A Tuktuk adventure - first part 🛺⛰️

You remember, at Ella I've met Kasia from Poland, while hiking through the mountains we made a great plan: As both of us wanted to make a Safari on Sri Lanka, but didn't want to spend a whole day in a jeep to get there, we decided to rent a Tuktuk and go on ourselves to Udalawale national park, for a safari 😎.
Hiring a Tuktuk in Ella wasn't that easy and while walking around asking people for it, we ran into Ami, the Indonesian traveller I had met in Trincomalee before 😅.
Having a brief chat, we invited her to our trip, so "Tuktuk-crew" was complete 🛺😎
Finally we managed to get a Tuktuk for rent, even a very fancy one 🤩
So the next morning we started, as I was the designated driver, I had to fight for a while with gear shifting, it's quite tricky 🙈
While going down from the mountains, we rapidly understood, why the owner of the Tuktuk made a detailed explanation, how to change tires: we had a flat tire after going like 10km from 250km total trip length 😯🤪
But as I'm feeling like being a lucky man, during this whole trip, it happened literally 30m away from a Tuktuk mechanic's, even a tire shop was only 100m further down the road 😅.
While we had some discussions by phone with the Tuktuk owner about buying a new reserve-tire, deducting the rental fee, the great guys from the Tuktuk mechanic's changed our wheel (~ 1.8$, tip included 😅). So after about an unplanned break, taking like 1.5h, we were able to move on 😎.
First planned stop was at Diyaluma falls, Sri Lanka's 2nd biggest waterfall.
An amazing experience, it's a huge, impressive waterfall, looking at it from the downside. From the last Tuktuk parking upwards it was like a 20min hike on small paths, awarded with an unbelievable view and the creek going through a great series of small ponds, before falling down the steep cliffs.
Only a few tourists around, mostly local ones, so free roaming around and going quite close to the cliffs was amazing.
Walking a few minutes upstream took us to the second part of Diyaluma falls, way smaller, but wider and a big pond to have a swim. Some nice little steps in the waterfalls made kind of showering or sitting in the falls possible 🥰
A great and very refreshing experience! 🤩
Loved this place so much, that we had to hurry a bit, to arrive at Udalawale not too late, but we didn't care 😅🥰Okumaya devam et