Istuti means thank you in Singhalese, on of the 2 main languages in Sri Lanka, the other one is Tamil. Thank you, thank you, thank you Sri Lanka for being amazing, your people, your nature, your food, your relaxed atmosphere. Our expectations were blown away (we just didn’t like the tourist attraction crazy prices). We did not feel ready to leave, but we will probably come back some day.
Today we had about a 3 hour drive to Unawatuna Beach. We stopped to see the famous stilt fisherman, but don’t get fooled, we were informed that the ones that we saw are just staged for tourism and the real ones are out at 5am. In order to take a picture you need to pay them but we decided to succumb to this tourist trap as we didn’t want to wake up at 5am for the same picture.
We then entered paradise. This beach is truly incredible; its clean, peaceful, with extremely turquoise water and red sand. It is considered one of the best 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, and we could see why.
We ate lunch at one of the places on the beach and appreciated the increase in tourism here because we got to enjoy kebabs and a great burger. We walked along the beach and then explored some of the side streets and managed to get a bit lost on our walk back to the hotel but still made it right on time for our quick drive to Fort Galle.
Fort Galle is a UNESCO world heritage site. This fort was built in 1588 by the Portugese. It was then fortified by the Dutch during the 17th century from 1649 onwards. This Fort offered much more than we expected for a fort.
You can still see the canons pivot points all around the walls.
It was on the beach with beautiful views especially of the sunset and was filled with a very neat mix of old and new. There were trendy restaurants, antique shops, tuk tuks driving and old walls and building everywhere.
This was another of several moments we have had in Sri Lanka where we cannot believe we are in Sri Lanka and in such a beautiful, modern and peaceful place.
I captured a bird stealing a yogurt cup.
We sat down on the fort walls to enjoy the beautiful sunset next to locals and some tourists as well. Beautiful place.
That evening we decided to splurge and have an extra nice dinner on the beach before heading to India. Eitan had a steak (out of fear of lack of red meat in India) and Sarah got shrimp (out of fear of not trusting any seafood in India).
The next morning we went back to Colombo for our flight to Delhi. We were very sad to leave Sri Lanka as it truly has been a highlight of our trip so far. This airport was efficient so we had the opportunity to enjoy a few hours in the hotel lounge before the flight. When we were boarding the next gate had a flight to Saudia Arabia and lets just say the population of people in that line would be TSAs worst nightmare!
We had about a 3 hour flight including our first Indian curry of the trip (we were happy we had already eaten at the lounge…) as it was truly disgusting.
Sri Lankan Airlines stewardess are dress with a beautiful peacock dress. Here you can see Sarah paying a lot of attention to the safety instructions and the guy on the other side was paying attention to Sarah (he thinks he is discrete).
By bye Sri Lanka!!!
When we arrived in Delhi we were surprised by how clean, calm and not crowded the airport was as we expected business the moment we entered India. But don’t worry it didn’t take long for some of our concerns about India to begin.
Bonus Pic Of The Day: Soccer in Mexico, Basketball in the US, Cricket in Sri Lanka. Even though Volleyball is the nation sport in Sri Lanka, it has been almost forgotten. Locals here play cricket in the parks. We have no idea how this sport works but we are looking forward to go a to game in India and challenge ourselves to last more than 15 minutes without committing boredom suicide.
WHERE IS NOODLE 