In recent years I've spent most New Year's Eves watching TV, yawning and propping my eyes open just long enough to see the fireworks explode over London on BBC1.
From our brief experience in the capital, I reckon the guide books are probably fair in their assessment. Colombo doesn't have much to recommend it unfortunately.
We wandered for a while and soon found our way on the seafront. The thin stretch of sand was packed with kids and teenagers in a post-school blur of activity.
They were playing cricket, splashing in the sea and generally enjoying the hazy sunshine over the Indian ocean. Good scenes:
Following a brief stop back at the hotel - for a dose of air conditioning as much as anything - we walked down the road to sample our first taste of Sri Lankan cuisine.
No photos unfortunately, but we had our first try of the ubiquitous 'rice and curries' that you'll find in every Sri Lankan restaurant. Instead of the Indian version of a curry, with rice and a single gravy-based dish, the Sri Lankan version has rice with several small fist-sized dishes. Like this:
It's a good idea because you get to sample more flavours, different levels of spice, can combine veg with fish/meat (though we stuck with veg most of the time) and have a unique experience each meal.
We ended up eating rice and curries every night (bar one).
Other notable 'events' during our 36 hours in Colombo: an ice-cream sundae from Burger King (in order to take advantage of the A/C), buying our train tickets (which involved several confusing rebuttals from the ticket man and the guy behind me practically molesting me in anticipation of his turn) and our first breakfast of toast and eggs.
So, poor Colombo gets a bad rep and I guess the paragraph above shows why. There just didn't seem to be much happening, much to do, sights to see.
Oh, I almost forgot. We did go to a park. It was greeny-brown, had some trees and a water feature that wasn't working properly.
Much as we'd have loved to stay, we had better places to see. And yes, they thankfully were better.
First up: Kandy.
Our train-buying experience of the previous day resulted in us booking on the Rajadhani Express, which was actually just a couple of carriages tacked onto the back of a normal train. The reason we booked it was because it was the only way we could book seats in advance.
The Rajadhani Express, at about five times the price of a normal second or third class ticket, was a pleasant way to travel but without the authenticity of 'normal' rail in the Indian subcontinent.
I had a great time zig-zagging my way down India on its fabled railway in early 2011 (including a particularly memorable, and mammoth, 21hr journey), but the Rajadhani Express was far removed.
We had A/C, we had a man providing us with refreshing towels, we had enough legroom to house a small collection of cats at our feet, and we had a series of American films on loop to 'entertain' us. Not exactly authentic.
Fortunately it was the first of four train journeys we took in Sri Lanka, and we roughed it (if you can call it that) on journeys two and three in Third Class. The A/C cooled comfort of the Rajadhani Express was a pleasant first ice-breaker I guess.
Towards the end of the 2.5hr journey, as the train wound its way up the hills towards Kandy, I snuck out of the carriage and into the guard's van. The guard happily opened the door to the outside world and allowed Lottie and I to take in the views and get some wind in our hair:
We arrived in Kandy after nightfall and took (tuk?) a tuk tuk to the Madugalle Guest House, so named because it was owned by Mrs Madugalle - a sweet elderly woman whose family had lived in Kandy for decades.
The guesthouse was adorned with various pictures of her ancestral family, and we discovered that her grandfather was a Kandyan big cheese. A politician or something.
We'd arrived too late to eat at the guesthouse so walked down the main road, doing our best to avoid potholes and other pitfalls in the darkness.
Eventually we found somewhere to eat. A canteen-style establishment with no discernible menu and lots of interested locals eyeing up the gringos in their midst. Not in an unfriendly way; simply curious.
In fact, that would become a common theme to the trip. Staring, smiling, interested locals followed us throughout. Sri Lanka is not long out of civil war and tourism is still in its relative infancy.
Throw in a couple of white faces, particularly when off the tourist track, and you spark curiosity and intrigue among the locals. With no hint of aggression or threat, it turns into a nice sideshow and can provide some memorable experiences.
During our first day in Kandy we were wandering round in circles struggling to decipher the map and find our way to a footpath that would take us up to a viewpoint above the city.
Exasperated by the seemingly nonsensical one-way system, I approached a gaggle of teenage girls who were carrying out some sort of survey on passers-by.
Before I even opened my mouth, they were blushing, giggling and hiding their smiling mouths behind their hands. As Lottie and I tried to ask them where Kandy's man-made lake was, they continued to giggle and struggle with getting any words out.
Eventually their head girl managed to compose herself and explain that she didn't know where the lake was. But it was an interesting experience - London thirtysomethings meeting Kandyan teenagesomethings. An experience I feel we all benefited from.
While I'm describing that day in Kandy, I may as well recount what we did. It won't take long.
We eventually did find that footpath to the viewpoint, escaping the crowded streets for a bit of air on high. Unfortunately what we did find was slightly underwhelming: a wall on the side of the road that gave a partial view of the city below.
Hardly worthy of 'viewpoint' status in my book, but I'm a hard man to please.
I found the lake itself similarly disappointing; the only thing of interest was a large reptile (which looked like a monitor lizard) swimming over to the walled shore and clambering out. Bizarre and slightly unnerving at the same time.
That evening, after a pleasant meal of rice and curries at Madugalle's, we headed back to the lake in order to visit the Temple of the Tooth.
It is Kandy's main tourist attraction, although having spent a couple of days in the city I'd say it has little competition.
Before visiting the Temple we took in a 'Typical Kandyan Dance' event. Set in an indoor auditorium-style theatre with rows of wooden seats, the eight or nine dances were reasonably entertaining, if lacking in the 'wow' factor.
All the dances were accompanied by incessant and tuneless drumming, which by the end was pushing us towards an early grave.
Fortunately the event finished on a high, as we were all beckoned forward to the stage to witness two dancers walking across hot coals, fire-eating and blowing fireballs into the air.
The latter would have had Health & Safety practitioners breaking out in a sweat, seeing as the whole hall was made of wood and there were big flammable drapes bedecking the stage.
Thankfully nothing caught alight and we were soon outside, greeted by a fantastic scorched sunset over Kandy's lake:
The Temple of the Tooth is a hugely popular destination for Sri Lankan Buddhists. The 'Tooth' is regarded as the original tooth of the Buddha and is now hidden in the depths of the Temple, only viewed after a long queueing session.
We weren't that fussed, so left the pilgrims to it and took a brief walk round the Temple before heading back home.
While Kandy itself didn't exactly wow us, we did enjoy a trip to the botanical gardens during our first morning - a short tuk-tuk ride out of the city.
Apart from the various plants and trees, including some bendy ones (a new one on me) and some incredibly tall ones, there was the small matter of avoiding being shat on by bats.
Avoiding bat shit seems to be a recurring theme for Lottie and I on holiday (see the Underground River boat trip in the Philippines).
This was on another level though. In a large section of the gardens you had to run the gauntlet under the canopy of trees that housed some of the world's largest bats.
These were scary-looking things. When they flew from tree to tree the wingspan looked to be between 2-3 feet, and when sleeping in the trees (hanging in eerie clumps on every branch) they made a whiny sound that provided a constant reminder of what was above your head.
Luckily we avoided any faeces falling on us, and soon got distracted by other things - namely some little monkeys:
The following day we got out of Kandy and headed to two points on Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle: Sigiriya and Dambulla.
Madugalle had arranged a driver for us, using her rather grand saloon car, and packed us a couple of sandwiches that she passed us before our 6am departure.
Our non-English speaking driver put his foot on the throttle and we were soon zipping north through quiet villages and towns. Within two hours we were at the base of Sigiriya, aka 'Lion Rock'.
After paying the £30 entry fee (!) we headed towards the striking rock, rising out the ground like the mashed potato mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
Just before taking our tentative first step upwards, we got a warning to keep our mouths shut:
After minimal sleep and both feeling a bit niggly, I don't think Lottie and I were in much mood for talking anyway.
The climb up Sigiriya was - for me - one of the highlights of the trip to Sri Lanka.
After walking through an ancient boulder patch - some of them the size of a small house - we climbed up a steep set of brick stairs and were soon above the tree canopy and under the shadow of the vertiginous rock.
At the top of the brick stairs we met our first serious challenge for Lottie and her fear of heights: a tight, steep spiral staircase that was bolted onto the rock with a handful of rusty bolts.
Thanks for that, Sigiriya.
Lottie pegged it up the stairs, desperate to get back on a horizontal slab of rock.
Unfortunately, we discovered that the stairs only led to a small walkway with some ancient pictures of women with their boobs out:
A pleasant diversion I guess, but probably not worth the scary stairway to get there. We went back down from where we came.
The next part was a relatively flat walk around the outside of the rock to the feet of the Lion that gives the rock its name:
The climb from here was pretty hairy.
It was steep, it was rickety, it was windy and it was full of foreign tourists getting in your way.
I don't think Lottie will look back on it with any particular fondness. The metal walkway just before the summit was especially queasy, with a feeling of age, rustiness and general neglect.
Having survived that we had a final steep climb to the top up some brick stairs, and were met by a family of monkeys larking around.
The views from the top were good, if not great, due to a hazy cloud cover.
We got decent visibility, but not the see-for-miles view we'd hoped for. But that was made up for by the fantastic old ruins on the summit of the rock.
We hadn't read anything about Sigiriya so the ruins were a great surprise. The settlement was created by the ruling king of the region, and his impressive palace was an imposing sight.
We wandered round for half an hour taking in the views, making some starjumps and taking some more pictures - the best of which was probably one of the bathing pool:
With plenty more to do in our day trip, we began our climb down.
Our silent driver was waiting for us back at the base of the rock, just beyond the awesome boulder field. We said thanks-but-no-thanks to the souvenir hawkers, had some fresh juice, and got on our way.
On the way back to Kandy we stopped at Dambulla. By this time Lottie and I had serious fatigue, the early start and the punishing schlep up Sigiriya taking their toll.
But instead of curling up in a little ball on the back seat of the car, we clambered out and started our second climb of the day.
Dambulla is famous for its caves, a set of five or six Buddhist shrines carved out of a rock overhang high up on a side of a mountain.
We eventually made our way to the top, slow footstep after slow footstep, and took off our shoes under the watchful eye of some grooming monkeys:
A picture of a monkey picking fleas off another monkey. That's what the internet was made for.
The caves themselves got more spectacular as they went along (from 5 to 1), with the last couple featuring some massive yellow Buddhas in a horizontal position.
Back at the bottom of the hill there was an even bigger Buddha - but this one was built some point in the last fifty years and was therefore a bit silly and kitsch.
We had one final stop-off of a long day, at an ancient temple tucked away down a quiet lane off the main Sigiriya-Kandy road.
Not much to say about it, except it looked very old and there were no other tourists there.
Kandy was relatively unremarkable; Sigirya more memorable. But the best of the holiday was yet to come.
Read the second instalment of our Sri Lanka holiday: Adam's Peak and Ella.
I decided to celebrate the 2013 NYE doing something slightly different: sitting on a plane heading to Sri Lanka.
Lottie and I chose Sri Lanka for our next dose of winter sun after hearing of golden, palm-fringed beaches, challenging treks, tasty food and friendly people. We weren't disappointed.
Our first stop, unsurprisingly, was the busy capital Colombo. After landing at the airport - about an hour north of the city by road - we ignored the various taxi touts and headed for the official taxi service just outside Arrivals.
We were quoted a fair price for an A/C minicab and were led outside into the muggy heat by an intermediary man and introduced to our driver. He showed us the vehicle, a battered old minivan that was clearly made several years before the invention of air conditioning.
I said thanks, but no thanks. Where's the A/C?
Intermediary and driver looked sheepish, mumbled something, and then intermediary led us back into the terminal before wandering off.
Intermediary and driver looked sheepish, mumbled something, and then intermediary led us back into the terminal before wandering off.
I then proceeded to ask for my money back from the woman at the official taxi service desk, asking three or four times. She looked at me blankly, smiling but not saying anything, until Lottie pointed out that I hadn't actually paid anything yet.
Oops.
We went to the booth next door and got a cheaper quote for an A/C car and eventually got on our way.
An hour later, following a leisurely (ie, slow) journey over the new 'Expressway' between Negombo and Colombo, we arrived at our hotel - the Whitehouse Residences.
With less than 24 hours in the city, we were soon taking our first tuk-tuk of the trip, first heading to the station to buy some train tickets and then heading to the Fort area for a look around.
Having done some research, I wasn't expecting much of Colombo. It's not known for being a particularly interesting Asian city in the way Bangkok, Tokyo or Mumbai are.
We wandered for a while and soon found our way on the seafront. The thin stretch of sand was packed with kids and teenagers in a post-school blur of activity.
They were playing cricket, splashing in the sea and generally enjoying the hazy sunshine over the Indian ocean. Good scenes:
Following a brief stop back at the hotel - for a dose of air conditioning as much as anything - we walked down the road to sample our first taste of Sri Lankan cuisine.
No photos unfortunately, but we had our first try of the ubiquitous 'rice and curries' that you'll find in every Sri Lankan restaurant. Instead of the Indian version of a curry, with rice and a single gravy-based dish, the Sri Lankan version has rice with several small fist-sized dishes. Like this:
 |
| Taken at Niyagama House near Galle |
We ended up eating rice and curries every night (bar one).
Other notable 'events' during our 36 hours in Colombo: an ice-cream sundae from Burger King (in order to take advantage of the A/C), buying our train tickets (which involved several confusing rebuttals from the ticket man and the guy behind me practically molesting me in anticipation of his turn) and our first breakfast of toast and eggs.
So, poor Colombo gets a bad rep and I guess the paragraph above shows why. There just didn't seem to be much happening, much to do, sights to see.
Oh, I almost forgot. We did go to a park. It was greeny-brown, had some trees and a water feature that wasn't working properly.
Much as we'd have loved to stay, we had better places to see. And yes, they thankfully were better.
First up: Kandy.
Our train-buying experience of the previous day resulted in us booking on the Rajadhani Express, which was actually just a couple of carriages tacked onto the back of a normal train. The reason we booked it was because it was the only way we could book seats in advance.
The Rajadhani Express, at about five times the price of a normal second or third class ticket, was a pleasant way to travel but without the authenticity of 'normal' rail in the Indian subcontinent.
I had a great time zig-zagging my way down India on its fabled railway in early 2011 (including a particularly memorable, and mammoth, 21hr journey), but the Rajadhani Express was far removed.
We had A/C, we had a man providing us with refreshing towels, we had enough legroom to house a small collection of cats at our feet, and we had a series of American films on loop to 'entertain' us. Not exactly authentic.
Fortunately it was the first of four train journeys we took in Sri Lanka, and we roughed it (if you can call it that) on journeys two and three in Third Class. The A/C cooled comfort of the Rajadhani Express was a pleasant first ice-breaker I guess.
Towards the end of the 2.5hr journey, as the train wound its way up the hills towards Kandy, I snuck out of the carriage and into the guard's van. The guard happily opened the door to the outside world and allowed Lottie and I to take in the views and get some wind in our hair:
We arrived in Kandy after nightfall and took (tuk?) a tuk tuk to the Madugalle Guest House, so named because it was owned by Mrs Madugalle - a sweet elderly woman whose family had lived in Kandy for decades.
The guesthouse was adorned with various pictures of her ancestral family, and we discovered that her grandfather was a Kandyan big cheese. A politician or something.
We'd arrived too late to eat at the guesthouse so walked down the main road, doing our best to avoid potholes and other pitfalls in the darkness.
Eventually we found somewhere to eat. A canteen-style establishment with no discernible menu and lots of interested locals eyeing up the gringos in their midst. Not in an unfriendly way; simply curious.
In fact, that would become a common theme to the trip. Staring, smiling, interested locals followed us throughout. Sri Lanka is not long out of civil war and tourism is still in its relative infancy.
Throw in a couple of white faces, particularly when off the tourist track, and you spark curiosity and intrigue among the locals. With no hint of aggression or threat, it turns into a nice sideshow and can provide some memorable experiences.
During our first day in Kandy we were wandering round in circles struggling to decipher the map and find our way to a footpath that would take us up to a viewpoint above the city.
Exasperated by the seemingly nonsensical one-way system, I approached a gaggle of teenage girls who were carrying out some sort of survey on passers-by.
Before I even opened my mouth, they were blushing, giggling and hiding their smiling mouths behind their hands. As Lottie and I tried to ask them where Kandy's man-made lake was, they continued to giggle and struggle with getting any words out.
Eventually their head girl managed to compose herself and explain that she didn't know where the lake was. But it was an interesting experience - London thirtysomethings meeting Kandyan teenagesomethings. An experience I feel we all benefited from.
While I'm describing that day in Kandy, I may as well recount what we did. It won't take long.
We eventually did find that footpath to the viewpoint, escaping the crowded streets for a bit of air on high. Unfortunately what we did find was slightly underwhelming: a wall on the side of the road that gave a partial view of the city below.
Hardly worthy of 'viewpoint' status in my book, but I'm a hard man to please.
I found the lake itself similarly disappointing; the only thing of interest was a large reptile (which looked like a monitor lizard) swimming over to the walled shore and clambering out. Bizarre and slightly unnerving at the same time.
That evening, after a pleasant meal of rice and curries at Madugalle's, we headed back to the lake in order to visit the Temple of the Tooth.
It is Kandy's main tourist attraction, although having spent a couple of days in the city I'd say it has little competition.
Before visiting the Temple we took in a 'Typical Kandyan Dance' event. Set in an indoor auditorium-style theatre with rows of wooden seats, the eight or nine dances were reasonably entertaining, if lacking in the 'wow' factor.
All the dances were accompanied by incessant and tuneless drumming, which by the end was pushing us towards an early grave.
Fortunately the event finished on a high, as we were all beckoned forward to the stage to witness two dancers walking across hot coals, fire-eating and blowing fireballs into the air.
The latter would have had Health & Safety practitioners breaking out in a sweat, seeing as the whole hall was made of wood and there were big flammable drapes bedecking the stage.
Thankfully nothing caught alight and we were soon outside, greeted by a fantastic scorched sunset over Kandy's lake:
The Temple of the Tooth is a hugely popular destination for Sri Lankan Buddhists. The 'Tooth' is regarded as the original tooth of the Buddha and is now hidden in the depths of the Temple, only viewed after a long queueing session.
We weren't that fussed, so left the pilgrims to it and took a brief walk round the Temple before heading back home.
While Kandy itself didn't exactly wow us, we did enjoy a trip to the botanical gardens during our first morning - a short tuk-tuk ride out of the city.
Apart from the various plants and trees, including some bendy ones (a new one on me) and some incredibly tall ones, there was the small matter of avoiding being shat on by bats.
Avoiding bat shit seems to be a recurring theme for Lottie and I on holiday (see the Underground River boat trip in the Philippines).
This was on another level though. In a large section of the gardens you had to run the gauntlet under the canopy of trees that housed some of the world's largest bats.
These were scary-looking things. When they flew from tree to tree the wingspan looked to be between 2-3 feet, and when sleeping in the trees (hanging in eerie clumps on every branch) they made a whiny sound that provided a constant reminder of what was above your head.
Luckily we avoided any faeces falling on us, and soon got distracted by other things - namely some little monkeys:
The following day we got out of Kandy and headed to two points on Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle: Sigiriya and Dambulla.
Madugalle had arranged a driver for us, using her rather grand saloon car, and packed us a couple of sandwiches that she passed us before our 6am departure.
Our non-English speaking driver put his foot on the throttle and we were soon zipping north through quiet villages and towns. Within two hours we were at the base of Sigiriya, aka 'Lion Rock'.
After paying the £30 entry fee (!) we headed towards the striking rock, rising out the ground like the mashed potato mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
Just before taking our tentative first step upwards, we got a warning to keep our mouths shut:
After minimal sleep and both feeling a bit niggly, I don't think Lottie and I were in much mood for talking anyway.
The climb up Sigiriya was - for me - one of the highlights of the trip to Sri Lanka.
After walking through an ancient boulder patch - some of them the size of a small house - we climbed up a steep set of brick stairs and were soon above the tree canopy and under the shadow of the vertiginous rock.
At the top of the brick stairs we met our first serious challenge for Lottie and her fear of heights: a tight, steep spiral staircase that was bolted onto the rock with a handful of rusty bolts.
Thanks for that, Sigiriya.
Lottie pegged it up the stairs, desperate to get back on a horizontal slab of rock.
Unfortunately, we discovered that the stairs only led to a small walkway with some ancient pictures of women with their boobs out:
A pleasant diversion I guess, but probably not worth the scary stairway to get there. We went back down from where we came.
The next part was a relatively flat walk around the outside of the rock to the feet of the Lion that gives the rock its name:
The climb from here was pretty hairy.
It was steep, it was rickety, it was windy and it was full of foreign tourists getting in your way.
I don't think Lottie will look back on it with any particular fondness. The metal walkway just before the summit was especially queasy, with a feeling of age, rustiness and general neglect.
Having survived that we had a final steep climb to the top up some brick stairs, and were met by a family of monkeys larking around.
The views from the top were good, if not great, due to a hazy cloud cover.
We got decent visibility, but not the see-for-miles view we'd hoped for. But that was made up for by the fantastic old ruins on the summit of the rock.
We hadn't read anything about Sigiriya so the ruins were a great surprise. The settlement was created by the ruling king of the region, and his impressive palace was an imposing sight.
We wandered round for half an hour taking in the views, making some starjumps and taking some more pictures - the best of which was probably one of the bathing pool:
With plenty more to do in our day trip, we began our climb down.
Our silent driver was waiting for us back at the base of the rock, just beyond the awesome boulder field. We said thanks-but-no-thanks to the souvenir hawkers, had some fresh juice, and got on our way.
On the way back to Kandy we stopped at Dambulla. By this time Lottie and I had serious fatigue, the early start and the punishing schlep up Sigiriya taking their toll.
But instead of curling up in a little ball on the back seat of the car, we clambered out and started our second climb of the day.
Dambulla is famous for its caves, a set of five or six Buddhist shrines carved out of a rock overhang high up on a side of a mountain.
We eventually made our way to the top, slow footstep after slow footstep, and took off our shoes under the watchful eye of some grooming monkeys:
A picture of a monkey picking fleas off another monkey. That's what the internet was made for.
The caves themselves got more spectacular as they went along (from 5 to 1), with the last couple featuring some massive yellow Buddhas in a horizontal position.
Back at the bottom of the hill there was an even bigger Buddha - but this one was built some point in the last fifty years and was therefore a bit silly and kitsch.
We had one final stop-off of a long day, at an ancient temple tucked away down a quiet lane off the main Sigiriya-Kandy road.
Not much to say about it, except it looked very old and there were no other tourists there.
Kandy was relatively unremarkable; Sigirya more memorable. But the best of the holiday was yet to come.
Read the second instalment of our Sri Lanka holiday: Adam's Peak and Ella.