Sri Lanka Darshan

When I thought of my maiden trip abroad, the destinations that came to my mind were New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Finally I short listed NZ and planned everything so that I can visit my bros during the month of June 2011. My parents too were there on a 2months visit and we all planned for a family get together sometime mid-June. My eldest brother couriered me the sponsorship letter and other supporting documents for applying for my visa. Few days later, in the early hours of the morning I decided to postpone the NZ trip as I can visit it anytime as my brothers are there anyways. Then I decided to go ahead with Thailand. My close friends Sam and Kiran were ready to join me in the planning stage itself since I changed the destination. But the flight fares worked out to be very expensive, as tourist traffic from India is in its zenith during the months of June/July. Luckily my friend Anoop had visited Sri Lanka a few weeks back and he had only great things to share about that place. He had so much to say about this small dot island with classy blue beaches, virgin forests, wild life, scenic train journey through tea plantations etc. Sam had been to Sri Lanka for a very short visit and he too insisted on going to this place again. So we three finally decided to go ahead with Lanka and booked flight tickets in a way that Kiran will fly from Chennai and Sam and I from Cochin. We planned to backpack the country as Anoop gave us a detailed briefing about the places to visit, the bus connectivity between places, must-see sights etc. We redefined the word backpacking a bit by booking hotels in advance. I have travelled a lot and I know the difficulties in finding out hotels on the spot, as we will be tired after the day’s journey or we will have an early start the next day. Sam did all research on accommodation and we booked nice decent accommodation at each place to avoid later inconvenience.
June 12 arrived and the wait was over. We both boarded the flight to Sri Lanka and it was a pleasant 1 hr journey to a foreign land- Sri Lanka. We had a not-so-good breakfast on board and landed at Colombo Airport safely. We didn’t have to take advance visa for Sri Lanka and visa (30 Days Permit) was stamped on arrival at the Immigrations counter at the airport. I believe the rule has changed now and now you have to apply for VISA online in advance. Kiran arrived early in the morning after a short search, we met him at the exit gate. We were told that there are buses operated by Airport Authority to the nearest bus station for free and we waited for 30+ minutes to get our bus to the nearest bus station which was less than a kilometre away.
The sight outside the airport was disappointing as everything looked exactly like Kerala or Tamil Nadu: from people to shops, buses to roads, buildings to terrain. We were dropped at the bus station and we checked the bus timings to our first destination Kandy. I was totally disappointed as I didn’t have a feeling that I was in a new country. After another not -so-good lunch from a local restaurant we boarded a local bus to Kandy. We were told that it would take 4-5 hrs to reach Kandy. After keeping our backpacks at the boot space we started our journey to Kandy. First 3 hours of the journey was so boring as we had the same feeling as we driving through country sides or midlands of Kerala with neat concrete houses, paddy, tapioca and rubber plantation with small towns in between. I even told Kiran and Sam that our decision was wrong and wondered what we were going to do in the next 8 days. Anyway, the last one hour stretch of the trip was interesting as we were climbing the Ghats to reach our destination. We reached Kandy Bus stand by around 04 30 pm and took a rick to reach the hotel. On reaching Kandy our paradigm about this country started changing slowly as it was a nice old British town with colonial buildings with a massive lake in the middle and well planned roads with proper pedestrian lanes. Kandy is a Buddhist town and everywhere we can see Buddhist monks walking around in their saffron dress. The hotel we booked was interesting with good views of swimming pool and valley. We unpacked our bags, had a shower and decided to go for an evening walk to the town centre from the hotel. We intentionally avoided the famous monument of Kandy “The Tooth Relic Monastery” as we had to be in queue for hours and we weren’t that religious. The main purpose of opting Kandy for the first night’s stay was the next day’s exciting 5 hr train journey through mountains and tea plantations from Peredenia to Neuwra Eliya. We did some light shopping from ODEL ( a famous retail chain in Sri Lanka ) and bought a few essentials for our evening ‘brainstorming’ session. After 2 shots and a satisfying dinner we went for a nice swim in the pretty large pool there and it was an awesome feeling to be in pool with the temperature below 20 C. We all went to bed early as we should have an early start to catch the train from Peredenia railway station which is 5 kms from Kandy. Our perception about this small wonderful country changed by the end of the first day itself and the coming days were more exciting which you will read about in my next blog….till then take care and a have a safe day.