A RoadTrip in Sri Lanka: Day 1- Madurai to Colombo

The Arrival

Even though the flight was on Tuesday afternoon, for me, the trip started officially on Monday night. Since I was the only person to start from Coimbatore, I reached Madurai before the rest of the party who started from Bengaluru. Even though I booked in the last bus to start from Coimbatore, I reached Madurai by 4 am. But I had a plan to kill time till my friends arrive. And I was luckily on time for where the visitors barge into the biggest house in the city and wake its owners every day morning.

If i start to give a brief introduction to Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple, then this blog wont be enough. So leaving you to Google about it, I will continue to the events. So every morning the priests wake the holy couple from palliyarai (bed room) and then the pooja starts for Meenakshi first. In a way, I feel bad for the gods because these priests always start the pooja on time and the gods cannot say ‘Today is holiday, please let me sleep for a while’. But Sokkanathar is lucky; he gets another 30 minutes of nap time before the pooja starts for him.

I watched all the pooja, bought a book about the temple and was watching the pigeons thinking what to do next. At that time my friends have reached. Then we took a cheap room beside the temple and got ready. Again I went to the temple with my friends and finished the breakfast with Sakkarai Pongal from the Prasada Counter and Poori and Pongal from the Kaiyendi Bavan nearby.

Now the time has arrived for us to depart. We reached the Madurai airport; checked in at the SpiceJet counter and got the immigration slips. The procedure was simple; just answered a couple questions in the counter about why I am going to Sri Lanka, how we all got together and planned a trip (Yes, I did mention the whatsapp group),and we all got cleared and boarded the plane.

The plane trip was surprisingly short and even before I finish my Chicken Tikka Sandwich, the pilot has announced that we will start descending to Colombo soon. I did try to look out the window and guess on which part of the Indian coastline we are crossing by comparing it with map.. 

Do you know that each flight in SpiceJet fleet is named after a spice ?

Now we reached the crucial part of our trip: Clearing the immigration in Sri Lanka. Since the beginning of this plan I had many nightmares regarding this, like my visa would not be approved for some silly reasons and I would be asked to return immediately in the next flight. But the real was totally opposite to it. 

I filled the form, approached an officer and spoke only three sentences. 'Hi, Good afteroon!'; 'I work in Indian Overseas Bank.'; 'Yes, We do have a branch in Colombo.'. That's it! My visa is approved! It was so short that we thought there might be a second round of questioning before we exit. But before we know we are out of the airport.

If I could relate that event to an film scene it would be the interview scene of Prakash Raj in 'Abhiyum Naanum'. No one asked me about Bucephalus nor NOC. Then we proceeded to buy the local sims. I have forgotten the exact prices of tourist sims but remember these; Airtel was the costliest; Hutch offered more for less money but couldn't get 3G in most of the places; and Mobitel gives you value for money. If you had liked my instagram photos I posted during my visit, then you have to thank Yogesha for getting that Mobitel sim.

The manager of the place where we booked in Kandy has requested us to pick another guy who is coming from Norway and staying in the same hostel with us. When we asked how to find him he told us that the Norway guy will find us. And as it is, he found us with in five minutes. I believe that manager would have told, look out for the guys who look like natives but standing there with out any clue of where to go next.

Then Sathya called our driver and the van came. It's a Toyota Hiace. Before continuing about the trip, I should say more about this van. I believe almost 80 percent of the four wheeler market in Sri Lanka belongs to Toyota. In that, more than half are Hiace. I have never seen a van model where it  is customised into so many variety and used widely. During our visit, I have seen many variants of Hiace like tourists cabs, home purpose, school van, ambulance, etc..

Within minutes of getting into the van we have realised that we cant rely on the AC of the van on this trip. We knew it was on but we couldn't feel it. We started to Kandy and on the way we stopped at Hotel Euro Star to have our first Sri Lankan meal. I don't want to comment much about the food we had there, except to mention that the Chicken Biryani I had there was my first and last Sri Lankan Chicken Biryani during my entire trip.

Then the road trip continued towards Kandy. Soon we have noticed that the shuffle of the van’s music player repeatedly started playing the first song in my USB for every two or three songs. And the distance from the airport to Kandy looked not so far in the map but the winding road just keeps going on and on. Now some of us started to doze off and other intellectuals like Yogesha were having a conversation with the Norwegian guy about the life in India and Norway. Suddenly Adhithya got the doubt whether Frost Giants really live in Norway or people in Norway at least believe in it like we do! 

The rest of day was just slow and finally we reached Kandy. Without Google maps and Sathya, we would have never found our place, the Kandy City Hostel. We checked in there and left to have our dinner. It took us a couple of kilometres and nearly twenty minutes to reach the main area of Kandy by walk. And to our surprise most of the hotels were shut. Then we came to know that it was a New Moon day and all new moon days are national holidays in Sri Lanka. 

Our vegetarian friends couldn’t find any hotels, so they decided to have some Veg burgers from KFC. but others luckily found a hotel open. We ordered some items but the waiter brought some other items saying only these are available. Now I felt that my vegetarian friends are more lucky. The one unique thing I found here was the food items are placed in a tray and you can take how much ever you want and get bill only for those. 

Then we joined the Veg eaters in KFC and met a guy who was proudly saying to us that the greatest cricket batsman Sangakkara’s home is beside his. Since we didn’t want to upset him by comparing Sangakkara with Virat, we left the KFC soon. We had taken a bedroom with ac and a couple of beds in a dormitory room. I got the dorm and took a lower bed near the balcony. Due to the humidity, we decided to leave the windows and balcony door wide open and I could clearly see the ‘Poya Day’ moon. 

I could feel that the coming week is going to be fun but I was feeling nervous also. I was struggling to get sleep and when I finally fell asleep, I got a night full of nightmares with all my banking transactions running inside my mind in huge LKR and un tallied Lots(A Lot is a combination of credit and debit).

Thanks to Google for always watching me from above!

A RoadTrip in Sri Lanka: The Prologue

The Plan

Every bachelor has a group in whatsapp that discuss where to travel next. This story also starts in a group like that. The aim was simple. Choose a place where we would spend less and gain a lot. As usual, like every men in this country, our first choice should have been Bangkok! I could try to convince you that we chose Sri Lanka instead of Bangkok because of its heritage value and as a teetotallers we would have easily got bored in Bangkok. But the real reason is, we are a bunch of cheapos who thought Sri Lanka would be cheaper than Bangkok and even India!

So the plan started three or four months back. And I am proud to say that I was one of the founding  fathers of the group and chose the dates of last week of March(March 22nd to March 27th). Then comes the plan of squeezing all the places you want to see into these days. All the places were discussed and I was firm that we should not miss any UNESCO cultural sites. Those were

• Kandy
• Dambulla
• Sigiriya
• Anuradhapura
• Polonnaruwa 
• Galle

My friend and the co-founder of the group Sathyanarayanan suggested that we should also see Kataragama and Jaffna. Since we did not know whether any special permission is needed to for Jaffna, we left it. The other co-founder Adithya suggested Nuwara Eliya; but that was also vetoed due to the reason it doesn't have much places to see.

The flight booking was done around Christmas, to and fro from Madurai to Colombo. The tip for fellow travellers: When you fly look for these moderately old airports instead of newly renovated international airports, because the flights departure from these new airports charge you extra. 

The other important thing to know about traveling to Sri Lanka is the ETA(Electronic Travel Authorization) procedure. The rates are in Dollars and you can check it in their site. There is a concession for Indians. No need to worry; it is a simple procedure; just fill the form and you will get the approval within few days. For each person we spent around Rs.1500 INR for it.

Later due to some personal reasons I could not participate effectively in the planning. The initial plan was to travel from Colombo to Kandy via train, and then visit other places via bus. The response of preparing an itinerary was given to Anand GB and hotel booking to Adhi. And I just got busy with applying my No Objection Certificate since I am the only one in the group who works in public sector.

When the date of departure move nearer, the excitement and the nervousness got increased and the plan kept changing and changing and we could not even remember which one is the final. Then Sathya announced that he arranged a car for us to travel in Sri Lanka through his uncle’s friend in Sri Lanka, it eased most of our tension.

I was also little pre occupied with my NOC, since it did not arrive till the mid of March, even though I have applied it in the last of January. Then it got sanctioned just a week before, reached my Regional Office in Coimbatore. Then I got a call from there that NOC was sanctioned in CO but I have mistakenly mentioned the dates as March 22nd March 27th 2015!! Thankfully it was not a big issue and I got the NOC in my hands just a couple of days before the trip.

Now we were all ready. We had everything in need for the visa procedures; packed everything ; arranged for travel and hotels; but still had that rumble in the stomach about our first international trip. And I believe that’s how every memorable trip starts..