*This Post originally appeared on my now defunct lifestyle blog Style and Chocolates. This blog post has a few modifications to the text and is being transferred here permanently.
I've always been fascinated by the thought of Sri Lanka. If you’re
a Disney or Rudyard Kipling fan, you would know that The Jungle Book was set in
the jungles of Sri Lanka! Our tour also included a safari to one of the National
parks so I was super excited for that! I’ll be posting some photos, as well as
anecdotes and highlights of the places we visited.
Warning : This is a VERY long post with lots and
lots of photos!
Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage
I think this site has to be one of my favorites!
When I read the itinerary, the elephant orphanage didn’t seem that exciting to
me because I felt like I've already seen so many elephants in my lifetime. I
didn't really see anything unusual hen reading about the place's proile. Well I was wrong because the sight
we saw was pretty incredible!
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| Eating Time! |
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The Baby Elephants. Andy and Alex on their way to feeding time.
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First, we had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the
river - that scene in itself was already gorgeous and we saw one or two
elephants from afar drinking water. Then we were taken to the feeding area. We
saw two baby elephants named Andy and Alex. They were too adorable! All of a
sudden we hear a commotion and then we see all the elephants lining up and then they all started running towards the river. It was bath time!
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| The elephants hustling towards the river |
We followed their trail of uh, dung and came to
the river. The scene that we saw when we got to the river was amazing!
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| Bath time for the elephants! |
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| Gorgeous View. |
Speaking of dung…the pathway that we passed on
the way to the river was a street filled with all sorts of touristy shops. Most
of the shops there sold paper made from elephant poop! It was pretty
funny actually seeing all these signs. At least they found some good use out of
it! I didn’t buy any but I wonder if they smell? Would you guys buy poo paper?
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| They make good use out of their droppings! |
Indian Ocean
Living in a tropical country with 7,107 islands,
you would think I’m used to the beach and bodies of water. The thing is though,
the places I live and go to in my country are surrounded by relatively calm
seas so seeing the enormous Indian Ocean was kind of new and somewhat fascinating.
We stayed in several hotels that were situated by it and also visited some
sights and restaurants near it. The sight of the ginormous waves crashing to
the shore was pretty amazing. A bit scary to watch too!
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| Beachfront of our hotel in Negombo. |
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| The shore was so wide! |
If you guys remember, Sri Lanka was one of the
countries badly affected by the 2004 Tsunami.
The side of the coast where we stayed and toured at were the places that
were hit. You can still see evidence of the disaster like ruined houses, mass
graves and memorials. But overall, you can see that they’ve made a remarkable
recovery. Life for them, still goes on and it’s amazing to see such resilience
to calamities like it.
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| Everyday life of Sri Lankan fishermen |
This particular area of the country is touted as
the “English Countryside” of Sri Lanka. To get there, we had to drive through
twisty mountains at night. Before reaching Nuwara Eliya, we made a stop at a lookout point
that showed us a view of Kandy, the second largest city in Sri Lanka. Once we
arrived at Nuwara Eliya, we were surprised to find that it was really cold! Sri
Lanka is a really hot and tropical country so it was such a nice surprise to
have cooler weather, even for just a night.
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| On the way to Nuwara Eliya, we passed by a lookout point that overlooked a large city, Kandy |
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| View of Kandy |
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| Colonial buildings in Nuwara Eliya |
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| Creepy looking mist/fog in Nuwara Eliya |
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| A haunted looking house in Nuwara Eliya |
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| Waterfalls by the side of the rode, seen on the way out from Nuwara Eliya |
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| Some Tea plantations seen on drive to Nuwara Eliya |
The one thing I was most excited about was going on
a safari at the Yala National Park! It is the second biggest national park in
Sri Lanka. It’s a jungle where wild animals roam free but at the same time a
wildlife sanctuary.
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| Jungle scenery |
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| Pumba and his family crossing the dusty road behind us. |
I don’t think I’ve ever been to a proper safari
before (do the ones in Bangkok count?) And it’s my dream one day to do one in
Africa. For now, traversing through the jungles that inspired Rudyard Kipling
was more than enough and hopefully a teaser to an African safari that I want to
go to in the future.
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| A deer among the trees |
The thing with safaris though is that you are never
sure what animals you see or if you even see any at all. That’s part of the
whole excitement! You ride a huge jeep and drive through the dusty orange
pathways and keep a lookout for the jungle dwellers. The most elusive and most sought
out animal is the leopard. We were not guaranteed that we would see one but
driver and tour guide did their best. They had radios and communicated with
other drivers and guides as they all helped each other out with news if ever there
was a sighting. There were a lot of false alarms and we got our hopes up so
many times, but finally, finally! Our driver gestured to us excitedly and in
one of the stops we saw it. The leopard was coming out from the trees and it
was facing us for literally 5 seconds before it turned and started to walk
away. And guess what, the leopard actually turned to look back for a split
second and I swear we made eye contact! (my sister also swears it too) We were
too stunned and it happened so quickly that we did not even have time to take a
photo. Oh well. Experiencing it was awesome enough already.
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| A bird hitching a ride with one of the water buffalos |
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| A crocodile snapping it's jaws |
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| Why did the peacock cross the road? Why to get to the other side of course! har,har |
Kosgoda Beach
One of our stops on the last day was a trip to Kosgoda
beach. It is a prime turtle nesting site. The Kosgoda Sea Turtle conservation
Project monitors the turtle activity and plays a big role in preserving these
endangered animals. We were given a mini tour, where we saw the egg, the
hatching site and finally the little pools that had hundreds and hundreds of
baby turtles ( one pool had what they called the Happy birthday Turtle because
they were just a day old!) and some other pools held individual older and some
injured turtles. They usually release the sea turtles to sea after they are 4
days old.
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| Sea turtle eggs |
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| The Happy Birthday turtles |
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| This is how the turtles look when they're all grown up |
Love that there are places like these and people
who want to help out. It’s sad to know that sea turtles are endangered. Hope we
can all help out in some way to more projects like this. Click HERE for their
website to know more about the Conservation Project.
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| Baby turtles! |
We also drove around and Galle, an old town
preserved from the Dutch Era. We visited some temples that had a couple of
monkeys lurking about. One important sight is the Sigiraya Rock Fortress. If
you go up a thousand steps you can see that the entrance is sort of guarded by
huge Lions. Unfortunately we did not get to see this as we didn’t make the trek
up. The scenery around it was gorgeous though and the Rock Fortress looked
colossal even from afar. I must come back one day and conquer those steps!
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| Sigiraya Rock Fortress |
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| Sigiraya Rock Fortress |
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| Dal, one of the most common dishes. These are like yellow colored lentils |
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| The resident monkey at Dambulla temple, grabbing a bite to eat |
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| What pepper plants look like. I've never seen these before! |
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| Saw some porcupines at the side of the road! So cute! |
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| One of the most fantastic and unusual hotel entrances/foyers I've ever seen! |
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| Amazing foyer of the Jetwing lighthouse Hotel. |
We also went to a Spice garden. It was one of my
favorite stops on the tour and I got to buy some fresh nutmeg and vanilla
extract, it smelled so good and as so potent!
Sri Lanka is a gorgeous country and more people
should go and visit it! There are still so many hidden gems that I have not
discovered. There are so many aspects of it that I haven’t found in other
countries. For example, they have some really good cashew nuts! So juicy, chewy
and milky! Driving down the roads in the countryside, you’re bound to run into
a stand that sells cashew!
Sri Lanka is also rich in mineral resources like
gemstones. Beryls, topazes and sapphires are naturally found here so if you are
a gemstone lover, then you should go!
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| A lovely Sri Lankan scenery. |
All in all it was a lovely vacation. I
hope to be back to go up Sigiraya Rock Fortress and see the enormous lion paws.
Oh and to get more cashew nuts! They were so darn good!
All photos in this post are personal
photos of nofiltertravel.blogspot.com. If you want to use them or borrow
them in any way, please contact me first! My email add:
nofiltertravel@gmail.com. If you can't be bothered to send me an email and
still want to use my photos, then please do credit them and link back to this
blog. Thanks!
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