Serendipity? Ceilao? Ceylon? No: Sri Lanka!

Presentation

Since we wanted to take a big trip, different and far away, that included both culture and nature, as well as the sea, I remembered that Sri Lanka and the Maldives could be combined and that the latter no longer offer only exclusive and prohibitively expensive resorts to host tourists, so I started my search, beginning with the flight. On Expedia at the end of March I booked the Rome-Dubai/Dubai-Colombo and then Colombo-Male route with return to Rome with a stopover always in Dubai at €850 each, from 6 to 25 August in total. The long-haul flights were with Emirates, the little hour-long flight between Colombo and Male we did with China Eastern Airlines.

In Sri Lanka we stayed 11 days and I had the tour organised by Mr Upasena, owner of the Bo-Mie Tours agency for €500 each, but that's because there were 4 of us, otherwise we would certainly have paid more, for the following services: - Driver always available. - Half board, in hotels that, although three-star, were on an upward curve of improving quality. - Jeep accompaniment for the safari in 2 different national parks. - Lunch with a family who live in a rice paddy. - 2-hour train journey.

Negative notes: the driver is not a guide and sometimes that's absolutely not the same thing; we changed hotels almost every time and that's exhausting; you spend a lot of time in the car, because the roads are truly all curves; the national parks and, above all, the archaeological sites are extremely expensive (up to 30 dollars each!)

Positive notes: the companion we requested and got, Lal, was extremely helpful, patient, always smiling and so sweet; Upasena tried to really get me what I had requested, immediately correcting course when something didn't work and following us by phone throughout the trip; when we had free time, Lal helped us see how to use it, organising new things as needed.

To enter the country you need a visa, which to save time and a few dollars, you can get from Italy. On arrival at the airport the money exchange is as cheap as elsewhere and it's worth doing, because they almost always accept only their own currency. We also bought a Dialog phone card, to call Italy, which for €5/6 gives you a minimum of independence. I had expressly asked for a middle ground between nature, art, temples and also some authentic place/situation, that is, not very touristy. The sea didn't interest us and in any case, at this time of year, to enjoy it you have to go to the North East, when we passed through exactly the opposite part.

Description

From Colombo, in 3 hours we reached the characteristic Portuguese city of Galle, on the south-west coast. First night at the Girigala Hotel, on Mirissa beach. We continue heading south and along the way we visit our first temple, at Matara; then we go to see the Ho-o-Maniya Blowhole, a kind of marine geyser, a bit disappointing, because the sea isn't very rough; we reach the Peacock Reach, hotel in Tissamaharama, known as Tissa, where we'll stay 2 nights. Evening at the Hindu procession and pilgrimage of Kataragama: we see another single family of foreigners.

Departure at dawn for Yala National Park, where we manage to see the leopard! It's a park of 127,000 hectares and apparently only about thirty of the cats remain! Then elephants, crocodiles, hares, fallow deer, macaques, mongooses, wild boars, iguana, buffalo and countless, countless species of birds! Breakfast by the sea! Then we go to visit a Buddhist monk who lives in a temple in the forest scattered with gigantic rounded rocks, similar to the Greek Meteora, which we'll encounter again in so many places, sometimes basaltic, other times granitic: peaceful and serene atmosphere. In the afternoon another temple within the Yala park area, Sithulpahuna. It's full of animals, the temple's position is stunning and there are no other tourists: evocative. We see our first snake, small, not venomous and..busy eating a frog.

We head north, towards Ella, a little village nestled among the mountains where the tea plantations begin. Along the way, we visit 2 more non-touristy temples: Maligawila, with 2 Buddhas 12 metres tall, one in limestone and the other in rock, and then Buduruwagala, with some statues of varying sizes, slightly carved into the rock face. We pass by the Rowana Falls, beautiful waterfalls crowded with Sinhalese. In Ella we stay at the Sky Green Hotel, outside the village, but in a stunning position over Ella's Gap, a charming mountain valley. We do a couple of hours of trekking, enjoying beautiful views of these mountains, cultivated with tea and..jungle! It's Saturday and into the air, from the respective temples, songs and calls to prayer are broadcast that will continue until the next day, the day on which, with free choice, people go to the Temple.

Considering also where we are, it's magic. We go to Haputale; by now we're surrounded by tea plantations, made up of rows of bushes between 50 cm and a metre and a half tall, neatly cultivated, parallel or in hexagons close to each other, which from above look like the shell of a turtle. We drive up to Lipton Seat, a peak from which you enjoy a stunning view over the plantations, skilfully wrested from the forest and rigorously cultivated only by Tamils, in fact the area is full of their super colourful Hindu temples. We come back down to Haputale, from where we'll take the train to Nuwara Elija, known as Little England, another mountain village, where the English colonisation is very evident. The train rattles through the mountains:the scenery is very beautiful and the experience even more so.

In Nuwara Elija we quickly see what there is to see and Lal manages to organise an Ayurveda massage for us: the best of my life! Hotel, The Rock, the worst of the Tour. Departure at dawn for the Horton Plains, a mountain plateau where we walk almost 10 km among mist, streams, waterfalls, moorland and rainforest and a couple of natural "balconies" over incredible cliffs, one of which, and the name says it all, is called World's End! We continue to Kandy, the ancient capital, where in the afternoon we ask Lal to be able to attend a show of characteristic Kandy dancers: the situation is a bit too touristy, but at least we get an idea.

We make up for it, though, in the evening, because we'll see the Perahera procession, which is repeated every year for 10 evenings until the first full moon of August, in which the traditional dancers parade, about a hundred elephants decked out in festive gear, showmen with whips and fire rings and drummers. We knew it was difficult and tiring to manage to see something: well, it didn't go that way, we were right at the exit of the Temple of the Tooth, from where all the protagonists of the ceremony came out and it was an evening truly full of magic. Night at the Richmond Hotel, very very characteristic. A walk to the beautiful Botanical Garden of Kandy and then departure for the Knuckles National Park,in the mountains: the only truly useless, tiring and dull thing done on this trip. Afternoon and evening a bit wasted at the hotel on the lake at Oarutota.

Stop at a Batik cotton factory and a spice garden, proposed discreetly and, although done for the purpose of "getting us" to do business, still interesting. Temple of Dambulla: stunning, and in the afternoon safari at the Minnerija elephant park. Climb to the incredible rock of Sigirjia and then lunch with a family who live in a rice paddy. Ritigala: abandoned temples built in the 1st century BC in the middle of the jungle and Aukana, with another very tall stone Buddha. We visit one of the 2 Ancient capitals, Anuradaphura, built over a vast area and where a guide would have been particularly useful, because the 2 books I have don't help much.

Here there is the sacred Bho tree, officially the oldest tree in the world and many gigantic Stupas or Dastaba, a kind of stone bells that hold some relic of the Buddha and that have the same architecture, with various names, in all the countries that follow this religion in its orthodox form. We didn't visit the other capital, that of Polonnaruwa. On the 17th in the morning we calmly set off again towards Colombo, from where we took the flight to Malé.

Final thoughts.

I've been extremely long-winded and I'd still have so much to say, because the emotions, as already said, were very strong.

The nature of this country is stunning, the variety of landscapes is great and so is the abundance of colours..

Poverty here seemed to me like wealth, the sharing of what one has even between strangers or between men and animals and the respect between the different religious faiths, a teaching.

Truly, thank you from the heart for the endless smiles you gave us, noble people of Sri Lanka, a people of ancient and prestigious origins and with the blood of the lion in your veins.