Our time in Sri Lanka was drawing to a close and though we had been enjoying our lazy lifestyle by the beach, we wanted to make sure we saw a little more of the country before leaving.
After some contemplation we decided to make our way to Kandy, a mountainous city situated in central Sri Lanka. It would have been great to cycle there, but we decided, due to the amount of luggage we had and limited time, that the best option for us would be to take the few hours bus ride from Colombo (the capital). We contacted the people we had stayed with when first arriving (the couple who also ran a Montessori nursery from their property), and they were happy to look after our bikes and some belongings for the week while we went inland.
Now all we had to do was to cycle back from Weligama to Colombo.
On our first day of riding there was little wind and the view seemed to pass by quickly, especially the first part of our journey to the city of Galle. The relaxation of the beach fell away as we passed through more built up areas – our bodies beginning to feel pumped once again.
We took the day at a slow easy place, stopping for lunch and for Miki to take the odd video clip. As dusk arrived we began looking for a camp spot, searching along beaches as we had on our journey south. It took a little while to find a deserted and suitable place to set up, tiredness and irritation setting in as tyres got stuck in the sand. Luckily, the second part of the beach we’d stumbled upon had the ideal spot. Now we just had to drag our bikes and luggage to it!
After finally lowering bikes to the floor and beginning to unpack our camping gear, we were approached by a couple of German girls who had watched us pass by the bar they were in. Our feat had looked so intense that they had taken pity on us, arriving to our aid with a wonderful gift of a coconut each!
The events of our evening, it turned out, were not quite over. As we sat eating dinner in the doorway of our tent, exhausted but relaxed, we were approached by a couple of security guards from a nearby military site. They came to warn us not to fly our drone over the area anymore. “We don’t have a drone” was our immediate response, which was met with a large amount of scepticism. Ok, they said, but don’t fly it anymore. They left us feeling rather exasperated after continuing to disbelieve our claims we didn’t have a drone, only to return around 20 minutes later to apologise, having found the real culprit sitting at one of the bars along the beach.
Day two was a little less relaxed as we planned to reach Colombo and be on a bus to Kandy before the day was out. From our camp we were around 100km from Colombo. With this mission in mind, little wind and a flat road, I put my head down (leading the way for this first leg of the journey) and pushed on. The first 25km passed in about an hour, but from there our pace slowed a little to a more steady speed. We stopped every couple of hours for food breaks, but never for too long, always keeping an eye on the clock.
The ride became more a battle of endurance, less an enjoyable coast by the sea, as the roads got busier and the big city drew nearer. And then, we were there. The final hill climbed and we were pulling back into the familiar accommodation Montessori school on the outskirts of Colombo. It was just before 4pm.
We were met with welcoming kindness, given a place to store our bikes and access to a room to allow us to wash and change. All of this done and our bags repacked for a week without camping or cycling, we reached the bus stop by 5:10pm. The bus (of course after all of this rush) was late, and pulled into the stop 50 minutes later.
Then the final part of our endurance began. The vehicle was overcrowded, for a long duration there was nowhere to sit, and barely room to stand. We had little water and no food as we hadn’t thought we had time to buy any.
By the time we reached the winding entrance into Kandy several hours later the bus was nearly empty, and we were hungry, thirsty and exhausted. Stepping into open air we quickly found a tuk tuk to take us to our accommodation – up one of the steep hills encompassing the centre of the city – and then thought we were going to have to go back into town as no-one was answering our calls! Eventually, some 20 minutes later, we had success. Led up to our room, we were soon placing down our bags and gratefully crawling into bed.
