8. The road to Dambulla

Well, a long, hot and eventful journey from Negombo to Dambulla yesterday.

(More on the events later from Helen.)

A day of hard and dusty driving but fortunately we have the benefit of powerful air-con in our people carrier.

May took many photos of the sights and scenes of daily life of as we drove ever onward into the Sri Lankan interior. I'll try to upload them to a flikr account if we have time in the schedule. Broadband is a bit erratic and very slow at times.

The Hotel Kandalama, where we are staying, is an unbelievable place. It is built into and around a high rocky, jungle-clad hill overlooking a huge tank (man-made reservoir – I say man-made but it was made by men living in a previous millennium so there is nothing artificial about it.)

The Kandalama

 Some background info on
The Hotel

The building is close to half a km long in total, winding it’s way round the hill, and has 6 floors but is as unlike a concrete monolithic edifice as it is possible to get. The jungle is never more than a few feet away at any point.

We woke this morning to find monkeys on one of our balconies.

Yes, we have two balconies. We booked standard rooms at all the hotels on our tour but Rebecca at Audley’s managed to get them all upgraded to deluxe rooms at no extra cost. She’s a marvel.

When we arrived at the Kandalama they only had one deluxe room available so they upgraded us again to a suite. At first May insisted that she and mum had the suite but decided on reflection that she preferred the panoramic lake view from the one deluxe room to the suite’s less exotic jungle view, so poor old Roshan and me had to settle for the suite.

We aren’t complaining. The Jacuzzi is huge.

There is a tri-nation cricket tournament going on at the moment and the hotel is the base for the Sri Lankan, Indian and New Zealand teams. We are constantly coming across people I’ve seen playing on Sky Sports.

It’s a strange, unworldly experience to keep bumping into strangers who look so familiar.

Today Sri Lanka are playing new Zealand, so the hotel is quieter but this evening there will be one happy group and one a little more downcast, I expect.
I was talking to one of the Sri Lankan coaches (an Aussie) last night and he’s very confident of a Lankan win. We’ll see later.

All the players and their support staff for all three teams seem a friendly bunch despite their great fame and the reverence they are universally held in, here in Sri Lanka, which is a country utterly besotted with cricket.
It’s a marvellous place.

Me and my new friend, Lasith Malinga.

Lasith Malinga