Why Sri Lanka? Good question. It's warm, has things to see, and has beaches. Not a bad combination. Somehow, Sri Lanka won out in my mind among the places I could go. So here I am. Ta da.
- Day 1 - Arriving in Colombo - Tuesday February 19, 2014
After flying out on Tuesday night, I arrived in Colombo after a ~9 hour flight on Wednesday afternoon. A friend of mine in London persuaded me to use Blue Lanka Tours to arrange everything, and to be honest, I was pretty easily persuaded.
Got to the hotel, got everything there situated, and wandered around the town a bit. I managed to see a Buddhist temple, which also had a lot of general Sri Lankan things as well, and saw the ocean. Didn't go swimming yet... I'm saving that for the nice beaches at the end!
Colombo itself probably isn't the most beautiful city in the world, at least not the parts that I saw, but that's pretty much in line with what I heard, and is also why I'm only spending time there on the first and last nights.
Ultimately, I had to find a way to jump ahead 5.5 hours in time. For some reason, India and Sri Lanka are 5.5 hours ahead of London. You might think it would make more sense to have a timezone shift in full hour increments, but... nope. You apparently thought wrong.
- Day 2 - The Journey from Colombo to Sigiriya... via the Elephant Orphanage - Wednesday February 20, 2014
My first thought was "wow, how do they fit all of these elephants here and treat them well?". It looked like the elephants were doing alright, with a bit of space to roam around in.
Look, they let me feed an elephant. And they didn't feed me to the elephant, I just got to give it some fresh fruit.
Here was one of the areas where they could wander around. There are tons of them, and this isn't even all of them!
They kept some of the baby elephants separate. Not all of them, just some of them... not sure why. Maybe the ones who aren't there with their mothers? I guess that would make some sense. Anyway, you can get up close to them and say hi, and they also had a bottle feeding that we got to see.
There was another area (which also had a restaurant that I ate at) where the elephants can go in the river. The elephants seem to be sent over in shifts, so they don't get too crowded. Also, apparently the "traditional way" to bathe an elephant is for it to lie down in the river and take a nap (some of them clearly were doing this), and then it just gets splashed with water.
After the elephants, it was onwards to Sigiriya. We stopped for King Coconut water along the way - no picture of that, though.
Eventually, we made it here, with the plan of climbing up the rock in the morning.
It's sort of funny to see how many Japanese cars and brands there are here. The cars I can understand, I suppose, given that they both drive on the left side of the road, but still a bit strange that there are more Japanese cars than, say, TATA Motors. I don't understand the Japanese paint brands, etc. at all though.
I suppose "secluded" is the right word to describe the hotel I'm at. So it's me, what seems like a trillion Germans, and a few other assorted tourists hanging out at the hotel bar / restaurant area.
2 comments:
They probably keep the baby elephants separate because male elephants sometimes will kill babies that aren't theirs and I am assuming they wouldn't want to do that.
I thought about that too, but there are definitely some baby elephants with the main herds. Not sure how many male elephants, though.
That could be the answer, though!
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