Lankan Sojourn

After visiting Leh during the Hemis Festival, and Cambodia during Songkran, it was now turn to visit Sri Lanka during the one of the only 2 festivals they celebrate in a year, the other being New Years, the Buddhist Vesak Festival.

There were certain drawbacks to travelling at this time, like clogged roads and an alcohol and non-veg food ban, but we figured ways around it, and ensured it was yet another exciting adventure.

First, some top lines about Sri Lanka:
* In spite of the wide coastline, it's Pork and Beef that's more popular here than seafood
* Order the "devilled" versions in the non veg dishes as often as possible - it's Sri Lankan for a deliciously spicy ensemble
* There is a massive 25% tax the government levies here - so carry enough LKR to get away paying in just cash wherever possible
* Visit the North East Coast, which is still virgin territory given LTTEs recent exit in 2009
* Try to pass off as Sri Lankan wherever possible. The difference between the rates charged for foreigners and locals is steep

April 30
Travelling to Sri Lanka is so simple that you don't feel like you've left the country at all, till you get out of the airport in Colombo that is. For one, the flight is a 2 hour direct Jet Air from Bombay, and with the exception of Tiger beer being served on board, is not too different from a flight to Delhi - the flight charge also being similar in some cases! For another, the visa process is so easy, that you just fill up a form online 24 hours before your flight, and you don't even need to show the print out of the acknowledgment at immigration, they just paste a little sticker which becomes your visa.
Anyway, we exited the airport and found our driver holding out a board with my name and the Unilever symbol on it. So the journey continued to look like a domestic one, in fact, like an official one, until he drove down the car that was to be ours for the next 4 days - a Toyota Prius! This is when it first struck us that we weren't in India, as Hybrids are not that popular yet in our country that probably needs it far more than our little cousin down south.
In fact, we were surprised to notice that most cars here were Toyota, Honda or Suzuki. It was modern day colonisation by the Japs!
We drove to Hotel Renuka, which was on Colombo 3, and while checking in, I searched on Zomato for places with words like Red, Sky, Cloud, Lounge, as Geet was mentioning few clubs with those words, and found one called Sky Lounge that turned out the perfect place to visit, as it was a club that offered a near 360 view of the city, great drinks and food, and most importantly, good party music!
The evening turned even better, when Geet's friends Yohan and Arthy decided to visit us in spite of the late hour, and hanging out with them over drinks and our first Sri Lankan dish, Devilled Chicken, was a great way to start off the trip.

May 1
The moment we got ready, I rushed to the Burger King just opposite our Hotel and packed a Beef Whopper and a Chicken Crunchy Burger. Was delighted to finally eat a classic BK Burger, which the Indian versions have completely spoiled for me. What I genuinely admire about the BK Burger is how it holds itself together till the last bite, unlike many other burgers that crumble around your fingers while eating it.
While I was purchasing the burgers, I noticed our Hotel was just next to the Colombo coastline. Unfortunately we didn't have too much time to check it out as we were running late for our long trip to Habarana via Kandy.
We reached Kandy in the comfort of our Prius, with our driver Mohan, at about 3pm, by when we were craving some lunch. Mohan stopped at a roadside restaurant called Food Court where we thought we may get some authentic Sri Lankan food, but the dilapidated joint was actually serving Chinese! To top it, they had just had one dish, which was their lunch meal option, and given it was too late to try and check out another place, we decided to dive in. It was Chicken Fry, Fried Rice, Shrimp Pickle and Cabbage Gravy, all rolled in one single plate. Geet and I ordered just one plate and just about managed to finish it between both of us. We were thinking just as we finished the meal, that this must definitely be the cheapest Non-Vegetarian meal we have had outside India, coz the plate cost just 100INR! Anyway, this was completely made up with the amount we spent on Food and Stay the next few days.

Mohan next took us to the Tooth Relic temple, just opposite the Kandy Lake, the 2 main attractions of this city. We learnt some history about Buddha’s one tooth that fell from his burning pyre, being saved over centuries, and now lies buried beneath 7 bells at this very temple. There were loads of Buddhist monks who went about their prayers as tourists took their photos here, which is very typical of Monks everywhere, and after a lot of photos of the temple and lake ourselves, we headed towards Habarana.

We reached Cinnamon Lodge at Habarana at about 8pm and were checked into a deluxe suite that they upgraded us to, and it was one of the fanciest places we have stayed in. Bathtub, Queens bed, big screen TV with Sony Six, the works!

After a quick shower, we hit the restaurant and planned to order a light a la carte until we noticed the buffet spread. It was the biggest spread we had ever seen, and for 1500INR per person, we knew this was a feast we cannot just surpass. So I got the JDs coming, Geet got the Mohito's coming, and we sat by the pool for the feast of the trip. Grilled Lamb chop, Peking Duck, Grilled Pork Belly, Appams, Chicken Curry, Shrimp Salad, Thai Beef, Crab Chilly, Fish Fry.. The list was endless, and the most amazing part, each and every dish tasted delicious. It's very rare for a buffet to have more than a few dishes that taste good, and this one has such a massive variety, and still scored everywhere!
We ate till we were completely satiated, and only then called it a night.

May 2

We started the day early as we were recommended to trek up Sigriya Rock before it gets too hot. So we tried having breakfast at 730am, but managed very little giving the misgivings of the previous night. However, the next 3 hours burnt all that food and a lot more, coz we climbed 200mts to the peak of this Unesco heritage site of SL, which was an architectural wonder when it was built back on 400BC. From the top, we got a beautiful view of the city, a giant Buddha on one side, and forests on the other. The best part of this trek was that Geet made it too. In spite of her vertigo and general laziness, she still punched through and was there to enjoy the view from the top together.

Sigriya forts entry was 1000INR per person, and for SL local, just 20INR. One consolation is that SAARC country members still pay only half of the other tourists, but it was still too steep for us. So a tip here is to try and speak some Tamil, keep your driver with you if required, and try to pass of Sri Lankans. We anyway look the same, and can avoid paying these steep tourist fares that are charged at most places.

The next stop was Dumbella Golden Temple, which is supposed to be the largest Buddha statue in the world with that posture. Few photos later, we hit a local restaurant, where the waiter insisted we order the Devilled Beef instead of Beef Fry, and it was here that I realized the Devilled is Sri Lankan for their best House dish. So we pretty much kept ordering this over the rest of the trip, and it never failed to impress. We had this Beef dish along with the buffet, which were Chicken Curry, Fish Curry, Veg Kurma and Greens Sambhal. I couldn't have the last 2 dishes, given how filled I was with the Beef, and even the local beer, Lion Lager, which we tried out here for the first time on the trip, didn't help improve my appetite much.
We got back to the room after this and just crashed out till the evening. We were supposed to go for a safari at 5pm, but the charge of 4000INR coupled with our fatigue with the day's trek led us to cancel those plans and simply hit the swimming pool instead.
There was a beautiful full moon above us, in a pool that was warm, well lit and incredibly clean in spite of the number of people in it. Geet continued practising her kicks, while I got my 5 standard laps done, before it began to rain and had everyone except for a bunch of noisy kids quickly exiting the pool.
Once we showered, we decided to indulge once again in the mammoth spread. This time though, we brought our own beer from the room which we purchased earlier from a Grocery in order to avoid paying 3 times its cost at the Hotel. The waiters were fuming when they saw us with the beer, but given we got to know them the previous night, just let it slip by, as we gorged on more meat, Appams and other delicacies for the night, which was somehow a completely different ensemble from the previous day. That's how incredible Cinnamon Lodge was.

May 3
We woke up to the celebrated Mayweather Pacquio boxing match today morning which we watched over breakfast, after which we packed, took some farewell photos of the property, and headed towards Trinco. The Virgin beaches on the East coast, portions of SL that began seeing tourists only after the LTTE ousting in 2009. We reached our Hotel, Anilana Naliveli, and realised we had the best room they had on offer for us. It had a balcony the size of our hall back in Bombay, a view of the infinity pool overlooking the Indian Ocean right from our bed, and a bathroom you could literally place a King sized bed in.We took a lot of photos of the room itself before stepping out to the beach restaurant and grabbing lunch, which was Devilled Pork for me and Fish and chips for Geet. 

The Pork again was probably the best I've ever had, and after filling ourselves, crashed in our room before taking an evening walk under the full moon on the cleanest white sand beach we've seen.
We closed out the day with room service, as the buffet spread didn't look as interesting as what we've been eating at Habarana, and besides, really wanted to go easy on the food for a change.

May 4
Post a light breakfast at the Hotel, we took a boat ride to Pigeon Island, the main attraction of Trinco, and accessible from the very beach, Nilaveli, where we were staying. Tamil speaking boatman Siddique gave me the ride of my life, not on the boat, but while snorkelling, when he took me to a section in the water where I suddenly see a shark right in front of me! Now I've seen too many reruns of Jaws and Deep Blue Sea, to know what a shark looks like, and the fins and gills on this one was conspicuous. The only consolation was the fact that this one seemed to be a baby shark, as it was just as long as I was tall. So I tried being brave, and swimming on, but that's when I see another, and then another, until I had 4 of them swimming around me at one point. Images from the movie Beach now started whirling in my head, and I was freaking out enough to turn back. But just as I was trying to signal Siddique to back up, he started tugging me further to the deep end. I began imagining the baby sharks mommy is what he was trying to show me, and I didn't want any of it. So I forcefully abscised myself from him started swimming back. Once back on shore, he tells me that he was trying to show me a turtle, apparently a rare sight in these waters, and where "vellaikara’s” pay good money to come and take a look. I was perfectly fine skipping a turtle sighting, as I thought I just faced a near death experience. Once I walked back to where Geet was waiting, even she first asks me if I managed to sight a turtle, as some of her friends said it’s the best thing to do here. I was so annoyed that everyone on this island feels the turtle is the thing to see, and think nothing of the world’s greatest water predator that I just encountered here.

It was only later, while talking (in Tamil!) to some of the locals on Pigeon Island did I figure that these were “Black Sharks” that I saw, which are actually the harmless versions of the ones we see in movies, those celebrities being the “Great White Sharks”. This new knowledge, coupled with the fact that the same place where I was swimming alone with Siddique now was infested with foreigners made me feel pretty silly about getting so scared and swimming back to shore. But in any case, I still enjoyed swimming with the sharks, and it will remain the highlight of this trip for me, apart from that gastronomic adventure at Habarana!

We then began our drive from Trinco back to Colombo at about 11am, and the drive time was supposed to be just 5 hours. So Mohan kept stopping at different places en route to pick up stuff for his family, and it gave us the chance to experience some local cuisine like Dahi with Honey, Sri Lankan Mango and Coconut, and roadside Roti with Tomato pickle. We even stopped at a Zam Zam restaurant for lunch, which are small “tapirs” that I have seen all around Chennai and always wanted to visit, and finally managed to hit one here. It’s a different concept of dining, where the waiter will bring a big plate of Naan’s and Appam’s, and you have how much you want from it with whichever side dish you can order separately, and he will take the remaining back and charge only for the ones you ate. Quite an esoteric concept to experience, with food that once again tasted great!

We continued on our journey, which ended up taking nearly double the originally intended time, as we reached our Hotel in Colombo only by 9pm. This was because the roads were clogged with Vesak celebrations, and because Geet and I weren’t the ones driving, and given the car was a comfortable Prius, it wasn’t an altogether painful experience, as we got a complete local flavour of Sri Lanka, which is quite rare for tourists who are typically only shown the touristy side to countries they visit. People standing in line in front of a tall and heavily lit Buddha’s statue, other people serving them Tea while the stand there, local songs being sung, all of it was really nice to observe. We saw some tourist spots also, like the Kanniya Hot Wells which are small Hot Springs, and a Konneswaran temple, which is a rare Shiva temple to visit in these parts.

Altogether, the last day gave us a unique flavour of Colombo, which was a fitting farewell for this quick Lankan Sojourn.