Sri Lanka - March 2024

02:40
That was CLOSE. Well, sort of.

We’re just over an hour late landing, meaning I’ve less than an hour to deplane, get through security and get to my next flight. It’s departing from gate B22. The plane I’m on sails past the B gates, and ends up as far away at the A gates as possible. This just adds to my task. Sydney lady has given up the ghost, but I’m going to do my damnedest to make it. I hustle to the transfer desk, silently and not so silently swearing at slow moving people who get in my way. The queue at the security check is blissfully small. There’s still the usual rigmarole of removing liquids, taking out laptops etc etc. And there’s the usual category of passenger for whom this seems an utterly alien task. Having cleared security, I make for the transit station. The gate I need is SO far away that I need to take a train to get there. There’s another guy trying for the Colombo flight who’s just been on the Gatwick inbound flight with me. We keep pace with each other, we glare at the same people that slow us down - it’s good to have a comrade in these circumstances. Off the train, into a lift, the doors of which never seem to want to close. Out of the lift, find a sign for B22 - we’ve got about 5 minutes until the gate closes. There are slow people EVERYWHERE, but despite their best efforts, we both make it to the gate in time. Just in time, but in time nonetheless. We’re immediately boarded, find our respective seats, aaaaaaaaaand - sit there like lemons for 25 minutes while the plane waits for some passengers transferring from delayed inbound flights from Europe. I am a hot sweaty mess, and more than a little irked that my mad dash across the airport appears to have been unnecessary.

07:30
4 hours passes incredibly quickly. I manage to sleep for about 1.5 of them, and am only woken when the plane starts its descent into Colombo. I suspect the brief kip I’ve had will be enough to get me through the airport and to my hotel ok, but that my afternoon is going to be full of naps.

11:15
Arriving into a sub-continental airport, you’re really never sure what to expect. I’ve had good experiences (Goa), average experiences (Mumbai, Goa), and terrible experiences (Delhi, Goa). Colombo pleasantly surprises me. It’s a relatively modern building, well air-conditioned, and actually pretty well organised. There’s a slight hiccup at immigration when it transpires that I have yet to complete an immigration form that no one has told me about, but we smooth over that fairly quickly. 20 minutes after landing, I’m waiting at the carousel for my bag, and a further 15 minutes after that, I’m in the back of a very heavily air-conditioned cab on the way tot the city centre. My driver is a jaunty chap called Pradeep. He’s keen to practice his English, so I’m subjected to a rapid-fire interrogation - have I been to Sri Lanka before, where am I going while I’m here, how old am I, what I do for a living (that one’s interesting, to say the least)…

Pradeep’s driving is - let’s not beat around the bush here, - atrocious. He’s not alone though - everyone driving on the roads seems to have a death-wish of sorts. I think my only comparable experience was my first cab trip from Mumbai airport into the city way back in 2007. On the Expressway, the concept of lanes is just really a guideline. Cars, bikes, trucks - all weave in and out of traffic to try and get where they’re going that tiny little bit faster. Pradeep’s Prius also makes a slightly worrying vibration as it reaches 100 kph. There’s also a faint smell of burning. A couple of times, he veers quite dramatically towards the central barrier. As we hit the outskirts of Colombo, the traffic slows. I think this is a good thing, as it means less chance of us smashing into another vehicle. What a tool. The additional vehicles merely mean the chance of incident has sky-rocketed, as there are more vehicles to hit. We approach a traffic light. There are 3 marked lanes for traffic. I count at least 8 cars abreast lined up at the front of the queue. All this near-death stuff shouldn’t detract from the thoroughly enjoyable, visual introduction to Sri Lanka. We race past rice paddies, many cricket pitches, several wattas (watta is the Sinhalese word for garden, and used idiosyncratically to describe the slums around Colombo, which - whilst nothing on the sheer size and scale of the Mumbai slums, are still notable. As we near the city centre, I’m fighting to stay awake. My eyes are hazy and heavy.

My home for the next two nights is C1 Colombo Fort - a hybrid hotel/hostel that’s very well reviewed, and very cheap. They don’t have a room available for me at 10:00, and suggest I sit in the air-conditioned reception area to wait. I try reading, but nearly fall asleep. I try writing this journal, and nearly fall asleep. I try watching some TV on my iPad, and nearly fall asleep. Finally, I decide to try falling asleep, and nearly fall asleep. Something in the reptilian part of my brain won’t let me drift off in an unfamiliar place with my bags scattered around me. As self-defence mechanisms go, it’s not a bad one.

17:30
Three hours later, my room is finally ready. It’s basic, but clean and functional. Critically, it:

a) is cold, and
b) has a bed in it. Two actually.

The guy who brought my bags up has barely left the room before I’m face down on the bed, deep in the land of zizz. I’ve nominally set an alarm for around 16:00, but decide to push this back an hour, and make the most of an unplanned afternoon. I wake up feeling pretty well refreshed. Still a bit jaded around the edges, but capable of leaving the hotel, and having an explore this evening. Quick freshen up I think, then off we go.

19:30
I’m not planning to stray *too* far from my hotel this evening. I’m staying in the Fort area of Colombo, which seems to have lots of options for food and some beers, and I just don’t have any sense of the city’s geography yet. It’s dark by the time I head out, so I figure discretion is probably the better part of valour this evening. There’s a weirdness about walking around a busy city for the first time at night - a slight tension. I don’t know which are the good neighbourhoods, and which are the ones to avoid. I definitely do NOT understand road crossing etiquette yet. There are no pedestrian crossings as such, so I just follow along with other pedestrians, in the hope that none of them are suicidal.

I head off in the vague direction of some places that sound cool, and end up in a very smart tea shop. Now look, I could tell you that tea is of almost religious importance in Sri Lanka, that I want to be respectful to this centuries old tradition. The truth is, as I was walking past, I thought it was a bar I was aiming for, and once I’d entered the tea shop, it felt rude not to order something. I peruse the menu like some kind of connoisseur, but the truth is I barely know my Ceylon Sapphire from my PG Tips. I opt for a Ceylon Souchong, on the basis that it’s got a fun name, and end up with a very cool pot of tea, and a little timer to tell me for how long the tea needs to brew. The flavour is amazing - vaguely fruity and hint of smokiness. Still, tea’s not really what I came out for…

22:00
Wandering around the neighbourhood, it transpires that I’m largely surrounded by big, international hotels, the eating and drinking establishments of which are typically very shiny, and (by Sri Lankan standards) very expensive. I stop at a bar for a beer, which costs me the best part of £5. There are two beers on tap, both of which are pretty standard lagers - Carlsberg, and a local brew called Lion. I plump for the latter, and it’s - well, ok I guess. It’s cold and refreshing, which is fun, but there’s very little in the way of flavour. Wine is both rare and expensive around here, so I may end up drinking large quantities of gin as my default setting.

The bar has a distinctly international feel to it, by which I don’t mean that it’s terribly chic, and with the mystique of the jet-set, but rather that you could drop it into most global cities I’ve visited and it wouldn’t look out of place. What am I trying to say - there’s nothing ‘Sri Lankan’ about it - it’s catering to the type of traveller that has neither the inclination nor perhaps the time to dip more than a toe into Sri Lankan culture during their stay. I’m giving myself a pass for this visit, as I’ve only been in town a few hours. There are several TVs showing cricket in the bar, to add to the several TVs showing cricket in the airport arrivals lounge, and I’m reminded that Sri Lanka is as cricket mad as nearby India. The two barmen are enrapt by what’s showing. I turn to look, to see if it’s some International match that Sri Lanka are playing in today, but no - they’re hooked into a replay of a game from 2008, featuring two sides - neither of which are Sri Lanka. I’d love to see a cricket match while I’m here. Sri Lanka are currently on tour, so it’d be a domestic game, but some of the stadia used are those used for International cricket that I’ve seen on TV before, and it’d be a wonderful experience to spend a few hours at one of them.

My dinner nearby , whilst excellent costs more then £20 - certainly more than I’d budgeted/bargained for. Still - it’s incredibly tasty. Some beautiful, plump battered prawns with a pineapple sambal to start. Seafood is, unsurprisingly, a huge part if this island’s cuisine. These sambals are also a staple of Sri Lankan dishes - midway between a relish, a sauce and a salad, spiked with chilli. It’s pleasantly hot, and the prawns are sensational. To follow I have a mutton curry with some plain steamed rice. It’s beautiful. Flecked with fresh curry leaves, definitely some coriander seed and cinnamon in there, and with meltingly tender, er, meat. In India, mutton tends to refer to goat, rather than the very specific definition in the UK of a sheep that is more than 2 years old. I suspect Sri Lanka is aligned to the former. Irrespective, it’s delicious.

I briefly consider another beer, but I’m flagging. Despite an extensive afternoon sleep, I’m still working off 5 or so hours of sleep, so head back to the hotel. It’s still hot, and very humid. My room is a delicious cocoon of cool. I read for maybe 5 minutes before falling quickly into a deep sleep.Leia mais