Hello from Sri Lanka.
We arrived at about 4.30am on Saturday morning after what felt like three years of travelling. Flying in the middle of the night is not the dream. Nor is driving through the Mumbai slums with a dodgy driver and a boot that doesn't lock. But that's another story.
We have spent the past two nights staying in a pretty little guesthouse in Mount Lavinia, which is a kind of resort town just outside of Colombo. The proprietor used to live in Tooting. How random. Anyway, on our first day here we asked a few people for directions to the beach and ended up inside a very posh hotel. After further investigations we realised that the hotel owns a stretch of the beach and that's where we were headed. It was so beautiful, proper picture-postcard beautiful, and we didn't really want to tell anyone that we weren't staying in the hotel so we just had lunch and kept quiet.
The next day we went to the public beach, trying to be good global citizens. You had to cross the railway track to get there - I thought this was terrifying, Joe thought I was being ridiculous so I acquiesced - and when we did arrive the beach was horrible and covered in litter. So we went back to the hotel beach. This time we paid to be beach guests and so climbed on our sun loungers with a pina colada in one hand and a strong sense of civic pride in the other. The guest tickets we bought allowed us to use the swimming pool as well as the beach and of course we wanted to get our money's worth, so we trooped off to the pool when it got too hot. It wasn't exactly what we had in mind though. The pool was on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by the restaurant, with an easy-listening band blasting out soft jazz classics in the corner. Everyone was fat and European. A child threw a ball at my head while I was swimming, which Joe thought was bloody hilarious, and I thought signalled time to leave the hotel.
We are leaving Mount Lavinia today for Bentota where there is a turtle sanctuary. Apparently you can release the baby turtles into the sea if you go at the right time of day. We are v excited. Joe has even agreed not to eat a turtle omelette (something of a local specialty.)
First impressions of Sri Lanka - beautiful, hot, and much cleaner and quieter than India.
I feel like I have given India a bit of a bad press since I've been writing this blog but I defy anyone to spend six weeks there and not get pissed off. It is an incredible country but has some serious problems - the infrastructure is crumbling, the poverty is endemic, and the population is growing faster than the place can cope with. It is loud, in-your-face, and it often smells of sewage. That being said, it was probably one of the richest experiences I have ever had and I will always be glad we went.
So there.
I'm off to pack my enormous rucksack now but I will write again soon - hopefully with tales of saving wildlife
x
We arrived at about 4.30am on Saturday morning after what felt like three years of travelling. Flying in the middle of the night is not the dream. Nor is driving through the Mumbai slums with a dodgy driver and a boot that doesn't lock. But that's another story.
We have spent the past two nights staying in a pretty little guesthouse in Mount Lavinia, which is a kind of resort town just outside of Colombo. The proprietor used to live in Tooting. How random. Anyway, on our first day here we asked a few people for directions to the beach and ended up inside a very posh hotel. After further investigations we realised that the hotel owns a stretch of the beach and that's where we were headed. It was so beautiful, proper picture-postcard beautiful, and we didn't really want to tell anyone that we weren't staying in the hotel so we just had lunch and kept quiet.
The next day we went to the public beach, trying to be good global citizens. You had to cross the railway track to get there - I thought this was terrifying, Joe thought I was being ridiculous so I acquiesced - and when we did arrive the beach was horrible and covered in litter. So we went back to the hotel beach. This time we paid to be beach guests and so climbed on our sun loungers with a pina colada in one hand and a strong sense of civic pride in the other. The guest tickets we bought allowed us to use the swimming pool as well as the beach and of course we wanted to get our money's worth, so we trooped off to the pool when it got too hot. It wasn't exactly what we had in mind though. The pool was on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by the restaurant, with an easy-listening band blasting out soft jazz classics in the corner. Everyone was fat and European. A child threw a ball at my head while I was swimming, which Joe thought was bloody hilarious, and I thought signalled time to leave the hotel.
We are leaving Mount Lavinia today for Bentota where there is a turtle sanctuary. Apparently you can release the baby turtles into the sea if you go at the right time of day. We are v excited. Joe has even agreed not to eat a turtle omelette (something of a local specialty.)
First impressions of Sri Lanka - beautiful, hot, and much cleaner and quieter than India.
I feel like I have given India a bit of a bad press since I've been writing this blog but I defy anyone to spend six weeks there and not get pissed off. It is an incredible country but has some serious problems - the infrastructure is crumbling, the poverty is endemic, and the population is growing faster than the place can cope with. It is loud, in-your-face, and it often smells of sewage. That being said, it was probably one of the richest experiences I have ever had and I will always be glad we went.
So there.
I'm off to pack my enormous rucksack now but I will write again soon - hopefully with tales of saving wildlife
x
Where are the elephants, have you met any monkeys called Hanuman and what will you call the turtle before you set it free to be lunch further down the coast? Don't tell me you won't give it a name. I suggest Herbert.
ReplyDeleteI thought Herbert was a rabbit...
ReplyDeleteWell Kate sorry to burst the sri lanken bubble but I have a private beach right outside my window! Just come to Porth and I'll show you the way. It's not exactly private, in fact it's owned by the public but- there are such steep steps down (and then obviously back up) that no one goes down there. It's just like being in jurassic park, it's wild, except just more surfers than in the actual film.
ReplyDeleteLots of love xxx
Actually Herbert was an uncle of mine, husband to the famous Harriet, but not the Harriet who invented the game, the Harriet who was a farmer. Who is Herbert the Rabbit? I have heard of Brer, who was a hare, and Peter who prevented my children from enjoying country stew, but never a Herbert rabbit. Are you sure about that?
ReplyDeleteHarvey. As in Nichols.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the retail therapy rabbit, one of my favourites.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid we didn't get to release any turtles. We did get to hold them though, which you'll see from the new photos on facebook. One of them kicked me in the stomach so I will be lobbying to turn him into a nice pair of sunglasses.
ReplyDelete