Negombo

Tangalle spoiled me. Almost a week I did doing nothing except eating fresh sea food and rice with different curries, riding the bike along the coast and inland, reading, swimming and chatting with the manager, his family, the cook, the cook's brother and all the other lovely Sri Lankans who probaly because of some great karma in their past lives are living in this place now.

I visited Galle with its old Dutch fort, at night tried to spot turtles which supposedly come to lay eggs on full moon (not this time though) and explored some more beaches, caves and temples in the villages nearby.

Tangalle was so quiet and peaceful, it couldn't get any better than this. The way along the coast was pretty nice though. It was raining, but not heavily. There were those so-called "stilt fishermen" near Kogalla, sitting like sea birds on their sticks coming out of the water, then in Hikkaduwa there was a good Italian restaurant with capuccino and tagliatelle with prawns, and then as I was coming near the capital, I decided to skip the visit there, mainly because its suburbs started 20 kms before the city and looked like an infinite line of shops from two sides of the road congested with heavy traffic. It reminded me of Delhi, sort of, just smaller and cleaner. I didn't like it there. Shopping amidst exhaust fumes isn't for me. So I got back to this nice beach town, Negombo, spending my last few days here. Today I rented here a nice 250 cc bike and went north along the west coast, all the way to Puttalam and back. There weren't many attractions, it started raining heavily several times, but overall, it was a pleasant experience. There wasn't much traffic, the road was in great condition, so I drove from one coconut plantation to another (there is even something called "Coconut Research Institute"), stopped to pay respect to Shiva & Parvati in a beautiful Hindu temple and took a turn to some forgotten little Muslim village where the kids were pretty surprised to see me.

Sunday is work... ?