Sri Lanka- A tuk tuk adventure

I’d read a couple of months previously that hiring a tuk tuk in Sri Lanka to travel around had become popular.

So I found a company that seemed pretty respectable as it ran as a social enterprise for the local community, tuktukrental.com.

They organised a Sri Lankan driving licence for me before we arrived and took you out for a driving lesson, which thankfully I passed!

The weather had looked a bit wet when we’d checked from Australia but other than the first day when it did pour it down, we followed the sunshine around the country.

As usual we had no itinerary and we taking recommendations from other travellers as we went, this has worked to varying levels during this trip but I think here we hit some amazing spots.

Negombo to Puttalam Peninsula

For some reason we always do too much on a first day anywhere and the journey from our starting point to the coast was no different. We headed off thinking we had about a 3 hour journey, with the very misguided understanding that there would be loads of places to stay as where we were headed was the main kiteboarding area, how wrong we were!

Although the tuk tuk speed limit is 40 kph you really average about 30-35, once you’ve dodged the dogs, cows, monkeys, potholes, and people just wandering all over the main road. This in itself wasn’t too much of an issue as we’d clocked up many miles in Indonesia in similar conditions, but the tuk tuk was less agile and the gears were really clunky.

We arrived at the northern tip after about a 7 hour drive and must admit I was thinking the whole idea had been a massive mistake, everywhere was closed up, it was getting late and the roads had turned into sand tracks, with holes so big I still don’t know how we didn’t tip the tuk tuk over.

We managed to get a bed for the night and as with everything it wasn’t so bad the next day, we ended up moving to a nice place and took the tuk on the beach to watch the wind surfers

We had a couple of days to settle into driving the tuk and even made a friend at the beach

Puttalam Peninsula to Anuradhapura

The nest stop was an historical capital city but now is a World Heritage Site famous for its well-preserved ruins of the ancient Sinhalese civilisation. Richard had read up about this and we made use of the tuk to travel around and see the ruins, and a few monkeys.

Anuradhapura to Dambulla

We made a short move to the town of Dambulla as there we 2 things we wanted to see near there.

Dambulla Royal Cave Temple and Golden Temple

We’ve seen so many Buddhist temples and statues this last few months but this complex was pretty amazing. You arrived at the complex, greeted by the Golden temple and a very over decorated museum

A short walk up a very steep hill and you reach the complex of 5 caves.

Each cave is fully painted with religious drawings and statues.

Sigiriya Rock

Also known as Lion Rock. According to the ancient Sri Lankan chronicle the Cūḷavaṃsa, this area was a large forest, then after storms and landslides it became a hill and was selected by King Kashyapa (AD 477–495) for his new capital. He built his palace on top of this rock and decorated its sides with colourful frescoes.

When you arrive you make your way through some remains of a formal garden and then there are a mixture of steel or stone steps to climb up the side to the top

Once on the top you can make out the perimeters of the buildings that once stood there, it’s so high and must have been fantastic.

The views of the jungle surrounding the rock was also as impressive.

Dambulla to Minneriya National Park

We hadn’t done an organised tour here yet and so glad we decided to pay the £50 each to get a jeep into this national park. We hadn’t seen any elephants yet, but on the way there we did spot one on the road.

We met our guide and we managed to avoid all the other tours and he took us to a stop where we could see a couple of elephants in the distance. This was quite good in itself, however, we drove for about another 20 mins and turned a corner to be met by a herd of about 50 elephants! We were still on our own so we had about 40 mins just to sit with them and watch them play and feed, there were even a couple of tiny baby ones

Could have stayed all day, the park was so pretty and they are such gentle giants.

Minneriya National Park to Polonnaruwa

Another day, another ancient city!

The ancient city of Polonnaruwa remains one of the best-planned archaeological relic cities in the country, and has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Again the compound was spread out over quite a large area so the tuk came in handy again to get us around

We even had a local monkey offer to drive!

Polonnaruwa to Arugam Bay

After all the historical sites we felt it was time to head to the beach, and settled on this little bay on the east coast. It had a feel of maybe an Australian town 30 years ago. There were lots of Europeans strutting their stuff along the beach and in the numerous cafes, made me feel very old!

But the beach had great waves to body surf in and the water was the perfect temperature.

Arugam bay to Ella

From beach to mountains we headed to Ella for one of Sri Lanka’s most famous journeys through to Kandy. Most people do this by train and it winds up through the tea plantations, but we’d decided to complete the route by road, if the tuk made it up the 2000ft climb to Nuwara Eliya.

Before we started we’d heard about a train from Ella that would take a 3 hour journey into the local hills that would give us a taste of the famous train route and got a ticket for £2 so seemed rude not to do it!

The journey to Kandy was pretty steep and I thought we might not make it in the tuk as it was sounding like it might fall apart at any minute. But we made it to the tea plantations and after the heat it was quite refreshing to have to cooler mountain air.