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Travel 2020 - TBC

January 2020 - April 2024
An open-ended adventure by George Read more
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  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 11

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 12

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 13

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 14

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 15

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 16

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    Day 17

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 18

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 19

    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

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 20

    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

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