A long trip this one. Before travelling onto New Zealand to see Nardia’s family, we decided to (finally) make a stop in Sri Lanka to visit Rukshana. All in all, I was pretty excited about this one, not least because of the flight on a brand new Emirates A380. So, it was a bit of a disappointment when we sat on the runway for four hours because of an electrical fault. What was surprising, however, is how one fixes such a fault. Apparently, a modern jet is not much different from a lap top. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to try turning it off and on again to see if that fixes the flashing fault warning. It will be darkness for the next twenty minutes”. Well, “control, alt delete” did the trick nicely and we were on our way.
Unfortunately with the delay, we missed the connection in Dubai and therefore drinks at the executive club in Colombo. The one upside is the 675 Euro refund for a delay of more than six hours from Emirates. Still…
We arrived the following day and were met by Rukshana, her mum and dad and their driver (got to love colonialism) who took us down to a small fishing town on the coast where their family has a holiday house.
It was great. The weather was smoking hot (cue burnt Englishman) and the food was awesome. The highlight though has to be Rukshana’s dad reminding the driver that there is only one captain of the ship (not the driver in case you didn’t guess).
After the beach we drove back to Colombo (there was still only one captain) for a night of drinks before meeting up with our driver/guide the next day.
The plan was simple, visit the tea plantations before heading onto the ancient cities of Sigiriya and Anuradhapura, a safari and then finishing in Negombo where we would meet up with the others for the Interhash.
I have to say, I absolutely loved the tea plantations. The drive through the hill was majestic and once there, it is like stepping back in time. It is tough, depressing work though for the tea pickers, particularly given how little they get paid. Next time you have the choice to pay extra and buy fair trade, it is worth doing (hoping of course the few extra cents filters down). I think they definitely appreciated the twenty dollars that were left for taking a few pictures.
After the tea plantations we drove for what seems like says to the ancient city center of Sri Lanka. it was pretty cool, although the downside was it was so vast it was impossible to take pictures which did it justice. One piece of ancient advice did however seem right on point and is well worth remembering. For added value they made sure it was communicated in multiple languages.
Lastly, we headed back towards the coast to finish with a safari and hash run. Now, when your guide says let’s go through the fence and see if we could see elephants, you might think that the guide is perhaps a little crazy. True. You should, however, make sure the elephant grade electric fence has first been successfully navigated before losing concentration. It is fair to say, this particular fence had a little more punch than your average European farm… more like the kind of punch that happens when i hurricane brings a power line down… or at least that is what it sounded like when it zapped my leg…
Anyway, back in the safety of a 4×4, we saw some wildlife but no leopards or elephants unfortunately. Still it is some nice landscape.
After recovering from my electrocution back in Negombo hashing, we got back on the plane. On on to New Zealand.