Sigiriya, Sri Lanka

We decided to take a taxi from Negombo to Sigiriya. It was about £40—much more expensive than the bus, but it would take only two and a half hours instead of five and be air-conditioned instead of unbearably hot.

As we were packing up to leave, an English guy from our hostel room, Alex, mentioned that he and his German friend, Rafael, were about to take the bus to the same destination. We arranged for them to join us in the taxi and split the cost, bringing it down to just £10 per person. The journey flew by as we chatted about our travels, shared recommendations, and—once again—added even more destinations to our ever-growing list of places to visit!

Alex and Rafael were staying at a different hostel, so we dropped them off along the way. Our hostel in Sigiriya is nestled in the jungle, which means it’s always slightly damp, and we seem to get a lot of tiny frogs in the bathroom. Luckily, they’re cute, so we don’t mind too much! However, we didn’t feel like spending the afternoon in a damp room, so we headed into Sigiriya to explore.

First, we grabbed lunch at a restaurant with a precarious-looking balcony overlooking the road. We decided to try kottu—a dish made of chopped roti mixed with scrambled egg, onions, and chilies. It was tasty, though not really to my liking, so I ended up sharing my leftovers with a very friendly (and very pregnant) cat.

Grace, on the other hand, loved it, and it’s quickly becoming one of her go-to meals here!

After lunch, we explored the town, though it didn’t take long since it’s mostly just a handful of shops and restaurants. We then decided to take a walk around the local lake.

The main attraction here is climbing Lion’s Rock, a massive, vertical rock formation that supposedly resembles a lion’s head. You could see it clearly from the lake, and the walk was lovely—until it started raining about halfway around. It’s currently the rainy season in northern Sri Lanka, and it’s definitely living up to its name!

We ordered a tuk-tuk and took shelter under a small coconut stall while we waited. We bought a coconut to share, and the stall owner, though he didn’t speak any English, kept bringing us different foods to try. When it came time to pay, our coconut cost Rs 300, but we only had a Rs 1000 note (about £2.60). He looked slightly panicked about not having change, so we told him to keep the whole amount. His face lit up—he beamed, shook both our hands, and kept offering us even more free food.

Eventually, we managed to say our goodbyes and hopped into our tuk-tuk, heading back to the hostel.

In the late afternoon, we joined the sunset hike organized by our hostel. It took us up to a small nearby viewpoint overlooking the town, with a great view of Lion’s Rock. The hike was relatively easy and didn’t take long, so we had plenty of time before sunset to chat with the others from our hostel and make some new friends.

Unfortunately, thick clouds blocked the sun, so we didn’t get much of a sunset, but it was still a great experience. Once we got back to the hostel, we carried on socializing over a few drinks.

We were supposed to be having an early night ready to get up at 4am for the sunrise hike up lions rock, however we didn’t quite manage that, due to the heavy rain the group of people at the hostel ended up not going out clubbing and ended up doing karaoke at the hostel instead, which was actually super fun as everyone had to do songs that were big in all of Europe so everyone knew them, so lots of fun throwbacks, I’ll spare you any videos here though!

We eventually left the group around midnight, popped in some earplugs, and tried to get a few hours of sleep before our early wake-up.

We eventually left the group around midnight, popped in some earplugs, and tried to get a few hours of sleep before our early wake-up.

We woke up at 4 a.m., absolutely knackered, and got ready—only to be told the hike had been canceled due to heavy rain overnight. With no reason to stay up, we happily went back to bed.

A few hours later, at 9 a.m., we got up again and headed out for an elephant safari. This region of Sri Lanka has the largest population of wild elephants, and our hostel offered a safari to a nearby national park. A Dutch couple we met the night before, V and Brian, had booked a four-person jeep and asked if we wanted to join them, which would bring the cost down to £20 each.

We weren’t too confident we’d actually see any elephants for that price, but since we didn’t have much else planned, we decided to give it a go. Turns out, we completely underestimated just how many elephants were in the area—finding them was no challenge at all! Every five to ten minutes, we’d come across another herd. They were completely unfazed by the jeeps, so much so that we often had to keep reversing as they got a little too close for comfort!

It was incredible to be so close to elephants in their natural habitat, especially watching the baby elephants play. However, at one point, we turned a corner and suddenly came face-to-face with a juvenile male, startling him. His ears flared wide, and he took a step back. We immediately told our driver to move us away, but he waved it off, saying it was fine. That was until the elephant started stomping his front foot and making warning noises—at which point, our driver quickly changed his mind and backed us up in a hurry!

It was raining heavily on and off throughout the 4 hour safari and we ended up soaked, especially when the guide kept getting us out of the jeep to climb look out points as if the elephants weren’t right next of us most of the time anyway.

One silver lining of the rain was that we got to see the elephants splashing around in the water and spraying mud over themselves, which was amazing to watch. We could have stayed for hours, but eventually, it was time to head back.

We attempted to climb Lion’s Rock again in the afternoon, as the weather forecast showed a clear window for two hours. After a tuk-tuk ride to the entrance, we approached the ticket seller, who warned us that heavy rain would start in five minutes. He said he’d sell us a ticket if we still wanted one, but climbing in the rain would be dangerous.

Skeptical, we checked multiple weather apps, all of which showed the rain would hold off. We asked him again if he was sure, and how he knew—and he simply replied, “I know.” Sure enough, as if on cue, the heavens opened moments later, drenching us completely as we hurried back to the tuk-tuk. We tried again the next morning but again it was raining so we decided to cut our losses and move on to the next place early.

It was a bit frustrating not to be able to do the main hike we came here for, but that’s the risk of visiting during the rainy season. That said, getting up close to wild elephants feels like a pretty great consolation prize!

Tomorrow we are heading to Anuradhapura, it’s further north so we’ll probably get much more rain, but it is supposed to be a less touristy safari lace than the parks down south and a good place to see leopards, I’ll tell you all about it soon!

love, Alice x

Negombo, Sri Lanka

After a four-hour flight, we arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and quickly hopped into a PickMe car (Sri Lanka’s equivalent of Uber) to head to our hostel for the night in the nearby fishing village of Negombo. Our taxi driver was incredibly friendly and gave us plenty of recommendations for places to visit, foods to try, and things to do during our stay.

So far, everyone we’ve met in Sri Lanka has been just as warm and helpful, which has been lovely. After our two-week tour of India in November, we were slightly concerned that the culture here might be similar to Rajasthan, where we experienced a lot of photo requests, grabbing, and an overall sense of insecurity as women alone at night. However, Sri Lanka has felt much more welcoming, with a relaxed and peaceful vibe.

The light was fading as we arrived, so after dropping our bags at the hostel, we headed to the beach to watch the sunset. We found a nice beach bar and restaurant for dinner, where the owner struck up a conversation with us. He started by asking about our flight, joking that we were too pale to have been here for a week but not sunburnt enough to have been here for a few days—so we must have just arrived. We couldn’t fault his logic! As we ate, he shared some recommendations with us, making for a lovely first evening. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel.

We’ve definitely jumped in at the deep end with our hostel, opting for a mixed dorm right away—forgetting that hostels near airports are always noisy, with people coming and going at all hours for their flights. We didn’t get the best night’s sleep, but at least everyone is friendly and chatty.

It also takes some getting used to when strangers casually change into their pajamas while chatting with you, but we’re already back in the thick of hostel life!

There isn’t a lot to do in Negombo—it’s mostly a sleepy beach town. However, we saw a Dutch fort listed as a point of interest, so we decided to take a tuk-tuk and check it out.

The only remaining part of the fort is a small bell tower, so there wasn’t much to see. But as we wandered around, we couldn’t help but notice—mostly by smell—that something fishy was going on.

We came across a vast area where fishermen bring in their catch to dry in the sun. One of the workers, who was turning the fish, noticed us taking photos and came over to chat. He kindly gave us a tour, showing us the different types of fish being dried, the area where they gut and salt them in barrels, and the different sections where they’re laid out to dry. It was fascinating to see the process up close, and we gave him a tip at the end to thank him for his time.

By midday it was again humid and hot, around 33°c so after a dragged out lunch in an air conditioned cafe we headed to the beach and sat in the shade of a coconut tree. We had a nice chat with a looky looky woman who tried to sell us some dresses and then gave up and just sat chatting to us for half an hour instead, claiming it was ‘too hot for sell sell sell today’.

By three pm we were starting to feel like dried up salty fish ourselves, so we decided to leave the shade in search of a beach cafe. After 5 minutes walking we were drenched in sweat, arriving in a cafe where the waiter sat us in the shade and immediately brought a big bottle of water and a pint if ice cubes without being asked. Apparently I had a face like a ‘red hot curry’. The same dish we later ate there for dinner!

That’s about all we got up to a in Negombo, next we’re off to Sigiriya, if we haven’t melted first. I will tell you all about it soon,

love, Alice x

Dohar, Qatar

So Grace and I are off backpacking again, the plan was to start in Sri Lanka, but looking at flights the only affordable ones seemed to have a 18 hour stop over in Dohar Qatar, after some digging I found out that the Qatar government, in an attempt to encourage tourism, will pay for you to stay in a 4* hotel if you leave the airport and stay in Dohar city. I had a Google to make sure it was safe and there were actually things to do and decided why not make it two days? Several months later, here we are, jet lagged in a hotel in Dohar.

Our first night was spent getting to the hotel and then eating tacos the size of plates in an American hotel bar, which wasn’t a super Qatar experience. We could have been anywhere in the world except for a sign on the door that said Qatar women weren’t allowed in unattended and not at all after 5pm, which felt very surreal.

The next morning after a long sleep we went out and saw some of Dohar. We started by walking around Souq Waqif, a market for traditional clothing, handicrafts, spices & perfumes. It was pleasant to walk around and have a nose in all of the shops, we probably would have ended up buying some of the pretty hand made bits if we didn’t have to carry them around with us for the next 3 months. We also saw the very popular sculpture of a massive thumb, which seemed to have a crowd of people having photos giving a thumbs up infront of it.

One cool thing we also stumbled upon which is probably quite unique to Qatar, was people selling falcons. Apparently hunting with falcons here is still very popular and was saw several shops selling them, one let me get a photo holding one for $1.

Next we wandered along Al Corniche, the promenade by the sea front, and saw lots of wooden boats and the football world cup photo point, we also said hello to some camels in stables… or whatever the camel equivalent of a stable is…

Next we visited the museum of islamic art, which had a lot of cool textiles, pottery and books and the most flash diamond necklace I’ve ever seen.

After we finished in the museum we headed back to Souq Waqif for lunch, we were seated on a table next to three Qatari men in their thirties. They ordered huge amounts of food and one of them fed some extra to a cat and then suddenly we were surrounded by about 5 cats and me and Grace were laughing at them trying to shoo the cats away. We ended up chatting to them and asking about the dishes they were eating and they offered to order us some, we said we wouldn’t eat it all so they just offered us some of theirs and we offered them back some of ours, a mushy meat spread on bread. We continued chatting and they seem surprised we were just visiting Dohar and wasn’t here for work and we’re asking us about the UK and what we did for work etc, one of them was an Arabic teacher and taught us how to say hello (As-salamu alaykum) and thank you (Shukran) in Arabic. We were talking for around 20mins mostly in broken English then at one point on of the men rang a friend who spoke good English and his friend translated for us that they had a very nice time talking to us and we’re glad we liked Qatar and that they were paying for our lunch. We were slightly apprehensive about this, wondering if we had misjudged the situation and been over friendly and if we were about to owe them something in return. But when they had finished they paid our bill despite our protests, wished us a pleasant stay in Qatar and left. They had just been kind and paid for us with no strings attached, and they say there is no such thing as a free lunch!

It started to get warm in the afternoon, despite being winter and the coldest season in Qatar it was still 27°c (I’m glad we’re here in winter as it gets up to 50°c in summer!) shops close between 1-3pm so we headed back to our hotel and started doing some planning for our time in Sri Lanka.

In the evening we headed to Dohar food festival a it was the last day of a huge week long event in one of the parks in the new part of town, it was cool to see all the sky scrapers there.

There were stalls with food from all over the world but we headed for the middle eastern section and tried several dishes. First was a dish called Majboos, which was flavoured pilau rice with fried chicken on top covered with a spicy sauce.

Next up was some Palestinian tacos, which we did get explained to us but I now can’t remember what they were composed of, they were nice but nothing special. But the hibiscus drink we had with them was very nice.

Disappointingly we were already quite full after these dishes so the plan was to just get some water from a very quiet vegetarian stall and then head home. However, after a slight misunderstanding when pointing to water, we ended up with some samosas that were situated next to the water. Luckily these ended up being the tastiest dish of the night.

Our second day in Qatar was a lot less packed, we had a bit of a lay in and we went for breakfast in the market at 11am but this was way past breakfast according to our waiter so we ended up panic ordering a curry and bread off of the lunch menu. It’s not like we’re going to spend the next three weeks in Sri Lanka eating curry.

it was very tasty though, we only ordered one as the portions here are so big, we still had leftovers even through we were sharing it! It only cost £4.13 for the meal and two drinks!

After our early lunch had a walk round the market to try and find some post cards, at this point my body decided to try and reignite its favourite pastime while we’re traveling of making me puke in beautiful places. Luckily I managed to hold it together around the market, although there were some close calls in some very smelly parts where mice, rabbits and birds were being sold in cages. But on the walk back a strong waft of heated urine proofed to much for me to hold it in and I puked in a bush. I thought being in a country for just two days would mean I would be safe from having vomited there but apparently my body is keen to make sure no new land goes unclaimed, god I hate having Crohn’s Disease sometimes.

We made a hasty retreat back to the hotel scared about being arrested under public indecency charges of some sort.

Once my stomach had stoped cramping we decided to make the most of our last afternoon here by going to a pool bar. This also didn’t quite go to plan, we didn’t realise until we entered the pool bar that it was attached to the Ritz hotel and we had to pay £20 per person to use the sun loungers. But we paid up and found a nice spot facing the sea, only for the sun to disappear and the wind to pick up 5 minutes later. So the rest of the afternoon we spent under towels to keep warm, refusing to leave the beds we had just paid a day’s budget for. At least we got to finish most of our Sri Lanka planning!

For our last evening we headed back to the market and picked up some post cards to send home and then shared a chicken shawarma.

Tomorrow were up early to catch out flight to Sri Lanka, I’ll tell you more about it soon.

Lots of love,

Alice x