A visit of Colombo and Kandy

We land at 4.30am at the Colombo airport. It’s already very hot and humid. A few hundreds of people are waiting and shouting right outside. It’s packed, we need to elbow our way out. We start bargaining straight away with a few cab drivers and jump into a taxi to go the hotel where we rest for a few hours.

Later, we take a couple of buses to Colombo. What an introduction to Sri Lankan way of driving. Easy to understand why our guide book highly recommends avoiding taking buses. It’s kinda like a mix of Balinese and Thai traffic… but worse. Add to that music blasting through the speakers and drivers honking non-stop, it’s quite hectic!
To be honest, we didn’t really like Colombo: very polluted, noisy, and not that beautiful. We left the next day for Kandy. The train ride is known to be amazing and we can confirm (except maybe the few times we fell asleep)

Kandy, known as the “hills capital of Sri Lanka, is a bit quieter even though we found it doesn’t really stand up to its reputation. We couldn’t go for a walk around the lake without having tens of tuck-tuck drivers honking to get our attention or people trying to sell us something.
Kandy is famous in the Buddhism world as it holds one of Buddha’s tooth in a temple. They only show it every seven years and well… we were 2 years early.

We booked a tour to the cultural triangle as travelling by bus in this area seems really difficult.

Btw, if you’re ever in Kandy, make sure you eat at the Kandyan Muslim Hotel. Their Kottu rotis and Kabul rotis are succulent!