Sri Lanka 2015

We had already heard a lot of good things about Sri Lanka and so we left to get our own picture. According to our research the journey from Colombo airport, in the west of the island, to Arugam Bay should take about 5 hours. As we had to find out, this was only the case for a quiet night drive. Since we were on the road during the day, we were allowed to enjoy the local driving style and the high traffic volume for more than 9 hours. Again, and again we were woken up by either the honking of the horn, the abrupt braking and acceleration of the driver or the wonderful Indian-influenced music.

Finally arrived at our destination, we spent 8 days of surfing in the camp at Pottuville, north of Arugam Bay. In between we rented a Tuk Tuk and explored the area. Beside an elephant family on a mangrove tour, we saw a lot of crocodiles at a river (with a big safety distance, of course), only leopards didn't show up. But an elephant came to visit our camp. We had discovered this elephant two days before on the beach. At first, we thought it was a big rock, but when it moved, we kept some distance and withdrew. We described this incident in the camp, but nobody wanted to believe us until the day the elephant came closer and closer to camp. But luckily, he just walked past the camp and didn´t destroy anything.

From the east of the island we drove into the highlands to Ella. There we hiked to Little Adams Peak and strolled through the huge tea plantations. We briefly thought about taking the historic train to Kandy, but the travel time was a bit too long for us.

From Ella we took a taxi into the cultural heart of the island. There we visited the tooth temple, walked around the city and tried not to let ourselves be drawn into every stand at the market. After a long search we finally found a driver who had a car which was big enough for our surfboards and didn't charge usurious prices. The next day we went on to Kalpitiya in the northwest of Sri Lanka. Here we spent a very relaxed week. Actually, we only wanted to go windsurfing in the standing deep bathtub. But a kitesurf course offer and the given conditions were too tempting. We as windsurfers should kitesurf? Yes, we did it and it really makes a lot of fun!

Unfortunately, also this vacation ended again too fast and we had to go back to Colombo and back home. Also, in Sri Lanka we were certainly not for the last time.