Sri Lanka

March 16–21, 2022

Some journeys begin with a carefully constructed plan. Others begin when the plan falls apart.

Sri Lanka was supposed to be a fairly straightforward road trip. It was another birthday journey with Pragati, and as with some of our earlier trips, one of the reasons for choosing the destination was the relative ease of obtaining a visa. Sri Lanka was close to home, easy to reach from Chennai, and seemed ideal for a few days of driving around the island.

The plan was simple: fly to Colombo, pick up a rental car and drive.

It did not quite work out that way.

A Birthday Journey

We flew from Chennai to Colombo on March 16, 2022, on SriLankan Airlines. I had originally booked an economy ticket, but there was an opportunity to pay for an upgrade to business class. I took it.

There was something nice about beginning a birthday trip that way.

We landed in Colombo expecting the rental car to be waiting and the road journey to begin. Instead, the first conversation with the rental company changed everything.

Sri Lanka was in the middle of a severe economic crisis. One of the immediate consequences for anyone trying to travel around the country was the shortage of fuel. The rental company could give us a car, but they could not guarantee that there would be enough petrol available for us to use it.

A car without fuel was not much of a road-trip vehicle.

Our original first destination was Dambulla, several hundred kilometres away, and we had planned to drive there ourselves. Now we had no car and no clear transport plan.

So I did what seemed like the most practical thing at that moment.

I booked an Uber.

The idea was simply to find someone who could take us to our hotel in Dambulla. We would figure out the rest once we got there.

That decision ended up shaping the entire trip.

The Uber Driver Who Became Our Driver

During the journey, the driver asked us about our plans.

We explained that we had intended to rent a car and travel around Sri Lanka, but the fuel situation had made that uncertain.

He offered us an alternative.

Why not let him drive us for the whole trip?

He was a local. He knew the roads, knew the situation on the ground and was confident that he could find fuel. He would take us wherever we wanted to go, stay with us through the journey and eventually drop us back at the airport.

It was an unexpected solution to an unexpected problem.

Just like that, our failed rental-car plan became a road journey with someone who knew the country far better than we did.

With transport sorted, we could finally stop worrying about how we were going to move around and start enjoying the trip.

Dambulla

Our first stop was Dambulla.

We visited the Dambulla Cave Temple, with its large Buddha statues and cave shrines. Getting there involved a substantial climb, and I remember thinking that this was going to be the toughest physical part of the trip.

I was wrong.

At the time, I had no idea that the next day’s climb at Sigiriya would make Dambulla seem easy.

The journey through Dambulla also gave us our first real sense of travelling through Sri Lanka rather than simply arriving in another country. The road, the landscape and the rhythm of the place were beginning to replace the uncertainty of the first few hours.

We also visited Hurulu Eco Park, where we went on a jeep safari to see wild elephants.

Seeing elephants moving freely in their natural surroundings was one of the memorable experiences of the trip. There was something very different about seeing them this way rather than encountering them in a controlled setting.

By the time the safari was over, it was already getting late. We had lunch almost towards evening and then returned to our hotel.

Our stay was at Liyya Water Villas, a peaceful property in Dambulla where isolated cottages were arranged around man-made lakes.

After a day of travelling and climbing, the setting was exactly what we needed.

It was calm.

Sigiriya

The next day brought the climb I had not anticipated.

Sigiriya.

The ancient rock fortress rose above us, and the climb looked daunting even before we started.

This time, Pragati decided that she had had enough of climbing.

She asked to be excused and stayed in the park below while I continued with a guide.

The climb was hectic. By then I had already learnt that Sri Lanka was not going to be a holiday where we simply moved from one comfortable stop to another.

But reaching the top made the effort worthwhile.

The view stretched out below us, and there was something satisfying about finally looking down at the landscape after having spent so much energy climbing up.

The history associated with Sigiriya added another dimension to the experience. Standing there made the place feel much larger than just another sightseeing stop on a road trip.

After coming back down, we visited a local crafts village and then a gem factory.

Sri Lanka’s precious and semi-precious stones were displayed in all their variety. Some of them were beautiful enough to make buying one tempting.

Then we saw the prices.

We admired them and moved on.

Sometimes the easiest souvenir to take home is the one you decide not to buy.

From Dambulla to Kandy

We checked out of Liyya Water Villas and continued our journey towards Kandy.

One of the memorable stops there was the Temple of the Tooth, where the sacred tooth relic of the Buddha is kept.

It was a particularly interesting time to visit because it was a full-moon day. The place was crowded, with large numbers of Buddhist devotees coming to the temple.

The atmosphere was very different from the tourist attractions we had visited earlier.

This was not simply a historical monument.

For the people gathered there, it was a place of deep religious significance.

From Kandy we continued towards Nuwara Eliya, travelling through the hill country. On the way we stopped at Glenloch Tea Factory.

The landscape was changing as we climbed higher, and by the time we reached Nuwara Eliya, the weather had changed with it.

Nuwara Eliya and the Ramayana Connection

Nuwara Eliya was not chosen randomly.

One of the reasons I wanted to come here was its connection with the Ramayana.

According to the tradition associated with the site, this was the place where Ravana kept Sita in Ashoka Vana.

We visited the temple associated with that story.

There was something special about standing in a place outside India and encountering a story that had been part of our cultural memory for generations.

Travel sometimes makes familiar stories feel different.

You know them from books, conversations, television and childhood memories. Then suddenly you find yourself standing somewhere that is connected to that story.

It was one of those moments when the distance between India and Sri Lanka seemed to disappear.

Our hotel in Nuwara Eliya was a small, pleasant place called La Grande Villa.

It was cold and raining outside, while the hotel itself was warm and cozy.

After the heat and activity of Dambulla and the climb at Sigiriya, the change was welcome.

A Detour into a Family’s Life

The next day we checked out and started the drive towards Bentota.

Somewhere along the journey, our driver made an unusual suggestion.

His family lived in a village along the way.

He had been travelling with us for a couple of days and had been away from his family during that time. He wanted to stop and meet them.

So we did.

We stopped at his village and spent some time there while he met his family.

It was a small detour, but one that I remember because it wasn’t part of our itinerary at all.

We had started the trip with a stranger we had found through an Uber booking.

Now that same person had become our driver, guide and travel companion, and we were sitting in his village while he caught up with his family.

It was one of those experiences that no itinerary could have planned.

Eventually we said goodbye and continued towards Bentota.

Bentota

By the time we reached Bentota, we were ready to stop moving.

The Avani Bentota Resort was exactly what we needed at that point in the journey.

It had a private beach and a swimming pool, and after several days of travelling through the country, we finally allowed ourselves to slow down.

There was no major sightseeing agenda.

We rested.

Sometimes a good trip needs a day where nothing much happens.

Bentota gave us that pause.

After the climbing, driving, temples, wildlife and changing landscapes of the previous days, the calm felt almost like a reward.

Colombo and the Journey Home

Our flight back to Chennai was on March 21.

We checked out, collected our luggage and headed towards Colombo rather than going directly to the airport.

There was still time for some local shopping and sightseeing.

Among the things I bought was a wooden statue of Buddha.

It was a small reminder of the journey we had just completed.

And then it was time to say goodbye to our driver.

He had entered our trip almost by accident.

We had needed an Uber simply to get from Colombo to Dambulla after our rental-car plan collapsed. Instead, we found someone who stayed with us for the entire journey, drove us across the country, helped us navigate a difficult fuel situation and eventually brought us back to the airport.

The journey had started with a problem.

It ended with a handshake and a goodbye to someone who had become an important part of the trip.

Travelling Through a Crisis

There was another unusual aspect to this journey.

When we arrived in Sri Lanka, the country was already facing an economic crisis. Fuel availability was a major concern, and the uncertainty was visible in everyday travel.

But there was another effect that we noticed during our short stay.

The Sri Lankan rupee was depreciating rapidly.

Between the day we arrived and the day we were leaving, the exchange rate had moved noticeably in our favour. For every rupee or dollar we exchanged, we were getting more Sri Lankan rupees.

As visitors carrying foreign currency, this made many things feel surprisingly inexpensive.

That became one of the strange highlights of the journey.

We were travelling through a beautiful country at a time when the people living there were dealing with a serious economic crisis. What felt inexpensive to us as visitors was, of course, part of a much larger and more difficult situation for the country.

It was an uncomfortable contradiction to observe.

Travel can sometimes put you in situations where your experience as a visitor is very different from the reality of the people who live there.

Sri Lanka gave us one of those reminders.

A Country We Almost Overlook

Looking back, perhaps the most interesting thing about Sri Lanka is how close it is to home.

We often think of travel as something that requires long flights, complicated planning and distant destinations.

But Sri Lanka is hardly an hour’s flight from Chennai.

It is right there, across the water.

And yet, like many travellers, we can sometimes become so interested in places far away that we overlook the gems that are close to us.

Our Sri Lanka trip was supposed to be a road trip with a rental car.

Instead, an economic crisis took away the car, a last-minute Uber booking gave us a driver, and that unexpected change gave us a journey we could never have planned.

We climbed ancient sites, watched elephants roam freely, travelled through tea country, followed a story from the Ramayana, met our driver’s family, rested beside the sea and ended the journey with a wooden Buddha statue in our luggage.

Sometimes the best journeys are not the ones that go according to plan.

They are the ones that force you to change the plan and, in doing so, show you something you would otherwise have missed.

Sri Lanka was one of those journeys.

And perhaps the lesson was simpler still:

We don’t always have to look far away to find somewhere worth travelling to.