Our first two weeks in Sri Lanka

Lisa — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 06:22:19 +0000

Sri Lanka was the country that I had the highest expectations of. And to be honest, I didn’t really like it at first, but it’s starting to grow on me. There are so many awesome things to do in Sri Lanka!

As you may have read (in our blogpost ‘Our introduction of Sri Lanka’) our very first impression wasn’t a very favourable one. But we’ve met a lot of nice people since then and seen some pretty cool things, such as monitor lizards and even elephants!

So far we’ve been in Negombo, Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Polonnaruwa, Kandy, Ella and now we’re in Unawatuna.

Here are a few pictures to show you what we’ve been doing these past two weeks, up until we went to Polonnaruwa. More pictures to follow soon!

Jace loves the train! Good thing train rides are ridiculously cheap here in Sri Lanka

Wildlife! Big praying mantis we found on the terrace of our hotel in Anuradhapura

There were lots of monkeys at one of the temples we visited in Anuradhapura. Amazing!

Buddhist prayer flags at one of the temples in Anuradhapura

Statues of monks walking behind Buddha, Temple of 500 Arhats in Nellikulama, Anuradhapura

The tuktuk driver in Anuradhapura let Jace play in his tuktuk. He loved it!

Kantaka Cetiya Vaahalkada at Mihintale near Anuradhapura

Mirisewetiya Dagoba at Anuradhapura

When we visited Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil, the big Hindu temple in Jaffna, we heard music. When we went to check it out, it turned out there was a Hindu wedding in a smaller venue nearby.

Waiting at Anuradhapura station for the train to Jaffna

The area around Jaffna has a lot of lakes and wetlands where you can see a lot of different species of birds

Jace with the motorbike we rented in Jaffna

A lot of our scooter ride around Jaffna was on the coast near the sea. Here’s an abandoned boat we found near one of the fishing villages

At dusk huge bats started to come out of their daytime sleeping places to start hunting for food. They’re the biggest bats we’ve ever seen!

On our scooter ride around Jaffna we also found this beautiful Hindu temple. They really are very colourful and impressive

Detail of Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil, a big Hindu temple, in Jaffna

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Anuradhapura to Jaffna by first-class train

Maurice — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 10:30:09 +0000

From Anuradhapura we took a train to Jaffna up in the north of Sri Lanka. Because there was no second or third class train going there that day we ended up taking a first-class air-con train. The train was very nice but it was a lot more expensive than the lower class trains. The third class would have cost us around LKR350 per person and the first-class was a whopping LKR1000 per person. But we really wanted to go so we took the expensive route (LKR1000 is still only € 6,44 for a 191 km train ride).

We thoroughly enjoyed exploring Sri Lanka’s Cultural Triangle, although with a little one in tow we didn’t manage to see all the sights. The temples in the Sacred City of Anuradhapura and the medieval kingdom of Polonnaruwa were very impressive. What an amazing serene atmosphere! Unfortunately, we had to give Sigiriya’s Lion Rock and Dambulla a miss because we really wanted to travel all the way north to Jaffna. On the morning we left Anuradhapura, Harindra, the incredibly kind owner of Bevary Holiday Home, found us a big three-wheeler (tuk-tuk) to take us and all of our luggage to the train station. Luckily there was one nearby so we had no problem getting to the station.

On our way to the train station. In the back you see the owner of Bevary Holiday Homes, our home away from home in Anuradhapura

Waiting for the train

At the station, I was happy we were leaving from the platform closest to the entrance so I didn’t have to carry everything across the train tracks. We showed our tickets to the guy at the gate, went to the platform a took a seat to wait for the train to arrive.

Mommy is reading, while Jace is ‘talking’ to the locals

Oh no! Changing platforms

Twenty minutes before our train was supposed to come there was a different train stopping from the other direction. Because there was some sort of problem with this train it didn’t leave on time and we heard an announcement that our train was leaving from platform two. Shit! Now we had to quickly carry everything to platform two via a tunnel in the station. After some heavy lifting and some help from a german guy who was nice enough to help us carry some stuff up the stairs we made it in time to catch the train.

First class trains in Sri Lanka

The fist class train is nothing compared to the third class train we took from Negombo to Puttalam. They have assigned seating and the carriages have air conditioning. The seats are nice like in an airplane but with more legroom. There are a few screens hanging from the ceiling which show a movie but (fortunately) there was no sound.

We didn’t have to buy a ticket for Jace so he was supposed to sit on our lap the whole way (about four hours). Luckily the seats across the aisle were empty so I could have a seat there and Jace had his own seat. After an hour or so he put his head in Lisa’s lap a fell asleep.

Jace has become very flexible during this trip. He can sleep anywhere!

Entering a former war zone

The train ride itself was very nice but also confronting. We would almost forget that only six years ago, in 2009, the war between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil “rebels” ended. Making our way through the beautiful landscape we were getting in the middle of the former fighting zone. Watching the buildings from the window of the train we could see a difference from the rest of Sri Lanka we’ve seen so far. There were many abandoned buildings that were broken down because of the fighting that occurred in the area. We could see houses with bullet impact damage. This was the first time for both of us to be in a former war zone that had so recently seen fighting.

From Bhuddist to Hindu temples

Something else that amazed us was that there are some big flat open spaces in this part of Sri Lanka. There is some food grown here but not a lot. When the train got a bit closer to the sea we could see some lagunas and more sandy places. Apparently, salt winning was done here before the war started. Arriving in the Jaffna area we could see a difference in the buildings and of course in the temples, the main religion here is Hindu so there are a lot of Hindu temples doted around the landscape. Because of the war, many of them are being rebuilt and many new ones erected. We want to rent a motorbike to explore this different part of Sri Lanka but that is for another blog.

Booking.com

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