John's 7 days trip to Sri Lanka
8 years agoThe whole trip was lovely. The purpose was to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary and visit a country my grandfather had lived in for 10 years, building Trincomalee harbor as the Colonel in charge of the Royal Engineers tasked with that job.
The trip started well with the driver picking us up at the airport and making sure we were well looked after. In fact, our driver could not have been more helpful. While my wife enjoyed Sri Lanka form the back seat, we had many long chats as we drove around he country. The driver (Kumara) could not have been more pleasant to share our travels with and made the holiday far more enjoyable as a result.
Some of the key enjoyable times were:
1 Going to the elephant foundation and walking with one of the elephants for 45 mins, washing her in the pond with a coconut husk and hand feeding her at the end of our visit. The elephants we saw were so lovely, both those in foundation and later the wild elephants we spotted.
2 Watch out for the monkeys! They are nice to see but are quick to grab things. I opened the balcony door to our hotel room an the 5th floor and, unseen at first, a monkey was in and trying to rush off with a bag within 20 seconds. Luckily, I was bigger than the monkey and we got to keep the bag and its contents.
3 We adopted a heavily pregnant dog for the two days when in Trincomalee. She hid from the hotel security on our room's balcony (ground floor) and had two days of rest. Needless to say, my wife rushed out to buy her food and ensure she was well fed for her two days on the balcony!
4 Most of the hotels we stayed in were wonderful - except those in Colombo. Those on our way over to/from Trincomolee were excellent and the food was very good.
5 Then there was the perfect private beach meal at Trinco hotel. OK, it was 2 days before the wedding anniversary, but the weather was perfect, we had beautiful full moon beaming down on us, a lovely seafood BBQ prepared for us and the sound of the small waves gently washing against the shore 10 feet away.
6 Aside the monkeys, elephants and dogs, we took a few walks into the lovely countryside seeing many lovely views over the lakes and the mountains. Coming from the UK but living in Kuwait at present, we enjoyed the two showers of rain (about an hour each) and while everyone else wanted to get inside away from the rain, we enjoyed sitting in the hotel bar only a couple of feet in the dry. Aside from the two showers, the weather was excellent.
7 There is a carved stone notice in Trincomalee navy harbour that we tried to see. Sadly, the navy commander would not let us in to have a photo taken with this which, we were told, states my grandfather was in charge of the unit of the Royal Engineers that built the harbour. But we did not know this was in the naval base before we went.
So we loved our trip, would recommend Sri Lanka to all and thank Daya Holidays for arranging such a fun week.