Another year, another country

We have now left India, and entered another country on our itinerary, and it's just hit us that we are actually travelling round the world, not just round India.  It's so exciting to be in a new place with the prospect of discovering how it works and what it's like. 

01 The aftermath of the first lunch in Negombo

We took a flight from Trivandrum airport and everything went amazingly smoothly.  We left our hotel in Trivandrum at 7.30am and were swimming in the sea in Sri Lanka at 12.30!  The Silver Sands hotel was the only budget hotel mentioned in Negombo (a beach resort just north of the airport where we were headed for our first night) in our very small pocket guidebook (which we decided would do us as we're only here for 2 weeks) so we decided to give it a go.  We weren't sure what to expect but we needn't have worried because it was absolutely lovely, right on the beach front, really clean, a large private seating area outside our room, a massive mosquito net over the bed, and all for just over 5 pounds.  So our immediate impressions of Sri Lanka were good.  After dumping our bags the first thing we did was grin at each other in excitement because it all seemed so good, and then run in the sea for a pre-lunch swim. 

02 Street cricket on New Year's Day

Lunch was absolutely wonderful as well.  We both went for varieties of the national dish, known as curry rice, a name which belies its variety and size.  I went for prawn and Tim had fish, and with those we also got 4 bowls of vegetable curries between us, a mountain of rice and some pappad (poppadums to you and I).  The vegetables were sweet potato curry, dry-cooked aubergine with pineapple, okra in a creamy curry, and a very dry but absolutely amazing concoction of what we think was mainly grated coconut flavoured heavily with lemon.  I think we're going to like the food here, and I also think we're going to quickly lose our carefully cultivated beach bodies.... :-)

After lunch we started to go for a walk but instead found a shop hiring out bikes so took those instead, on a whim, and went riding round a virtually deserted (because New Year's Day is a national holiday) Negombo for a couple of hours.  There wasn't very much to see because everything was closed and it's a fairly small place anyway, but it was very pleasant to be on the bikes and have a little explore.  

03 Negombo beach

In the evening we tried to plan our time for the next 2 weeks, trying to see as much as possible whilst appreciating that 2 weeks isn't very long and we can't possibly see everything.  Tune in over the next fortnight to see how our plan develops.  (R)