Sri Lanka - gem of the Indian Ocean
Ten-day itinerary
We were picked up by our private chauffeur at Colombo airport at the start of our ten-day trip. We travelled up the coast turning inland, stopping along the way to visit temples before arriving at the sacred city of Anuradhapura. Anuradhapura is a beautiful UNESCO world heritage site where you can see well-preserved ancient ruins, including intricate stone carvings of animals.
We then travelled down towards Sigiriya the “Lion Rock”, a 200 metre high natural rock phenomenon. If you can manage the 1,200 steps to the top you can see ancient, perfectly preserved rock paintings on the way. Just when we thought we'd go to the top we were asked to carry bags of sand for the last part to help the locals who were in the process of restoring it!! That nearly finished us off!
Leeches, elephants and turtles!
Other memories include a stay overnight in the rain forest and my husband Gary finding a leech on his foot during dinner(!), a train ride up to the tea plantations and a stay overnight in the mountains above the clouds, a batik workshop, a turtle nursery on the beach and spotting wild elephants at the side of the road… every day we also experienced lots and lots of incredible food and hospitality.
Spicy Sri Lankan food, huge portions
The food was tasty across the board. I remember that I was not very keen on jackfruit and some of the vegetables were difficult to identify, but on the whole the food was great. The tradition is to serve lots of small bowls, sometimes at least a dozen! It was quite a challenge finding room for it all...
Our last night was in Galle at a boutique hotel on the beach. By that point we were so used to spicy food that we even sprinkled chili on our breakfast before going to the airport!
The Sri Lankan people were wonderful to us, kind and welcoming, all in all a GREAT trip and one I’d love to design for you using one of our local tour companies on the ground.