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I'm currently spending two weeks traveling around Sri Lanka. Yeah, I didn't really know what to expect from here, but this is beautiful. It's my first time in the country and I'm hoping to see as many of the highlights as my time will allow. Until just a few years ago, it was just a bridge, but now everyone goes there, including us. In this episode, I'll first be exploring the city of Candi. It's nice to appreciate the history, the architecture, and just the general vibe of the place. Then, I'll be taking the iconic train to Ella. It's beautiful, but it's sketchy.
Upon arriving in Ella, I'll have three nights to enjoy this popular traveler's hub. It's touristy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing cuz it's super fun. This is our swimming spot for the morning. Wow. Just triple left to break for my makeover. This week's video is brought to you by Surf Shark, a VPN for all of your devices which helps safeguard your data and privacy online. Now, I've been using Surf Shark for years, and one of the reasons is because I'm self-employed, I
do get to go off and do these big adventures, but whilst I'm away, life is still going on. And so, sometimes between that scenic train ride or going cycling through the hills, I need to access my banking and other secure data, and I can only use the public Wi-Fi at the hotel or the nearest cafe. By using Surf Shark, it encrypts your online data whilst using public Wi-Fi, so you don't become a victim of identity theft or fraudulent purchases. Not only that, you can virtually change the location of your phone or laptop to anywhere in the world. And this can help you save money with travel. For example, you can compare the costs of the same flight when purchasing from different
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get four extra months of Surf SharkVPN. Anyway, enough plugging. Let's get back to Sri Lanka. My journey began a few days ago when I touched down in Columbbo airport, spent the night in Nombo, then made my way to see. We got to walk 1,22 steps to get to the top. Just incredible.
The trip I'm on is a bespoke tour that I organized with intrepid travel and put on sale to people who follow my channel. And we have our local guide to Shana showing us around his own country. This is a central highland of Sri Lanka and one of UNESCO World Heritage site. When I was putting the itinerary together for Sri Lanka, I wanted it to be quite an active trip just so we can really get amongst the environments rather than just stopping and taking a picture of it. This is beautiful. Check this out. After spending a couple of days in the wilderness of the Knuckles Mountain Range, we're now heading to the city of Candy for one day before we take the
iconic train ride to the town of Ella. Nestled in the hills of central Sri Lanka, Candi was the country's last royal capital before it fell to the British in 1815. It's home to the sacred temple of the tooth, which we'll be visiting tomorrow morning. But first, we're just going to have a wander around the town before we go to a cooking class this evening. All right, so we've just made it to the town of Candy, which is the first proper city we've had a chance to explore on this trip. Uh, a fun
little fact to know about this city is just outside the town is where they shot Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We won't be going to any of those sites, though. But yeah, we're going to go check out the shopping street, just see what's happening, maybe get a drink somewhere. So, my nearest point of reference is IKEA is comparing it to my time in India a few years ago. And if you walk down the street, India, you hassled so much, so rarely see the exhaust. whilst here, you know, you get the odd person coming up going, "Would you like to buy this?" But generally, they just leave you alone. It makes it a lot more calm experience.
Oh, yeah. Which is great. So, you get to sort of enjoy it without getting, you know, passive to death. The noise people offering you stuff, but you walk past, it's all fine. They don't grab your arm, pull you back in, and bully you into trying to buy stuff. Oh, backpacker starter kit. This is fun though. Just having a little random wander around. Get a sense of the vibe of the place. Hello, sir. Hello. Hi, man. Just doing a quick stroll up to a viewpoint of the city. Like 15 minute walk from where we were.
Since it was a hot, sticky afternoon, we decided to go to a pub to cool off with a drink before the cooking demo this evening. Look at what we got here. To the pub. We only arrived in the city by midafter afternoon, so we didn't have a huge amount of time to explore. Although a few of the guys managed to randomly find a VR center, but now it was time for our evening meal. And tonight was going to be a bit different. So, we're now about to do something a little bit special, which is head to a local family's home where we're going to have some dinner and they're also going to sort of demonstrate how they cook it and we
might get involved with cooking as well. So, this could be really cool. We were first welcomed in with a cup of tea and some snacks before we started cooking the main dish, which of course was Sri Lankan chicken curry. And David kindly volunteered to be sue chef. Not like that. Just straight in. Yeah. No, I was joking. You ruined it. You think we're back? Get ready for all the YouTube comments coming. So nice of Dave to cook us a meal tonight. Next we moved into the main kitchen to make some idiapp or string hoppers which is made with a mixture of rice flour and water.
15 minutes. Oh, to go with the string hoppers, we made some coconut sambble, which first required grinding up some coconut, which was way harder than it looked. It's all made for me. That's great. That's really good. Little kick at the end, you know. Well done, team. It looks so good. You have to take the first bite when it's ready. Make sure you don't die. Yeah. Wow. Like your work. So, I was saying at the campsite that's the best food we've had. And it was amazing. But that's now just taking a title. That was such a delicious meal.
This is what we just had, but we've added in some extra stuff that you described as dynamite. That's pretty good, but it's not scary. Seems okay. Bit of spice to the back of the throat. This building, but not like a past dynamite test. Yeah. So lovely that family to welcome them into their home to eat their food. And yeah, that was incredible. Such a treat. In the morning, we went to visit the Temple of the Tooth, which is considered one of the holiest shrines in the Buddhist world, as it houses the relic of the Buddha's tooth. And before we entered, we had to make sure we were dressed appropriately.
My shorts just long enough. You got to cover your shameful knees. Pasty legs. cost 2,000 rupees to get in, which is just under $7 US, not Canadian. So, we've got rid of our shoes. We've covered our knees where appropriate and shoulders. Now, we're going to go for a wander around. The temple is a significant pilgrimage site for Buddhists and historically the relic's possession has been linked to political power with the belief that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country. The temple conducts daily rituals including morning, midday and evening services with the relic brought out for worship during these times. People are queuing and waiting for hours for the doors to open ceremonic and so they can do their offering.
Whenever you're traveling, it's very easy to get templed out, but it's nice to do just one. You know, you get to sort of go and appreciate the history, appreciate the architecture and the artwork and just the general vibe of the place and then move on. And that's what we're doing right now. We're going to be driving south for a bit and then getting on the train, the uh famous iconic train to Ella. So, that's what we're doing this afternoon. You can get the train all the way from Candy to Ella, but we're going to be driving the first half to a small town called Nanua and then we'll catch the train from there. And since we're winding through these beautiful tea
plantations, we decided to make a quick stop at a tea factory to learn about how it's made. Factory name is Dunro more than 150 years old. We have,200 acres 1,000 employees. From that 600 Deati brothers a day we produce here three tons of tea every day. So normally these tea bushes we can use more than 50 years but every 5 years we have to prune in them. After 6 months we can reuse it. But once a week all year around we can harvest. No season at all. And the tea pluckers they should pluck 20 kilos in a day is the minimum. Only takes 24 hours from them picking the leaves uh to them being ready to sell and ready to drink. There was a little tasting at the end but heard them drink tea. So I was like you guys enjoy
that. I'm going to enjoy the view. So, we just arrived in Nanoya, which is where we're going to be boarding the scenic train ride from here to Ella. We've parked up and we have to be right by a fish van, so it really stinks. We bought some tickets for the unreserved class, which for the 3-hour train ride only cost about a dollar each. So, we got about 20 minutes till the train arrives. Um, I'm not going to lie, the platform's mostly filled with tourists. So, they still got the super old controllers in there that they use for all the tracks and signaling. But yeah, it's been a 45minute delay so far, but
any moment now it should show up. 1 hour late, but the train is arriving. We just managed to squeeze on. Yeah, we're in the worst place possible. We're [__] Try not to die. We're buzzing for 3 and a half hours of this. Yeah. Oh, we're moving. Well, we're off. I'm not going to lean out. So, the classic thing is leaning out the doors. Uh, but then Sh was about all the people that died doing that pilots coming past these things. Not going to lean out. I'll be back. At least we're on the train and we're off.
The train is going to take somewhere between 3 to 4 hours to wind through the hills to reach the town of Ella. How you doing there, Car? Hanging on myself here. Comfy. Yeah. Hanging on. food truck coming through. Another fried too So we were going through the tunnel as we came out and suddenly the view expanded out this way and we were on a bridge and it was like a couple hundred meters down immediately right there.
I just stopped at the station. So they use toilet paper leaning out, hopping off to get selfies and stuff. Hey guys. Well, the views have really opened up the last few minutes. We kind of been stuck in the trees, but now it's just like vast view valleys around. As we stopped at different stations, more passengers were getting off than on, which allowed our group to spread out a bit rather than being cramped in the doorway.
This is great. Now the sun's coming down. Gone through all the tea field. Just beautiful. All right, guys. It's great long, but it's all right. Grab some fun going by grass. There you go. Yeah, there you go. I get itchy.
Nearly 4 hours later, we finally made it to the town of Ella, where we'll be spending the next three nights. Well, that was brilliant. Stood in the door the whole time, raw dogged it. What a beautiful journey. That was amazing. Yeah. I might take it home for the girlfriend. It'll last all 2 hours. This is Ella, which was once just a sleepy little village in the mountains. It's now a major tourist hub in Sri Lanka. become famous for all this natural beauty and of course the train ride that we got in here. And it's a big backpacker hub actually and it's just full of bars and the things you expect. Bars, restaurants, chill out
areas, souvenir shops and it's touristy but that's not necessarily a bad thing cuz it's super fun. Like a really cool victory place. So we're going to go get a drink. It's been a week now and we're all craving some western food. Now, our hotel was supposed to be in the center of town, right amongst the action, so everyone could explore this fun and lively place at their own leisure. But at the last minute, our hotel had been changed to one that's nearly 40 minutes drive out of town. And this place had the vibe of a retirement home toll.
So, we've gone from the pumping town to this uh hotel where we have retirement home music. Cheers everyone. Maybe we can watch the matlo later on. Cheers. She Okay, good morning from our hotel Mua Ella. And this hotel, whilst it looks beautiful and has an amazing infinity pool, it's half an hour's drive out of town, which is really inconvenient.
Plus, the runes themselves are pretty shoddy. It's actually a pretty old and rusty looking place. So, yeah, it might seem weird standing here complaining about this cuz it looks so gorgeous, but when you look a little closer, it's a bit like But hey, we'll make do. There's still loads to enjoy here. So, I'm kind of buzzing for our next 2 to 3 days of enjoying this town. Okay, we just stopped just outside of LA to check out Raana Falls, which is huge waterfall right up in front of us here.
Yeah, it's very busy here with lots of locals. Um, it's just because it's the weekend, so they've come to check out the beautiful surroundings. You've now come to the edge of town to go and see the famous nine arch bridge. If you've seen any picture ever of Sri Lanka on Instagram, it's this place. As Dashana was saying, until just recently a few years ago, it was just a bridge, but now everyone goes there, including us. From the main road, it was about a 10 to 15 minute very steep walk down to the bridge.
Well, this is it. It's one giant Instagram shoe. It's beautiful bridge though. This is Nach Bridge. Almost 100 years old bridge built 1921. Uh the architecture name PK Abuhammed who came with this nice idea because you can see there are two mountains this one and that one. Uh that time uh they were unable to connect this mountain to the bridge. Then Auhammer came with the idea this stone bridge with the bent as well. The height 100 ft height this bridge and a special thing is no any iron no any concrete used for this uh bridge only stone uh bricks and uh cement used to build this bridge. Perfect. Smash it.
Thanks buddy. So yeah, the train stops on the bridge for like a good 10 minutes so all the passengers can get out and take photos. It's madness really. I'm trying not to be cynical, but one giant photo shoot and I have nothing to add to it. I concur. All right, we just got to do the massive climb back up now. This is going to take a while. Now that we've all got our pictures sorted for the Gram, it was time to explore the area on some bikes. Today's one of the days on the trip I've been most looking forward to because got a bit of an action-packed morning. We're
going to go cycling around the hills here. We're going to go on a little hike up to mini Adams Peak and then we're going to go on a zipline and then we're going to go to a pool club and just relax and have some drinks and enjoy uh this beautiful place that we're in. Now, there was a couple of problems with filming the bike ride. First up, I had my GoPro pointing way too far down, so most of my footage looked like this. And secondly, the cycling we'd signed up for was described as mostly downhill. So I thought we'd just be relaxing, cruising between the beautiful hills and tea plantations. But the bike ride ended up being the exact opposite of downhill. So we spent most of our time doing this.
So I thought we just come to a little upstretch. So I'm just going to power through this. But then I kept going. Thank God. This has about two and a half gears. So, the slightest incline is like, nope. Our bus just treading right behind. It's probably going hurry up. Go, Carl. You can do it. Working hard. Oh, it keeps going. It does. Got you. Once we made it back into town, we dropped off the bikes and then it was time for our short hike. All right, so now we're walking up to Little Adam's Peak for a nice view before we get the zip line back down.
So, just over here we've got Ella Rock, which you can also do a hike up, although we're not doing that today. So down here we got the pool club we're going to later. And also here's the ultimate Instagram swing which you can pay for if you're a [__] So it cost 5,000 to go on the swing. So that's what like $20 maybe $30. So there's actually three peaks up here. So, going to go get the farm one first. Yeah, we thought it was flat across the other peak, but there's a big down and up, which we're not feeling right now. I might just go to the other one. That juice ain't worth the squeeze.
Well, this view will do anyway. Can see what we're doing for the rest of the afternoon here. Just as a blind and swimming pool. Gorgeous, gorgeous views all around of Ella. Heading back down, it was time for the next activity of the day, the zipline. But that's only if we weren't too tall to ride in. Bend your knees. Go a bit more. Bit It's a good look with the head. All right, up we go. Hi, man. How are you? I'm good, man. How you doing?
I'm excellent, man. here. Yeah. All please. Up. 3 2 1 go. Woohoo. Come on. I was going backwards most times. You kind of like And then before you know it, you're in at the end. Wow, that was good fun. Short and sweet, but awesome views around. Anyway, now we're going to go relax at the Ravana pool club for good 3 hours. So, that should be lovely on a gorgeous day like this. Anyway, cheers. Cheers, buddy.
It was so great to have an afternoon to just really relax and take a moment to appreciate where we are. But if you remember from earlier when I made those snide remarks about people going on the Instagram swing, here's the ultimate Instagram swing, which you can pay for if you're a Well, the group decided to chip in together and dared me to go on the swing. But they'd only pay for it if I wore the red dress. So, I said yes. Where's all the red dress? Oh, man. This is going to be exciting for you, buddy. All right. Do they know it that I'm wearing it? No, not yet. So, they've dared me. They're going to pay for it for me to wear the sw to the guys are paying for me to go on the
Instagram swing and wear a red dress. How about maroon? Red said that they're already being used. Do you want a sweaty dress? I don't give a [__] Sweaty dress. Bring on the sweatiest of them. North. It's fine. I'm wearing it. He's wearing it. That one right there. When is she done? Okay. They have on them. I mean, I'll let you know. Oh, great. Perfect. Well, are you getting rotated? Got a complicated operation.
Yeah, this got very complicated very fast. Ready for my makeover. And then which one's the most flowy and silly? They're both This one. Okay, I'll go with that one. All right. Hi. She'll help. Here. Yeah. I thought we going to hide there. You got to wait for the reveal in the mirror. I'm going to duck under you. What does my life come to? You and you can't look in the mirror until you have a headband on.
It's made your day. Oh, Carl, you are beautiful. He look like Caesar. You know Caesar? Going to rule over all of you. How's the back? Is it sexy? Well, we'll make sure it stays. I need a drink. Move yours on the bus. Wow. Yeah, I got some nice little moves here. Wow. I'm going to go outside and uh Gorgeous. Wow. This trip's taking a left turn. Oh, he's got the head thing, too. He's a sight to behold.
Yes, queen. A strip club later. Get some steak. Can't wait for Jamie to see this. I was just thinking just to make things better, a whole crowd started gathering to watch me make an absolute tit of myself. Heat. It was really funny. And then you're still there swinging for another 5 minutes and you're like, "All right, let's get down. Thank you so much. Thank you. I got slow-mos. I got portraits. I got close-ups. Everything. Yeah. No way. Did you feel peaceful?
See you next time. Bye. Wow. Show us some more. Show us some love. Show the slow-mo. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. And yet so great. So beautiful. What a happy princess. All right, let's go get some beer. Feeling better. Oh, not yet. All right, we're just heading to downtown Ella. Some drinks. Tim's getting some laundry done. What you got? Chocolate peanut butter banana roti. Roti hut. Why go to Pizza Hut when you're in Sri Lanka? You go to roti hut.
Cheers. I would say, look at me being all healthy with my falafel and hummus, but I've ordered a beer and a mjito. So, we made our way around a few bars in town, some of which had DJs and others had live music, although one of them somehow managed to play the wrong chords to Wonder Wall. Wrong chords. The wrong chords. This song ever is the wrong chords. It's our final day in Ella and we're going to be traveling out of town to Pahan Dawa Falls which is about halfway down from the highlands to sea level. This is the views we're driving through and like on a clear day here you can see all the way down to the ocean. Bit hazy for that but still a spectacular view. In Sri Lanka we have three penny planes.
Yeah. The first, second, third. This is the highest penny plane. From here we can see second penny plane and first penny plane until the sea. This is viewpoint all together. three tele. Altogether, it was about a 2-hour drive from Ella down to the waterfalls and then it was just a short walk to get to the river. Got some monkeys in the trees here. They're after the halfeaten jackfruit. Come on back. There's some monkeys on the trail here.
Oh, these monkeys. These clowns. Hey, our plan is pretty simple. We're just going to hike upstream along the river, get to the falls, and then have some quality time to just swim and relax. All right, this is our swimming spot for the morning. Like the rock right here standing on that is just like nuclear temperature. It's like being at the pool of Las Vegas. But this is quite cold. Welcome. Refreshing. It's great actually. It's very nice.
Come on in. So this is what you watch my YouTube channel for is men bathing in water landing there. That's like a little bathtub. The one you're in there. This is a harder one down here. Demonstrated by Cliff. invigorating. And I didn't even get my hair wet. Oh, it's so nice. All right, what else we got? So clear. That was really great actually. You know, it was just so nice just getting to enjoy a bit of nature and relax and go swimming in such a beautiful spot. As we started making our way back towards Ella, we stopped at another
waterfall called Suratali Ella. Keep going. That was a fun little stop though. Beautiful waterfall. On our way back up to Ella, we stopped at the town of Haputali to have another look at the views and have a little wander around. Just on our way back up. And that reservoir over there is where we're heading tomorrow to the national park to go do some safaris. So yeah, we're just wandering around grabbing some snacks. And something that's become a bit of a random tradition on my trips is seeing what state the local Mars bars are in.
Yeah, it still looks better than the Pakistan one, but sort of look normal. It's not great. What's up with it? Hopefully it'll look better than yours. I'm not finishing this one. It doesn't look as sandy as yours. I mean, that one it's melted, but it looks like a normal M. Cuz that's what happens when yours expires. Yeah. I've really enjoyed our time in LA. Like there's such a great vibe to the place and there's so much to do in the surrounding area that I could have easily spent longer here. But tomorrow
we're moving on and heading down from the highlands to the coast. In the next episode, it's the final leg of our trip and we'll be starting off with a safari in Udoawei National Park. So we're on 19 now, which means I'm still winning. Just we can't see any more elephants. And then we're going to have a nice barbecue dinner around the bonfire tonight. So, that's going to be really sweet. Then, we'll be having some chill time in the gorgeous beach town of Marissa. We've just made it to Marissa and it is beautiful. Just what the doctor ordered. And there'll be plenty more wildlife spotting opportunities here. Got a whale. So, I was just swimming along and then suddenly want to swim right past
