Sri Lanka

After a fantastic two weeks travelling the length and breadth of India, I must take the opportunity to pay a HUGE thanks to all those in Nagda & Bhatisuda who went so far out of their way to make us feel welcome, and also to Chris, my father for being a fantastic guide and infinate fountain of advice and information! Thanks!

Our final night in India, spent in Trivandrum close to the airport for our early morning flight could well have been a world record for the highest number of mosquito bites sustained by one man in one night. Nevertheless, ever the intrepid explorer, we showed up on time for our flights looking more like pizzas than gap year students.

After a short & uneventful 40 minute hop over to Colombo, we headed straight to Negombo, our first port of call and checked into our Guesthouse. We were met by a beautiful garden heading straight onto the beach, complete with palm trees, loungers and an outdoor shower! And for a little under 5GBP a night, we were hardly complaining! Little did we know that the following week would see us visit the extremes of total relaxation and impending doom and panic...

After a pleasant two nights in Negombo, we took the train into Colombo on Lankan Independence Day to take a connecting train down to Hikkaduwa. Just as our train was moving away from the platform, a huge bang went off, and on leaning out of the train to see what had happened, all I could see was smoke and complete panic. We only realised that this had been a Tamil Tiger suicide bomb attack once we reached Hikkaduwa, and found ourselves feeling lucky to have had such a narrow escape.

Although becoming increasingly overrun with tourism, Hikkaduwa (essentially an old fishing town) is pretty much as close to tropical paradise as you can get. Massive long and pretty much perfect golden sand lines the coast, which in turn is laden with bamboo fronted Bars. Further down the beach is the Coral Sanctuary, where i've spent a good day or so snorkelling & free-diving. The variety of marine life there is incredible - Sharks, Tuna, Barracuda, Squid, Sea Snakes, Turtles, and countless brightly coloured reef fish.

Today we spent more time in and around the pool, feeling pretty exhausted after contending with the strong currents out by the rock and over the reef. However, in typical Lankan style an early evening walk onto the beach resulted in helping some 20 locals haul in a monsterous fishing net, which, eventually, after a grueling half hour struggle, turned out to be laden with fish. Ever the optimist, i sat back with throbbing arms glad that it was over and satisfied with what we'd been a part of, only to see a fairly viscious fight break out between two of the locals that we'd just been working side by side with. Feeling compelled to intervene, i managed to tear them apart, but was left covered in another mans blood putting a bit of a downer on an otherwise great day.

Tomorrow, we head back to Negombo, through Colombo (hopefully no safety issues this time, fingers crossed!) to spend a final night there, before catching out 7:20 AM flight to Hong Kong, from where with any luck, i'll be able to post a further update.