food was brought over to us. We ate with our hands of course and the food was delicious and only for 40 rupee each. Stomached no longer empty we asked somebody at the bus station the best way to get to Fort Kochi, a bus to Thoppumpaddy and then change there to Fort Cochin, all together it should cost around 60-70 rupees each. We got on the bus and oh no it was another “super fast” bus! Would we survive? The ticket man happened to be the same man that we just spoke to at the station, we couldn’t get ripped off now!? 45 rupee for bus from Alleppey to Thoppumpaddy and then we found a bus going to Kochi beach and jumped on that as it was still moving, for 10 rupees - so a total of 55 rupees, or about 60p. We were dropped off and then dumped our bags in a nearby hostel after they agreed to do it for no charge (they initially wanted 150 per bag) and then started aimlessly walking around. It was so hot, 33°C according to our phones, but it felt more like 40° due to there being no breeze and it wasn’t helped by the lack of shade as it was midday.

    We walked along the coast and were surprise that locals were just selling tat and there were a lot of older tourists here. We saw the Chinese fishing nets (that neither of us really understood), Fort Cochin beach and then got some shade in St Francis church, where Vasco de Gamas tomb is. Whilst getting ready to leave I felt somebody stroke his back, he thought it was me playing around but it was actually a weird Indian man that had taken a liking to me - weird. We continued to walk around in the heat and after being asked to leave a temple because it was closed we decided to get some food nearby. I did a quick Google and found a local place nearby called Kayees, a local cafe where we went in and were seated next to 2 other Indian guys. We got to talking with them, they were in town on business and we asked them what was good to eat here...they responded with Mutton Biriyani. Shortly after the waiter come over and basically said in very few words that chicken Biriyani was all they had...so our vegetarian stint was now over, however the food was delicious and we ate every bit. We walked around for a bit more after food, but a little slower than we previously were. Before long we were in a street called “Jew street”, where we learnt that Kochi was the oldest Jewish settlement in India. We walked past colourful shops selling spices, antiques and clothing and eventually found a little restaurant where we each ordered a Lassi and enjoyed that in the shade, away from the burning sun. In our British ways, Tom asked the couple behind us if it was okay for me to move the fan in our direction a little, to which the man responded “yes, we mind”, we both laughed and Tom proceeded to spin it around assuming he was joking. He then more seriously said “I said I do mind, air is so important”... (ironic really considering they both lit up cigarette shortly afterwards). Tom spun the fan reassuring them that he wasn’t going to completely take it away from them...what a miserable couple!

    After finishing our lassis we walked back to the hostel where we left our bags, unsure whether we would be charged or not by the guy. We collected our bags and didn’t have to pay (RESULT). With our heavy bags on our backs we made our way to the ferry port where I queued up Indian styled (basically it was carnage) and paid 6 rupees each (6 pence) for the ferry back over to the mainland. We then started to walk to the bus station which was around 1.6 Kilometres away, it felt like we were walking for hours not helped by the fact that Tom’s small bag was completely ripped open meaning he had to hold it shut the entire way. We were once again on the search for a bag shop and Tom had his prayers answered on this journey as we walked past a shop called “Magnet Bags”, We walked in and managed to haggle a bag for 600 rupees, or £6 and managed to get the guy to staple up his old bag so it was easier to manage. With a slight spring in his step we made it towards the bus station, but the staples hadn’t worked. Within two minutes the bag was in pieces again. We quickly got to the bus station and eventually got on a bus going to the airport. Initially, we asked the station master which bus was going via the airport. He said it leave at 18:00,m...not exactly the answer we were looking for but we had time so I thought we could just check later. We tried to find some food, but there was nothing around, so went back to the bus station. As 18:00 was fast approaching I was keen to know which bus. The new station master was just as helpful, so I just started getting on all the buses asking which was going to the airport. Nobody knew, typical, so I went back to our bag pyramid. It was at this point I noticed the place name “Nedumbassery”, which I knew was the airport. As I had already been on this bus to ask I went back and asked another passenger and they confirmed it was the right bus...with about 5 minutes to go we jumped on and got some seats. Thankfully this was an AC bus so it was nice and cool, however, we both got cold as what would usually be a 30 minute journey turned into 2 hours thanks to Kochi and it’s roadworks.

    Eventually we got to the bus stand where we initially got the bus from the airport the other day and we walked to our hotel ‘Alfa Inn’ for the night. We grabbed a veg biriyani on the way back and got some well needed rest as we’d be up early for our flight to Hubli tomorrow morning    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    111111
    Dia 32

    Alleppey and the Kerala Backwaters

    6 de fevereiro de 2020, Índia ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    I awoke at about 7am, after having an ok first night sleep last night! I threw some clothes on and went outside to see if anything was going on, but the only thing around was the hostel puppy. I went back to the room to wake Tom so we could get ready for our backwaters trip today. We were up and ready for 8am as instructed and waited around at the hostel (with no communication of course). There were 7 of us from the hostel doing the Canoe trip today so we were confident that it would be a good day. Eventually a guy walked through the hostel gates telling us to all follow him, to which we all got up and did exactly that, followed him. He lead us to his TukTuk, where he (without communicating) left us on the side of the road whilst he drove down the road with an empty TukTuk....what was happening? He shortly returned, followed by another TukTuk. The group of 7 split off into the two TukTuks and we made our way to the ferry port where we were issued onto a ferry with all the other white people and some locals. After around 1 hour on the ferry we arrived at our “station” and each got off and were directed to a house where we would be having breakfast.

    The house was very simple (unlike so many of its neighbours) being made from the frame and plasterboard alone, with no plaster or paint to brighten the place up at all. We were served our breakfast of bread and curry with Masala tea and then made our way to board our canoes. It was 6 to a canoe, we were grouped with a couple from Israel and an older couple from France and we managed to get the front seats somehow! We slowly passed through the waterways passing by some beautiful houses and some very basic and saw wives washing clothes in the water, people bathing in the water, washing their pots and pans in the water and fishing with small homemade stick rods. It was very quiet and peaceful with the occasional engine boat passing us. We did this for around 2 hours and then the sun starting blazing down on us and now being at the front didn’t feel like too much of a blessing... we dipped our hands into the water in efforts to cool ourselves down but that wasn’t really working, as we were appreciating the occasional breeze that would pass. At one point I dangled my hand into the water where he obviously felt something stroke past his hand causing him to freak out and shake the entire boat by doing so...it was just a plant, but safe to say I’d never moved so quick! We were dropped off at a shop and bought some snacks, we each had a samosa, a savoury donut thing that we didn’t know the name of and a banana and were quickly back on our canoe to go back to the house where we had breakfast this morning. It was boiling hot, nkt helped by the lack of breeze and the very slow pace we were being canoed along at. When we eventually got back to the plasterboard house, we were served rice with a variation of different curries for lunch and it just kept coming! After lunch we had tea and then went to get the ferry back to the town - all in all a great trip for £10!

    Instead of getting a Tuktuk back to the hostel we decided to stay in the town for a little while and walk back to the hostel. I wanted to find some flip flops and a bag, and I wanted to look for a vest...we both failed in our hunt but instead found some good snacks! The nut-man served us warm peanuts and some sort of wasabi peas, which were delicious and cheap! On the walk we were separately intercepted by a few groups of school kids who found whatever we said hilarious! We eventually got back to our hostel, and chilled out for the rest of the evening.    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    1211
    Dia 31

    Sri Lanka —> India —> Alleppey

    5 de fevereiro de 2020, Índia ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    I woke up at 3:30 worried that I wasn’t going to get up or that we weren’t going to be able to get an Uber. After last night, we had very little faith left in Uber and the guys accepting the rides. We both got up at 4am and got ourselves ready, but once again we had an Uber disaster. Drivers were accepting our request to go to the airport, but they were either cancelling or telling us to cancel...they obviously don’t know how it works. They were also asking for us to tell them where we were, which again is pointless as they know from the request. I was all for waking to the Airport, it would take about an hour. We even downloaded the local version of Uber but they were no better, The guy who accepted calling us basically to say he wasn’t coming. After half an hour lost, I said that we needed to start walking, and that we’d just hitchhike to the airport. We set off walking with all our stuff, but ran immediately into a problem. There were dogs, lots of dogs, and not the nice kind; these were viscous and barking at us just for being in the road at 4:30. We had to change our route, but all along it there were dogs making their way towards us on the road and barking right at us. I’m not usually scared of dogs, but when they outnumbered us, it was pretty bad - Jennie would have decided to just miss the flight rather than face them. During all this, Tom has managed to summon an Uber, so we decided to walk towards where he was coming from and eventually found him and got inside...safe from the dogs.

    We finally got to the airport at 5am...it had taken an hour to do 3 kilometres. With the recent outbreak of Coronavirus, there were a lot of people wearing masks, both passengers and security staff. We didn’t have such a luxury, but Tom had read that they actually don’t do anything and it was contact, so we kept our bottle of hand sanitiser close by. We got through all security, spent the last of our Sri Lankan Rupees on one piece of Banana bread, which was amazing, and then we did the standard spray ourselves with as much aftershave testers as possible so we’d smell good - even for just a few hours. The flight was only an hour, but it was a massive plane with screens and everything. We made the most of the games on the screens, we even got a snack on the plane and before we knew it, we were landing in India!

    For some reason, there was a mad rush by the other passengers (all either Indian or Sri Lankan) to get up and get their luggage, even when the doors were still sealed shut. We walked the bridge to the terminal building and the first thing we were asked by a guard was “are you from China?”....close but no. We went to the E-Visa line and we had a little interview from an officer with all the usual questions and boom, we were in. We’d heard about the ‘selfie culture’ in India and how they love having westerners in their pictures and videos. After we got our SIM cards, the guy in the shop next door asked us if we could be videoed saying “happy birthday Malou”, so we did of course hoping this sort of request wouldn’t be every 10 minutes for the next two months. We got some cash and headed for the bus stop trying to get to Alleppey for the famous backwaters. We managed to get on a bus which was going to Vythilla which we were told we could then change and get to Alleppey. It didn’t take too long to see how much traffic there was in India, but it was as expected. We changed buses onto a ‘Superfast’ local bus which was totally open sided. After a slow start, we then realised where this type of bus got its name...the driver was driving like a lunatic, Weaving in and out of traffic as if in a sports car, not a 10 tonne bus. I decided that it was best to not even look at what was happening on the road, and in truth, we both managed to get a bit of sleep on this bus. After 90 minutes we got into Alleppey and happily got off the bus with our lives still ahead of us, we went to a Airtel store to sort Toms phone out which was relatively painless and then immediately started bargaining for a Tuktuk (something we would have to get used to now we don’t have one 😀🛺). We had been told that anything less than 100 was a good price to our hostel and the guy that stopped agreed to do it for 80...after we had to show him the exact location of the hostel on a map, give him the exact address and even their phone number for him to call... Tom began to get a little short with him, “are you going to take us or not”... and eventually he did. He had a very fancy speaker system built into his TukTuk, which he begun to blast music out of! Firstly he played Indian music, then LMFAO’s ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ and then Snoop Dog’s ‘Drop it like its hot’...as we passed through the busy streets of Alleppey we were mortified and almost embarrassed to be in a TukTuk with this clearly crazy guy who was dancing around at the front of his TukTuk, with no hands on the handles and clearly not looking at the roads. We definitely missed being in control of the TukTuk at that point and certainly missed Greta!

    We arrived at Bucket List Hostel, a cool looking place on the edge of the Backwaters and checked in. We met Lily from San Diego, and we all fancied going out for some food close by, so walked along the edge of the Backwaters to a row of little shops. Unfortunately, they were more breakfast places, so we ended up just grabbing some samosas and other things from a tiny place run by and old husband and wife, and the food was really nice. We went back to the hostel and chilled for an hour before we three decided that we should go to the beach for sunset. We jumped in a Tuktuk and made our way there, not expecting amazing things as we’d just had some really special beaches in Sri Lanka, but there was barely any litter, the sand was soft and white and it was surprisingly beautiful. We of course went for a swim and the water was gorgeous, if a little rough. We just chilled here for an hour getting some good tips for the west coast of America from Lily and getting to know her a bit more. She was between jobs so took a month to come to India. Lily was on the hunt for a beer, so we managed to find one but we didn’t feel like one after the day we’d had, so we all had the classic chat about each other’s countries...and if course the conversation came onto both Trump and Brexit - enough said!

    We all went back to the beach for sunset, the sun disappearing into the haze on the horizon. We were all hungry, so we decided to try out a recommended place in town which was a couple of kilometres away. The walk was interesting, seeing our first part of a classic Indian street, everything and anything being sold. Annoyingly when we got to the place it had run out of curry! Luckily we had another one to go to which did have curry, so we got rice, curry, naan all for £1.45 each. Exhausted and stuffed, we jumped in a Tuktuk back to the hostel for some well needed sleep. We got back to find a Finnish guy and Australian girl torn between going further south or doing the backwater tour that we had booked onto. They were doing rock, paper, scissors to decide and then changing their minds, so Tom and I helped them by setting out the pros and cons. Eventually they decided to do the canoeing tour. We all went to bed, hoping that the dangerously low ceiling fan wouldn’t cause anyone damage in the middle of the night. It had been a hectic first day in India, but so far we loved it!    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    Dia 30

    Kalpitiya —> Negombo

    4 de fevereiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    We got up nice and early as we were leaving for Negombo and the airport today. As we’d packed up the previous night, it was pretty relaxed and we had time to do a bit of the blog before we left. As we checked out, we were chatting to the owner and our neighbour about all sorts and he asked us if we had everything, and we gave back a confident ‘yes’. We set on our way with some bakery items we got yesterday and headed south, with Tom driving the first stint. We were blasting music out, without a care in the world when Tom stopped and asked if we had our flip flops...we searched the Tuktuk but nothing. We’d bloody left them - unbelievable!!!

    Today was Sri Lankan Independence Day, from the British in 1948, and pretty much every house and car and Tuktuk we went past had a flag on it. It was a 145km drive from Kalpitiya to Negombo, so we split the journey in half and I took over after 75km. We weren’t allowed on the major motorways or the till road in a Tuktuk, so we set Google Maps to avoid these and continued. For whatever reason the route we took seemed to avoid all major roads, including the main coastal route which we were ok to go down. Still, it got us off the busy road and before long, we were in the outskirts of Negombo trying to find our accommodation. It was like a maze and narrow roads, and the heat was getting to me, so I threw in the towel and Tom took over the last 5km with me navigating.

    We eventually got to the guesthouse and dumped our bags. The lady was really nice and we paid her there and then so we knew how much money we had for the rest of the evening. We went into Negombo to the beach front as we needed to get ourselves a Lion Beer - our first one here! We were looking around for ages, and the first couple of places we went were all sold out. So we ended up going to a hotel and they said we could have one, and if anyone asked we were staying there. We sat outside overlooking the beach with a cold beer at the end of our Sri Lanka adventure, sad to leave but ready to get going in India. I FaceTimed my dad who was out in Portugal, was nice to hear I’ve inspired him and Kate to book flights to Sri Lanka next January (hopefully the blog comes in handy). We jumped back in the Tuktuk and went to find Hangover Hostel where we were due to hand back Greta, truly a sad moment as she’ been such a reliable gal and we’d clocked up some 1250 miles in her around Sri Lanka. We grabbed some takeaway Kottu and some other bits to try and use up the last of our cash as we planned to Uber to the guesthouse from town and to the airport the following morning. Whilst at the handover point, we got a couple of print outs of our passports, cheekily for free, and went out to the main road to get an Uber...sounded so simple in theory.

    We requested a ride and were quickly accepted, but the guy rang us and said he was at the airport and wasn’t going to leave, so he cancelled. We then got another thug who accepted, but he started texting us saying that he was also at the airport and had queued up for hours and wasn’t going to come get us. It was so weird why they’d accept a ride when we clearly weren’t at the airport. However, this guy wouldn’t cancel and wanted us to (which costs us money) so we had a big argument with him saying that we are not cancelling and he would have to. Eventually he did cancel and then we got accepted again BY THE SAME GUY who then proceeded to ignore our calls and texts asking him to cancel. We’d figured out that this must be a scam where they refuse to cancel so you have to pay them when you cancel....so baffling. Anyway, we eventually got a guy who accepted, wasn’t at the airport, and was moving our way according to the little car symbol on the app. He saved the day when he turned up and took us to the guesthouse after an hour of our lives were lost!
    When we got back it was pitch black, so we went in and packed up the rest of our stuff, devoured our final Kottu and hit the hay ready for an early start to head to India.    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    11
    Dia 29

    Dolphin Watching in Kalpitiya

    3 de fevereiro de 2020 ⋅ ☀️ 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.    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    Dia 28

    Day in Kalpitiya

    2 de fevereiro de 2020, 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.    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    11
    Dia 27

    Mihintale —> Kalpitiya

    1 de fevereiro de 2020, 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.    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    Dia 26

    Nilaveli —> Mihintale

    31 de janeiro de 2020, 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!    Leia mais

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  • ViajanteTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    11
    Dia 25

    Trincomalee and Nilaveli beach day #3

    30 de janeiro de 2020, 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.    Leia mais

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