(Last Updated on Aug 28, 2024)

One random weekend, Pilla, Mehta & I were chatting on our group and we realized that we’d never gone on a trip together. So we started planning for the weekend of 15^th August. Potential destinations – anywhere in the southern half of India qualified as the three of us were sitting in Cochin, Hyderabad and Bangalore. After much debate, we zeroed in on Ooty, Pondicherry and Kodaikanal. And then, we went to Sri Lanka!

To start off, we decided to make this a proper backpacking trip – travelling like the locals, living with the locals – and we ended up seeing a major part of the island and spent only around 9000 bucks (excluding the flights, of course).

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Day 1 – Landing in Colombo

We took a flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka from Chennai (Spice Jet offers great deals to nearby countries – in fact my Dubai trip was also via Spice Jet). We got there in about an hour and as we landed, I could see the similarity of the landscape to Kerala – greenery, red-tile-roof houses and coconut trees.

We landed at the Bandaranaike International Airport at 7 AM and took a bus to the Colombo Fort bus stand which is about 35km away. On reaching the bus stand, we were relieved to find out that all the buses had their destinations written in three languages – Sinhalese, Tamil and English (two of which we could read).

Exploring temples in Colombo

We decided to check out the Gangaramaya Buddhist Temple in Colombo first and took an auto to reach there. Auto-rickshaws are called tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka (which makes sense, as it is much easier to say and also saves a few letters while writing!). Colombo looked quite like any city of South India (I found it resembling Trivandrum) but we could see many new skyscrapers making their way up to add to the skyline. The population was less for a city of its size and it was visible in terms of how less polluted it looked. And one thing that really appalled me was that the drivers gave way to pedestrians at zebra-crossings!

We reached the temple and at the entrance, we had to pay entry fees (all tourists need to pay). It was a nice tranquil place in the middle of the city with a stupa in the middle and many statues of Buddha all around.