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..