7/4/22
Our tuktuk ride took quite some considerable time!! The road was pretty and we watched the sunset across tea plantations and rice paddies. We also watched two families of elephants walk through the fields further away from the road. They also had baby elephants with them and it was beautiful to see elephants just freely roaming, even outside of a National Park! We stopped around halfway for kottu and pakora before heading on. We reached Jaffna pretty late!
8/4/22
My guest house was pretty glorious as they did home-cooked Sri Lankan food. I was determined to eat tasty and authentic local food and thought that by staying with a family, I should get that experience! I chilled the morning, and requested both lunch and dinner in the homestay. Lunch was delicious. A German guy was also eating so we had maybe four different curries between us including veggies, daal, crab curry and fish curry, along with ground red rice. I was in foodie heaven!! After lunch, I borrowed a bicycle from the owner and had a cycle around Jaffna.
I started my ride towards Nallur Temple after Dave’s recommendation. Since it was such a hot day though, I looked as it as I went by and headed straight to the famous ice cream parlour Rio’s to cool down. It was Sri Lanka’s acclaimed best ice-cream and had also won the award for being the best/biggest tax payer, which possibly suggests that many big businesses do not pay their share of taxes!! After an ice-cream, I headed towards the coast via a market, stopping at a big, yet intricate temple and a tiny, colourful mosque along the way.
The main market was pretty low key, although I wandered awhile and the fruit sellers street outside the bus station was lively. I grabbed a tea in a caf in the bus station and got a fried snack too. Then I went to collect my bike from beside the original market and headed on to the coast.
From Jaffna there is a thin peninsula that nearly reaches the first island. This peninsula is very pretty and I admired it awhile along with its brightly coloured boats before passing Jaffna’s fort, fishing port and many small villages on my way back to my homestay. It was not touristy at all – people were looking at me, smiling and waving. One little girl on the back of her mum’s bicycle double-taked me and then stopped the bicycle before turning off and then waved at me again. I returned home in time to blog before dinner. Then I watched some Netflix and rang my mum before bed.
9/4/22
Today I got up early and got a tuktuk to the bus station to then get a bus to the last island that is connected to the mainland before getting a boat to Delft Island. I got the government naval boat which is the easiest way for people to get to the island publicly. It took around an hour and I sat on the front of the boat enjoying the sun and the breeze. When I got off, they wanted my passport which I did not have but luckily they were happy enough with a photo of it. I set off towards a cafe, with a tuktuk or two pursuing me, trying to take me on a tour. Eventually, I agreed to a tour of five or six ‘sights’, including a really old tree, a ‘growing’ rock, some wild horses brought by the Dutch, a Fort and a beach. The roads were not really roads and apparently there were only fifteen tuktuks on the island and a few 4x4s, along with motorbikes on the island. We bumped along dusty dirt roads to see this big hollow tree, before heading to see the horses in a large plain. Interestingly, part of this plain were made of large pieces of rocky coral. Apparently, the island used to be completely submerged in the ocean.
After the horses, we headed to the growing rock which was in fact just a rock with a ribbon round it. Apparently it had got bigger over the past twenty years, but no tourist would ever know for sure!! I got a Milo (chocolate milk) and a muffin from the local kiosk before we headed on. Next we went to the old Dutch Fort. It was falling down a little, but I was surprised to see that the walls were also made of coral rock. Afterwards we stopped by the beach, with its beautiful white sands and pristine turquoise waters. Sadly for me, there were around ten Sri Lankan men in their twenties there on an otherwise deserted beach and I felt they greeted me with a little too much enthusiasm, so I decided not to swim there. I got back in the tuktuk and headed to the port. I had done the whole island tour in less than two hours, leaving me with four hours to twiddle my thumbs with no nice cafe available to me, until the bus came at 15.00. I tried to see if there were any earlier boats and the officer in the port reckoned I could try my luck around 13.00 on a private tourist boat. I thanked him and set off round the coast on a walk to pass another two hours.
It was quite a nice walk in the end! I passed through small hamlets with a few houses and a harbour absolutely packed out with small, colourful, wooden boats. As I passed through one hamlet, three dogs started barking at me. I looked round for locals and the dogs were also barking at them. They told the dogs off and continued walking. I did the same. I stopped by a forgotten white church and sat in the shade of a tree overlooking the ocean. I read my book awhile before going paddling. The sky was very moody and dark in contrast with the clear turquoise ocean. After my paddle, I headed back to the port. On my way, I walked through an open area with loud music and a large group of people. A little further away was a smaller group of boys with palm leaves. As I walked along to the music’s beat, I felt as if I was starring in a film about me. I stopped to ask the boys what was going on. One of them spoke and said it was for a festival. It later became apparent that it was for Easter – I had completely forgotten!!
I made it back to the port for 13.00 in time to see a tour group get on a boat. The port official asked the guide for me, before waving me through. I thanked the guide before getting aboard. I introduced myself and explained my story! It turns out they were all German and were touring Sri Lanka for an action packed two weeks (with no beach days whatsoever)! The guide explained that they were heading to another island before the mainland to see some temples and I could either join them or get off at the harbour and get another boat – since it was closer to the mainland there would be more boats going back there more regularly. Three girls in the German squad were enthusiastic that I joined them, which was sweet, and I also quite fancied the temples since I was in no particular rush to be back, so we did first a Buddhist temple and then a Hindu temple.
The Buddhist temple had a very cute puppy in and many Hindu girls who wanted selfies with me. The guide told the group about the temple, but since my German is so rubbish, I couldn’t understand at all, so just wandered about and admired the brightly coloured hand painted walls inside the temple as well as petting the dog. Afterwards, we walked along the road to the Hindu temple. I grabbed an ice cream on the road. The temple was very tall, one that looks as if its been piled as high as anyone could reach, and to frame the temple, it had a model elephant either side of the entrance. We couldn’t go inside the main temple since there was a prayer going on, but we went inside the inner courtyard to find some men smashing coconuts. The crowd were going wild! Apparently the coconut smashing is a kind of omen. If you make a wish/request and you smash the coconut first time, you should have good luck and your wish should come true eventually, but if you do not, it is not good.
When we returned to the boat, the captain was ready to unmoor us. We headed back to the mainland, arriving at the same time as the naval boat from Delft! What a day! I raced to get on the bus back to Jaffna town, getting a space on the stairwell just before it left. The driver was pretty crazy and we hurtled along the narrow lanes, with sea on both sides at breakneck pace, with the driver using the horn indicating people should get out of the way instead of ever using the break. The ticket man and two other men were in the stairwell along side me. It was quite the roller-coaster since we wereboth going at pace and the roads were not smooth! I got chatting to one of the guys in the stairwell, Nishan, who commutes to the island everyday. He leaves his house around 4am to get the 7am boat to be at work for 8am. Then he gets the boat back again at 3pm and arrives home at 6pm!! Madness!! I got off the bus just before the bus station because it was so busy and Nishan got off too. He asked me what my plans were and I said I wanted a cup of tea. He seemed far more concerned about my stomach than I am and made sure we went to a place sufficiently ‘sanitary’. We had tea and chatted and he invited me to hi family home for dinner. I was tired, but in the end, I decided that it was too good an opportunity to ass up on. He dropped me home on his bike, I showered and then we headed over to his family house. On the way there was pretty countryside and temples as well as a drunkard lying in the road. One of Nishan’s friends saw us as we passed the drunk!
When we arrived, Nishan went to shower and I sat around with his sisters while his mum made tea for me. Then when Nishan was ready we headed to the most northerly point of Sri Lanka, Saint Pedro, and the closest point to India. Afterwards we had dinner and I saw their baby cow and their two dogs which barked A LOT! Then I got a lift home and slept.
10/4/22
I had a traditional breakfast of crab curry and daal with crushed red rice before Nishan came to meet me on a bike. We were going to tour around the rest of Jaffna today. We started by heading to a beach on the northern side. It was a bit of a drive, but I drove for the novelty (it has been awhile since driving in Thailand), and Nishan directed me. We parked up and there were military sat at the beach. They were acting as both security and lifeguards, which bemused me as most Sri Lankans cannot swim. Apparently they were Navy and it is a requirement for Navy members to be able to swim… Makes sense! We walked along and a group of kids asked for a selfie. I thought it would be one group photo, but no no!! They all wanted separate photos with me and passed the one pair of sunglasses they had round to each person to pose with me. I felt a little famous!!
Afterwards, we went in search of tea. Nishan found a place which did chana poori as well as tea so we had both before stopping at a couple of Hindu temples including Nallur before heading to the cinema to see a new Bollywood film, ‘RRR’. It was based on Indians revolting against British rule and also featured a story on a ‘living god’, a girl that is selected and taken from her village to live either in a temple or in this case in a grand house and is prayed to and treated as a god until the day she gets her period. This is still practiced in Hindu faith today and was interesting to see. I laughed a lot at the overplayed Bollywood drama and thoroughly enjoyed the film! Afterwards, I went to book my night bus dove myself home on Nishan’s bike before saying bye and heading off to shower, pack and blog.
At 21.30, I was escorted by the owners dad to the bus stop to ensure the correct night bus was waved down. Not long after 22.00, the bus arrived and my rucksack was stowed and I thanked the guy and scrambled on. I was near the front in the ‘womens’ section. We stopped a couple of times and I got a tea and snacks. The rain poured on the road down to Colombo!! I tried to sleep!
wanderingwelshie travels 