Travels with Kathryn

I slept for 2 hours and felt immeasurably better. I think what woke me was the need for food. But first the plan. Day 1 of my tour starts at 5.30pm tonight with a welcome meeting and then:

Its a 12 day tour and the reason I chose this, in addition to the fact that the dates fitted in well with my Christmas plans and this is a good time of year to go, is because of one of my favourite books. I love a good family saga and in particular a book by Rosamunde Pilcher called Coming Home. It is set primarily in Cornwall during the early 1940s and concludes just at the end of WW2. Towards the end of this chunky read the main protaganist (who is a Womens Royal Naval Service or Wrens) volunteers after VE day to service in Ceylon (as she had lived there as a child) and this tour visits a number of the places she visited (including Trincomolee where I will be for my birthday. It was also one of the few trips which went to Jaffna which has only recently been open to tourists after the end of the civil war (more on this later).

Anyway, you can tell it is a popular time of year as there are actually 2 of the same tour running at the same time so it will be interesting to see who is on which group and whether we are actually put together or not. Anyway, as I said in my last post, I have met my first travel companion and hopefully will meet everyone else tonight.

Anyway, priority on waking was food. The hotel we are staying at is on the road behind the beach, so I decided to walk to the beach (finding a gap in the buildings on the other side of the road) in search of sustenance and luckily there were a couple of places more than happy to oblige. Pictured below is kottu which is chopped up roti, shredded vegetables, eggs and (in this case) seafood (calamari, prawns although also tuna – less good imho) all fried up together. It is delicious, and I felt a quick and sustaining lunch.

I should probably explain where I actually am. I am in Negombo which is on the tourist route for its proximity to the airport, old town canals and the famous fish market (where we are going tomorrow as it is not open on Sunday).

After lunch I decided to go to church. No, not because I have suddenly found faith, but because on the way from the aiport I passed a number of huge churches complete with HUGE Jesus’ and felt one of these needed to be visited. Also, although Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country this area around Colombo (perhaps as this was the capital throughout various colonial occupations) is 85% catholic. I headed towards St Anne’s church but on route I was stopped by a passing tuktuk who convinced me that actually I wanted to go to St Mary’s (and even had a laminated piece of paper with it on). This is the largest Catholic church in Sri Lanka and was built in 1874, however, the current church is actually the 5th on the same site with the earliest being established in 1544.

As I was a captive audience, I was also taken through Colombo old town (very Dutch) driving past the Hamilton Canal (which is 14.5km waterway connecting Puttalam to Colombo), the lagoon (one of the most important natural environments in western Sri Lanka apparently) and to a small ayurvedic farm and shop were I paid well over the odds for some “natural” mosquito repellent (which probably will not work) and some homegrown vanilla extract.

I am now back in the room catching up on my correspondence and shortly will be heading out for the group meeting. Always interesting.

It was indeed interesting and I only just (the next day) have a chance to catch up. We are a full group of 12 including:

• Two Brits (of which I am one and my roommate is the other, another retired Londoner).
• One German;
• One Irish (our Sri Lankan guide struggled with how to pronounce such a foreign name as Daragh);
• One American; and
• Seven Australians – a family of 4 (although 1 is actually British), a couple from Tasmania and a lady from Melbourne.

A younger group than I often have, I am certainly in the middle of the ages, perhaps in the older group but I refuse to accept this! Our guide (so far so good) is rather new to Intrepid with this being his second trip, and many of us have been on more Intrepid trips than he has.

For our group dinner (paid for by Intrepid as an apology for the fact that the train up to Jaffna is not running after damage caused by the cyclone) and I went for the “spicy” (rating 2 of 4 of hotness ratings) chilli crab curry platter. You can see why people rave about the food in Sri Lanka – this was absolutely delicious, and the photo below does not do it justice. You can see the curry, rice, 2 sambols, a lentil dal, poppadums and extra crab. This was with an excellent passion fruit, lime and ginger juice for my health you know.

We returned to the hotel at 9pm and I was very much ready for my bed, I was tired and also tomorrow morning we were planning a trip to the famous Negombo fish market which means a 5.30am start.

Question of the day: the Sri Lankan flag has a leaf on each of its corners, please name the tree this represents.