Sri Lanka - exploring an island

There was a time when Sri Lanka used to get more foreign tourists than Thailand did, but then followed a 30 year civil war, and thing went downhill for the country. The war ended a few years ago, and things are back to normal, except that the whole tourism infrastructure need to be built from scratch, and that is a time consuming process even in any well governed country. There is a lot of heritage in the country, which if properly showcased, will attract lot of tourists, but for my taste now, I am just glad we didn't select it for our hostel reunion later in the year.

Distances are not very large but it can take a few hours to cover those given the narrow road and heavy traffic. We had two days to discover central part, before coming back to Colombo for slpl finals. Our first stop was at pinnewala elephant orphanage and it was quite a site to see some thirty odds elephants taking a river bath together. After a few more hours of arduous journey, we reached dambulla cave temples, which are some 2100 years old, and had some brilliantly carved out Buddhist statues in the caves. It was worth the long climb to see this historic place.

Our plans to see the sigiriya ancient city ruins were ruined because of the ongoing construction work on the road, and after waiting for an hour at one of those logjams, we decided to turn back to Kandy. Seeing the Buddha's tooth temple was nice, but again I got the feeling there was nothing in Kandy, despite it's beautiful location,  that I haven't seen better and well organized elsewhere before. This unfortunate feeling lasted for the rest of the trip, and while Sri Lanka is a cheap place to travel, I couldn't figure out why it shouldn't be so.

Our last few days were spent in Galle, the beach town in the south west part. This was the area hit by a devastating tsunami a few years back, and there are still reminders of that horrible day around. They have beautiful corals, but the weather was bad and sea was rough, so we spent most of the time inside the unawatuna beach resort, a rather non descript but none the less highly rated on trip advisor resort. It's time to go back now, and it will be while before I come back to Sri Lanka again. 

Colombo- dawn of the SLPL

After a fantabulous eight weeks exploring USA and Canada, I was back in Singapore in time for school opening. In the middle of house renovation wasn't a good time to take off for Sri Lanka, but I had planned this way in advance as Bhammer brothers were organizing this mini IPL here. Against all odds, Sandeep had worked tirelessly to make this event happen and I had to come to support him. 

Even though the crowds were conspicuous by their absence in th league matches, the production quality was fantastic and one couldn't say it was being organized the first time. Given all the main sponsors were essentially Indian companies, it was just like IPL with the Indian players being replaced by Pakistani ones. There were quite a few international stars and they played some really good quality cricket. In all, a fantastic first year, and no doubt this will scale new heights in forth coming years. I had a new level of respect for the organizers after closely watching how much effort goes into organizing some thing at this scale.

My parents flew in from india, and it was exciting for them to watch the matches from the VIP boxes. I got to meet some of the international cricketers after the matches which was exciting for me. This turned out to be a great highlight of the trip, as unfortunately the city didn't have much else to offer. Battling the local traffic congestion in rain to reach a barely maintained Gangaramya temple or the national museum wasn't worth the effort. If they are serious about promoting tourism here, it's difficult to find any impact just yet in Colombo.