Gerry Hat-Trick

In truth, there’s not a great deal by way of ‘sights’ in Jaffna. There used to be a lot more. I learned from Google that before the civil war, Jaffna was Sri Lanka’s second biggest city; it’s now its 12th. The Sri Lankan army destroyed much of the rest, and even now, 17 years after […]

Another farcical start to the day. Google said we needed the 57 or the 87 to go to Jaffna, (the train is another one that’s been taken out by the typhoons, or we’d definitely have gone that way) and the bus stop was by the police roundabout. Just as we were leaving, our host kindly

Only kidding, but…there comes a point where a little voice in your head mutters ‘…and if I see one more reclining Buddha…’ But you can’t come all this way and ignore sites like a stupa so enormous that an early guide book calculated its bricks could construct a nine foot wall from London to Edinburgh.

I think Virle’s suffering from a bit of Buddha overload; she’s definitely itching to get back to the beach. As am I. But I managed to persuade her that it can be swimtime soon, but we can surely find a bit of time for a visit to the cultural cornucopia that is Anuradhapura.  So we

Over breakfast our host, working through a massive pile of curry (“Work hard, eat lots!”), told us his backstory. Joined the navy at 18, at 29 he was sent on a two week navigation course in South Korea. After ten days he went AWOL, then spent the next eight years working illegally, saving up enough

My first truly terrible night’s sleep since we arrived, the bed having all the comfy snugness of a slab of granite with a sheet on, but I did feel a bit bad after our host directly asked me how I’d slept and I told him. Poor chap looked so crestfallen. I do have a regrettable

Got a tuk tuk from the hotel (left a half-decent review after I calmed down), and the driver asked where we were going. We said Dambulla, and he dropped us off right by the right bus. Out of maybe 30 in a row. Saving us a load of hassle and effort with our rucksacks in

Full on day today. Started out by taking a trip to the local wildlife park, where we hired a couple of bikes and set off down the wibbly-wobbly path, initially seeing bugger all by way of wildlife, but lots of lovely nature – trees & creepers & that. Lots of birds, but we couldn’t actually

The one thing you really have to do in Kandy is visit the Temple of The Tooth. The tooth, that is to say, that was retrieved from the funeral pyre of the Buddha, and transported via a circuitous series of adventures to become the most venerated object in Sri Lanka. So we did it. We

Oh yes. Another travelling day today. Couldn’t get any kind of sense out of Google, which seems somehow to be oblivious to the fact that the massive storms of a couple of months ago have taken out the main train line, and kept insisting the train was the way to go. No biggy: we just