Our taxi driver picked us up from the Ella Corner Inn at 10am and we set off down the windy hillside roads from Ella towards our next destination, Udawalawe, where we would be spending two nights.   Our main aim while there was to organise a jeep safari to Udawalawe National Park to view Asian Elephants…

Having heard that the seven-hour train ride from Kandy to Ella was one of the most spectacular in the world we didn’t want to have the lottery of having to find a seat.  We discussed what the best option would be and decided to pay extra and book seats in advance on the ExpoRail carriage….

Leaving Trincomalee behind we had a two-hour drive to Habarana, a small village at an important crossroads in Sri Lanka’s cultural triangle.  We would base ourselves here for a couple of nights to visit nearby Sigiriya and the Dambulla Caves Temple. Our guesthouse, the A4 Villa, was slightly out of the village along a dusty…

We were in Habarana and still were not sure what to do. Sigiriya is THE iconic landmark of Sri Lanka.  The giant rock was home to King Kasyapa who decided to build his palace on top of the rock and decorate the sides with frescoes.  About halfway up he built a gateway in the form…

While eating breakfast one morning in Trincomalee a Dutch couple returned to the hotel full of smiles.  They had just taken an early morning boat trip and had seen lots of dolphins out at sea. “There are so many of them!”.  Up until now we had not thought of dolphin watching in Sri Lanka. Mum’s…

After 5 days in Kandy it was time to move on to our next destination.  We decided to detour from our planned route to include a visit to Trincomalee on the east coast of Sri Lanka.   Tourism in Trincomalee is back on the rise following the tsunami of 2004 and the civil war. It took…

Our arrival to Kandy didn’t go so smoothly, however it didn’t take us too long to find our groove after a good night’s rest in the Days Inn family apartment.   On our first full day we took a Tuk Tuk into town and searched for a place to eat breakfast.   We found Devon Bakery for…

We decided to become one of the 1.2 million visitors and take the kids to the Kandy Royal Botanic Gardens in the Peradeniya area which is just outside of Kandy city centre. As with most attractions in Sri Lanka, the entry cost for foreign tourists is a lot steeper that it is for locals. The…

We needed to get from Negombo to Colombo Fort this morning for a train to Kandy and had two options.   A Taxi to station or a Tuk Tuk to the bus station to get the air-conditioned bus to a bus station a 10-minute walk from the station.   Since we think we have too much baggage…