sribanter

[sribanter]

All the rest

Kandy to Nuru Elyia

Bus station

Travelled by bus at the front with all the bags

Arrived and taken to a home stay in mountains ‘highest village. Very sweet family thirsty for our money.

Played cricket in the streets

Waterfall trek and strawberry farm

Amazing home cooked meal

Nuru Elyia to Ginigathena

Trains still not working so decide to change plan and head a day early to the tree house. Not getting another bus so get a taxi.

Stop at tea train and meet Ian.

Lots of waterfalls

Town and beer shop.

Tree house accommodation

Another amazing dinner (rubbish family run place)

Abigail’s birthday

Jungle trek, leeches and river chill

Caught in rain

Lunch at restaurant > chill > used ‘massage oils’

Ice cream kick

Dinner back to same restaurant

Gekkos!!!

To berewula

Train or Bus or Taxi or Tuk-Tuk? Train delayed, bus too uncomfortable, taxi too expensive. So 6 hours in a tuk tuk it was.

Said goodbye to family

Driver Tried to chief us - again

Rain

Fancy accommodation

Amazing seafood dinner (tsunami)

Berawula to Negombo

Stealing coconuts

Massage

To complete our circle and meet Ezra

Back and forth on train

Finally arrived after 6 hours; almost lost toe.

Met Ezra

Bye Abigail hello Banta

dropped Abigail at airport

Now what to do?

Local lunch after failed mission to get ‘infamous’ egg hoppers.

Bastard tried his luck

Pool and research

To the airport to get Brian and mike

To not waste any time taxi straight to kandy - only stop to finally try an egg hoppers. Ate it before the curry came.

Arrived at hostel, welcome to the dorm life.

Dinner back at Dosi place and beers at pub.

Train to Ella

Not ready for the onslaught that was getting on the train and finding a seat. Aaron passed bags through the window to a stranger. After 2 hours ez and Brian finally got seats (only 6 hours to go).

Ez befriended mans not hot.

Brian and mike almost lost toes

Tasted the local Tobacco (leaf, root and paste).

Train ride was beautiful!

Arrived with no accommodation. Missions.

Whisky, cards and dinner vs no dinner.

24hour shack.

Aaron sleeps!

Mini adams peak

Left from our guest house and started getting lost on our way to mini Adams peak, taking a slight detour to check out the 9 arch bridge. Quickly becoming apparent that sign posting is not something the Sri Lankan’s see value in.

360 degree views from the top were breath taking. Stopped at a green tea plantation on way down.

Ella was a place of biggest and largest and mostests (mainly for mike) - who claimed he was hungriest he’d ever been, before consuming the largest meal he’d ever eaten, and then taking the largest dump he’d ever shat.

Checked out a local temple and waterfall. Witnessed a Monkey Rape.

Back in Ella we chilled and continued our what-would-become epic crazy-eights (to-be-renamed hateful-eights) card game over a few cheap cans on lions beer.

Then to chill bar where service was so bad that Ezra had the nerve to complain and half the mandatory service charge. Resulted in a ban for life which we were happy to absorb. So back to the 24 hour shack - where Aaron resumed his sleeping habit.

Brian chucked Aaron’s flip flop

Ella’s rock

Last day in Ella, we decided you challenge ourselves once more and climb Ella’s rock - apparently even more breath taking and challenging than mini Adams peak. Again no signage meant we got lost.. but walking along train tracks, through lush Forrest and small homesteads and farms wasn’t the worst place to be lost.

I final steep stretch made us work to get to the top, but the beautiful views of velvet green mountains and cascading waterfalls was worth it. Maybe it was the alcohol in our system but we seemed to find the climb harder than the average young girl in flip flops around us. One of the most memorable views on reaching the top was seeing this kids and middle aged women without a bead of sweat and then seeing mike, completely see through, drenched in his own sweat, looking like a drowned rat.

On descending, it was a quick stop at the bottle store before hitting the road to Udawalawe to see some elephants.

Udawalawe National Park > Tangalle

On arriving we all stared to realise for the first time that we hadn’t quite gotten our head around the Monopoly money that is foreign currency. We had been using 5000rupee notes as 50 and 500 notes and mike had even managed to mistakenly use a US$50 and €50 bill instead of a 50 rupee bill.

Our earliest start yet was met with mental and physical resistance. Despite a very enthusiastic guide and some very close encounters with elephants the safari was largely lost on us lads as we couldn’t even look an elephant square on, down his trunk, from 5m away without drifting off to sleep.

Quality buffet breakfast!!!

Off we set in the rain to finally reach the coast, Tangalle, still shcleeping the crate of beers from the liquor store in Ella.

Beautiful sea side fishing village. Played cards in the rain and befriended 2x Dutch ‘lesbians’.

Puti the Mafiosa manager at our hostel. Always topless, giving ordered from seated position, getting pissed! Medallion around his neck and a ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude.

Got pissed playing card games, watched some Sri Lankan’s watching other sri Lankens playing cricket in Sri Lanka, chilled on the beach

Tangalle Town

Following a very jam-packed first few days, we finally took a day off to do nothing and chill. We spent the day exploring the town and tasting local food (except mike who went for toasties and milkshakes - and was then gobsmacked when they were below his western expectations). Although at this point we did start validating an ever clearer pattern that service in Sri Lanka is TERRIBLE! slowness is one thing but it’s plain incompetence.

That night Puti put on a fish braai for us which was world class! He also somehow persuaded us to try these raw local chillies... what pursued provided endless entertainment for him and his friends. They did however return the entertainment by drunkenly serenading us until the early morning.

[sribanter]

Kandy

After a lovely 1 night stay in the lavish Earl’s Regent Hotel (and oversleeping once more) we decide it was time to be proper backpackers .. so we checked out of outer city luxury and into inner city dive - we were not even afforded a bed sheet. But not before living it up from the hotel buffet. We had curry (yes for breakfast), omelet, fresh fruit, waffles, hashbrowns, beans, bread and jams and more curry.

Apart from the disparaging news that there was a country-wide train strike that may prevent us from getting the infamous train from Kandy to Ella we were excited to make the most of the day. We enlisted the services of a local Tuk Tuk , Noor, to take us around Kandy and its surrounding attractions. First stop was a large Buddha that overlooked the city - it was cool to see but with very little context there wasn’t much to take form it beyond the surface exterior and impressive size.

Next stop was the local jungle where we decided to go off the beaten track and get only slightly lost. After reuniting with Noor he, almost aggressively, insisted on taking us to a ‘FREE-FREE-NO PAY’ spice garden and tea plantation. I’ll admit, the ‘FREE-FREE-NO PAY’ sounded good - even the Buddhist monks had been trying to mine us for what they could. How naive we were - and thus nativity wasn’t even my big moment of weakness....

And so the curtains drew on The Big Spice Show. Noor dropped us off and left us in the hands of his well-dressed ‘friend’ who proclaimed himself to be a Herb Doctor (in hindsight I should have insisted on seeing his credentials). He showed us around his (actually in hindsight) pretty shoddy ‘garden’, highlighting a few of the different plants and what spices stemmed from them (we were presented tumeric, pepper, cinnamon, vanilla and others). Also thrown in there was a cream that removed all the hair from my big toe and a ‘baby pineapple’ that contained enzymes that if eaten for 40days would remove 5kg of fat from any man. “If true, why are there so many fat Sri Lankan’s” is a question I should have asked. We were also given a complimentary tea as part of this free tour (clearly too good to be true’) - well I’m now convinced this tea was laced because next thing I know I’ve walked away with over a R1000 worth of products ranging from skin creams to massage oils to anti-tooth decay to misquote repellent. Note: all of the products are packed in branding and wrapping that looks about 50 years old .. oh and for those of you thinking I’m being a sinic, we later saw the same products at a local market for 25% of the price I paid (which was post rigorous negotiation btw).

The realisation of ‘The Con’ hit me almost immediately and the replaying of the previous instances took over my mind for the entirety of the tea plantation tour. So I can’t tell you much about it. Bit Abigail thoroughly enjoyed it and bout some tea and 800% of the price we later saw it at the local market. Needless to say Noor was very happy with his commissions earned and not too bothered about getting us back to town later than promised which meant we missed the Kandy Dancers.

We had a delightfully cheap and actually very tasty Indian dinner (Dosa’s) and then went to a ‘pub’ to try catch the football.

[sribanter]

“Where Are You From?”

We’ve come to realise that the first question EVERY Sri Lankan asks you (even a stranger on the side of the road) is ‘Where are you from?’. Initially, we answered everyone only too happily. However, after a while it became exhausting to explain, especially to someone who probably only understood every 5th word, that I was from the UK and Abigail was from Namibia (we then had to explain were Namibia was) followed by the situation that I lived in South Africa and Abigail lived in Dubai but we were travelling together in Sri Lanka. We also learned to realise that they didn’t actually inquire out of genuine curiosity but rather used this as a vetting system to find out what kind of tourist dollar they could extract from us. So rather than expelling any more energy on this we now play our own game by naming a different random county each time. It seems to work as when mentioning an obscure country such as ‘Guatemala’ they go quiet .. it only gets awkward when the genuinely inquisitive ones then ask targeted questions we can’t answer.

[sribanter]

Negombo to Kandy

we overslept. Something that would become expected and accepted as the trip went on. Luckily, the Sri Lankan’s are very service driven and so, at least on the surface, our driver didn’t mind he’d been waiting an hour for us.

And so we set off in or air conditioned Toyota Corolla - not the text book vision of backpackers travelling through an island off southern India. The one advantage though, was being able to stop at various side-of-the-road market stalls to buy fresh coconuts and fruit. First stop was a pineapple plantation where we learned that pineapples don’t grow on trees and taste great with salt, pepper and chilli.

Next stop was The Millennium Elephant orphanage. This was an experience of mixed emotions. It started with great excitement: I have a strong love for African elephants and so was intrigued to get up close and personal with the Asian variety, while Abigail had never seen any elephant in the flesh. Despite all the signage promoting themselves as an elephant charity that prided itself on elephant conservation and safety it didn’t seem like the elephants were happy or treated with any dignity whatsoever. They were clearly over fed by the relentless tourist feeding frenzies and over worked by having to continuously give humans rides all day. Their exhaustion was clear by the way they lay motionless in the river in between shifts and the continuous barking and stabbing by their Mahouts (trainers’/ masters). Abigail and myself also took a brief look at the ‘elephant sick bay’ and they clearly looked distressed.

Still exhausted, we fell asleep once back in the car and decided to head straight for our hotel in kandy. Stopping very briefly for a local curry buffet.

Not quite ready yet to delve headfirst into the traveller experience we used a ‘special rate’ offer on bookings.com to justify one more night of ‘luxury’ and booked into the Earl Regent Hotel which was just outside of Kandy and had a beautiful pool overlooking the jungle.

We ventured into a very quite Kandy city for a local dinner and game of Yaniv before retiring to the hotel.

[sribanter]

Negombo

My flight from CT to Dubai was occupied mostly by work as I transformed my window exit seat into an office. Laptop plugged in and phone and laptop connected to WiFi, I was able to get a very productive 7 hour work day in.

Slightly delayed coming into Dubai it was a quick changing of planes and a rendezvousing with Abigail and we were on our way to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Just the hour of uncomfortable kip and the 4 hour time difference meant walking out of the airport was done in a state of delirium. Nonetheless, we managed to go through the standard arrival motions of withdrawing cash, processing the exchange rate for the trip, buying a local sim and bargaining for a taxi.

First impressions of Sri Lanka were tropical, hot, hectic and noisy. We quickly learned that despite English supposedly being the main language the general grasp of it was not so great. Also surprisingly, there was a diverse mix of religions from Buddhist to Hindu to Catholic to Muslim (but no Jews); all living amongst each other and even intermarrying while keeping their respective faiths.

We dropped our bags off at our hostel and decided to kill the hours before we were allowed to our room by visiting a local fish market. The fish market was huge and included 1000’s of square meteres of gutted fish being sun dried on matts on the beach. We were explained the process and the different types of fish by a local called Raja, who’s whole blood line had been fishermen. To thank him we treated him to a sea food lunch at a local restaurant.

After a mandatory afternoon nap, that was very hard to awaken from, we decided to treat ourselves to a lobster dinner. We also decided to renegade on our plans with Raja of a lagoon tour the next day and opted to instead leave early doors for Kandy (via a private driver that would stop at various attractions along the way).

[sribanter]

Pineapple pineapple pineapple Tasty tasty pineapple

[sribanter]

When Jungle Book = Real Life

[sribanter]

When you know you’re in a foreign country.

[sribanter]

Picked up this monkey somewhere between Cape Town and Colombo 👉🐵

[sribanter]

SriBanter: The Preface

You may remember me from unfinished blogs such as: ‘Sex, Coke and Buses’, ‘Peri-Peri Potholes’ and ‘VietBAMbodia’.

Well all you avid fans of my aimless, non-informative, poorly written, anxiety ridden, sorry attempts at travelling blogs are in luck! As I bring you the 4th episode in my series; SriBanter!

The plan? Perhaps just to finish the blog. But that’s ambitious. The itinerary? There obviously isn’t one. The country? That’s confirmed, and its Sri Lanka!

Like all good trips (or maybe just all MY trips), it’s started with a hangover and a frantic hurry to get to the airport on time. As usual this was owing an over commitment of to-do’s on the morning of my midday flight - not helped, of course by the hangover. All resulting in an unwavering feeling that I’ve forgotten a million things.

So what do I want to do differently this trip? Well I’m the proud new owner of an iphone8 and an Osmo gimble, so hoping to put these to good use and capture some epic content to make everyone whos not with me wish they were 😁💪