Trip to Sri Lanka, Sunday, Mar 13, 2024

We wake on our last day in India and have Indian food for breakfast, cooked by our hosts. They are good cooks and the food is amazing, even if we don’t know what it is! Some kind of crepe pancake and vegetable filling. Indian coffee is very rich and tasty!

We have 4-5 hours before our ride to the airport shows up, so we take a walk through the slums (or so it seems) to a park called, “Deer Park”. We pass a lot of vegetable vendors on the way. It is a nice stroll though extensive parklands that many people are enjoying. We eventually come to a lake and stroll along it until we come to an old fort. We find our way to the entrance and decide not to spend our remaining Rupees to get in. We find several places where we can point our cameras through fences and take random shots.

We stroll instead through another slum like area (not ever did we feel threatened!) and take photos of how the people live. We pass by some old ruins of a small castle and water tank collection systems which are interestingly backdrops for models posing! At the end of the road several children were enthralled with us and posed for photos, which they then insisted on seeing in the back of our cameras! After giving each child his or her own ‘high five’, we move on. Well, that was fun!

As we walk away from the children, WHAM! A water balloon hits me from behind! It doesn’t hurt at all, it is just surprising! I turn around and can see no one laughing. smirking, scowling or any other guilty looks. Not even any threatening looks anywhere so I relax. It appears it was just someone having fun with a couple of tourists! In the heat and humidity, it was actually a bit refreshing!

We make our way back towards our AirBNB, but not before stopping to try some local Street Vendor Food. “How do you know what street vendor to buy food from?”, you ask. Well, it’s simple. Look for the vendors that have lines and throngs of local workers in line and it’s a safe bet the food is okay! We find one that actually has its own Tandoori Oven. It’s fun to watch the guy ‘slapping’ the bread down inside the walls of the oven! We don’t get food there because it would take a very long time with the crowd. We walk on and I find another vendor with not so long a line (but we can see the actual cooking of the food, which is another telltale sign) and I buy a Paranta filled Roti wrap bread and it is delicious! Spicy and delicious! Okay, mark that off the bucket list, ‘eating street food in India’!

Back at our AirBNB, we kick back and pack up. Soon, our driver arrives and we are off to the airport. We arrive at the airport with 3 hours to spare and we get through security where they literally empty out our bags and camera gear to inspect. They take my corkscrew that I forgot I had in my bag. I know that’s not allowed. But they also take my TSA corkscrew which every other country allows! Sheesh, what a nightmare to try and pack the bags back!

But we survive security and still have over 2 hours to boarding. We find an Irish Pub and get some pub food. I get a pint of a fairly decent Indian beer and Elee gets a Chenin Blanc wine which turns out to be really good! The ‘Grande Nachos’ that I get are somewhat bland, spice-wise, So I ask for extra salsa and a supply of Jalapenos and it brings it up to par. Finished with that, there is still 45 minutes left, so another beer and glass of wine are in the works!

We walk seemingly forever to the end of the Terminal to find our gate and we board the plane. This time, we are in Row 26 of 28 Rows and we settle in for the 3 hour flight to Columbo, Sri Lanka. Turns out a lot of Passengers from our ship are on the plane, returning from the Ship’s Tour of the Taj Mahal! We even met a few at the Taj yesterday. The flight is uneventful and we arrive in Columbo. Getting through Customs is a breeze and we just walk out.

We arrange for a taxi to our hotel for 6000 Sri Lankan Rupees (different than Indian Rupees), about $20 US Dollars. The ride takes most of an hour and we get to the hotel just short of Midnight. With no aspirations of getting a meal (we did get a meal on the plane), we turn in for the night.

See you in the morning!