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I'm currently spending two weeks traveling around Sri Lanka. We've just made it to Marissa and it is beautiful. Just what the doctor ordered. It's my first time in the country and I'm hoping to see as many of the highlights as my time will allow. What a spot. It's super busy, but there's great vibes to the place, so it's all good. In this episode, we'll be heading to Udawi National Park to go on a safari and do some glamping. We're going to have a nice barbecue dinner around the bonfires tonight, so that's going to be really sweet.
We'll then head down to the coast where there'll be more wildlife spotting opportunities. Got a whale. We'll spend a day exploring the old fortress town of Gaul. The turtle down there just popping around the rocks. And then our journey will come to an end in the capital city of Columbbo. Stopping for some jungle kayaking along the way. Hello. Our journey began 9 days ago, landing in Columbbo and making our way to see Gera. 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 Dashana showing us around his own country. This is a central highland of Sri Lanka and one of UNESCO World Heritage site. After exploring the city of Candi, we boarded the iconic train to Ella. It's beautiful, but it's sketchy ass. We then had three nights to enjoy the tourist hub of Ella. This is Nach Bridge. It's madness really. I'm trying not to be cynical, but the guys have dared me to go on the Instagram swing and wear a red dress. So, all right, let's go get some beer.
It's now time for the final few days of our trip as we make our way south towards the coast. Today we're leaving the mountains behind for the rest of the trip. We're heading back down to the lower plains and uh this afternoon we're heading to Uda Walawi National Park to do another jeep safari. We'll see how many elephants we spot this time and who knows, maybe ragoff will lose some more beer. It's just over a 2-hour drive down to Udoawei National Park, but we're going to be stopping for some food and refreshments along the way.
Stop for a quick King Coconut break. Good. Cheers, Cheers. Boom. This is super fresh. What a nut. Once we were down from the Highlands, we stopped at a small local place for lunch. This is our Sri Lankan Hela Bjun Hala. Hela Bjun mean singhala authentic foods store. Mostly uh here you can see there are some housewives their husbands are farmers. They are collecting all those ingredient from their home garden and they came to here with their ingredient prepare authentic local foods and they have all these stalls just cooking different dishes. You go and pick which one you want and pay at the end. But they are not using preservatives, artificial flavors, anything. They are using only raw uh ingredients.
Nice change up after doing like the big kind of touristy restaurants in Ellen come a bit different like this. Just try some things out. And it's dirt cheap. It's like so cheap. So you can just try a few things and see what you like. The prices are very low because of the no intermediate people. I've gone for curry and rice and I asked for a spicy. Let's see how we do. Tastes good. I think it's been out for a while. It's not like warm with the string hopper costume.
Get spicy. You got a vegetable rotty. You think this one's super spicy. So, let's give it a go. It's got a bit of a kick to it. So, it starts building up on your tongue. It's really tasty. It started okay, but then your mouth came up. It just numbs your mouth after like 5 minutes. that accumulated. My tongue's kind of on fire now, but not it's not like it's like the max level spice without it being uncomfortable. This is string co. Okay. Yeah. Kotu. Enjoy it. M. Yummy. I love it. The whole bill roughly $18. Wow. Yeah. Including my meal and other meals as Yes. $1 per person.
By early afternoon, we'd made it to Udawi National Park where we'll hopefully get to see lots more wildlife. Going to do an afternoon jeep safari. It's boiling hot. We're going to go around and see what we can see. So, the last one was pretty good. In fact, last one was very good. So, hopefully this will be a similar standard. We just saw some elephants right by the road on the way in, just the other side, the electric fence. So, yeah, promising start to the safari. Oh, little Astro turf war for RG straight through the fight for the mini five aside later.
Everyone ready for the safari? Yeah. How many We going to have a bet again on elephants? I'm going down. I'm going to go lower. You're saying below 10 elephants. So if you're wrong, you're buying drinks. Round of drinks for everyone. I'll go 24. Well, you're going exactly 24. He's going for a range. You're going exactly 24. Oh, there's a range we can pick. Yeah. So it's like he's going under 10. So if it's above 10, he has to buy drinks for everyone. So you could do like 11 to 20.
I'm going to go 21 to 30. Wow. We're in a big park. I'm going to go from 11 to 20. Okay. All right. There's a very small crocodile perched on the rock over there. All right, we got one. Game has begun. You just sort of see the silhouette of a croc on this little island here. Say it, Tim. What? Say it. Cy. It's a crocodile. That'll put number two.
This is where this goes. It's all the dust. So, we got the baby feeding off his mom. Bit of baby bird stuff. Oh. Uh, six. There's another one back way back there. Not looking good. It's almost seven already. Not looking good. Sweat's on. So, I could be wrong, but that might be the massive reservoir we saw from the viewport yesterday.
10. There we go. Tom's 100% buying beers. I'm in the safe zone now, so I'm not buying beers. It's also a beautiful animal. No. Well, there you go. That was a peacock flying. That was the number 11. Oh yeah, there is a buffalo in the water. Got a water buffalo cooling off the water here. Nearly fully submerged.
Quite jealous given how hot it is, but I don't get eaten by a croc. So, we're on 19 now, which means I'm still winning. Just we can't see any more elephants. There's a little baby right there. Hidden in the shadows. Angel's 20, which means Heather wins. winning. Stupid baby elephant.
That was a really lovely afternoon that just super relaxing cruising around seeing all that incredible wildlife. So, we ended on 22 elephants, one more than last time, which means we s got to buy a round of drinks. from the national park. It was just a short drive to our camping spot for the night. All right, we've made it to our glamping site for the night, just on the edge of the national park. So, we're just going to get settled into our glamping tents and then it's going to be a barbecue dinner, which should be lovely. Have a bonfire, all that, all that good stuff.
So, this is the room for the night. Got two twin beds for myself. Um, we got a fully equipped bathroom with, you know, running water and all that. So, it's it's glamping, but it's nice. It'll do for one night. And we're at such a lovely place next two nights at out by the beach. So, this is fine. And then we're going to have a nice barbecue dinner around the bonfire tonight. So that's going to be really sweet. So for firewood, they're using coconut shells. That smells so garlic. Oh, garlic bread. hell. This is getting better and better. We're not just having barbecued chicken and pork. We've got garlic bread.
This is amazing. They have a really fancy sauce on it, too. Is it ketchup? Yes. One more beer. Chicken. Really juicy. Oh, it's right here. Proper bit of chicken. Not just a little bone. Love it. So, we have some March Mellows. That's not me mispronouncing it. That's just the brand name. I'm going to try to cook them on the fire here. The fire is so hot and the sticks are pretty short. So, it's like a chance of balancing cooking it the right amount without burning your hand. Okay, that's not bad. They're not great marshmallows or marshmallows, but we also saw a 724 up.
They're pretty shitty marshmallows. Yeah, pretty We're just setting down for breakfast and we have the Sri Lankan grizzled giant squirrel trying to get some freebies. These guys are big, but like whole body is probably shoulderto-shoulder length. Give a kiss. He's trying to do a Spider-Man kiss. Oh, right in the air. Anyway, today we're heading down to the beach. Heading to Marissa.
Hi. Yeah, thank you. Anyway, uh yeah, today we're heading down to the south coast. Just heading to the beach to the lovely little town of Marissa. Um going to have two nights there just to sort of just chill out and relax. Um it's been quite a sort of busy full-on trip, just seeing lots of sites, doing lots of activities. So having a bit of a chill time, easy time is just what the doctor's ordered right now. We do have one activity booked for tomorrow, which is going to be doing a whale and dolphin watching boat tour first thing in the morning. But other than that, it's just going to be ah slow down the pace a bit and just relax into it. So, yeah, it's like a three-hour drive from here, mostly on the highway,
so it should be fine. Be there at midday and be on the beach in no time. All right, we've just made it to Marissa and it is beautiful. Uh we're just waiting to check into our hotel. So, we come to the restaurant across the road from it, which belongs to the hotel and get a quick bite and a drink. Good. Yeah. We got like two and a half Well, we got two full days here really. So, plenty of time to enjoy the beach and all the activities around. Oh, yeah.
Looks amazing. It wasn't long until we could check into our hotel and we all decided to head to the rooftop and just relax in the pool. This is what we're talking about. This will do. This works good. Cheers, guys. After a decent amount of chill time, we decided to go explore along the beach.
So, this is Marissa Beach, the main beach of the town. And uh you could easily spend a week here cuz you just like chill into the place, explore different beaches, do some different water activities, have a go at surfing, try the different restaurants. So yeah, very nice vibe to the place. But yeah, if you've done your shrianket adventure, you've been in the mountains, you've been on safaris, then just come down here and just take it down a notch. All right, we're going to head out to Parrot Rock right here. Got to wait through the water a little bit. I literally have all of my expensive equipment on me, so hopefully it's works out okay.
Yeah, you guys go first. Oh boy. I might do this one another time. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to save that for another time cuz I have all of the stuff in my bag. Drones, GoPros, GoPro will be all right, but everything else. We're going to work our way down the beach to Coconut Hill and go watch sunset right there. Got some prawns. They look really good. It's like a little cheap beach bar, so you never know what you're going to get. They put their hands on you. This is not my thing. Oh, it's got curry sauce in it. Pretty good. So, we just end the Coconut Hill and you can't walk there on the beach even though it's not far. We're just taking a lovely pleasant stroll on the road.
Try not to get killed. All right, I've been cynical about some of the Instagram spots on this trip, but this one is actually genuinely freaking beautiful. Gorgeous. This is pretty bright to be fair. Yeah, not bad, eh? So, we're just at the top of Coconut Hill like the main bits just over there. And there's they got a bastard up here. We can just sit and watch the sunset. So, you can bring your own as
well and sit further down, but this will do for tonight. We'll make it work. Yeah, it's super busy, but it's great vibes to the place, so it's all good. What a spot. Sun's gone down now, but you can see all the lights of the fishing boats out on the right. Getting out dinner for tomorrow. It's about 6:00 a.m. in the morning, bright and early. We're about to go on a whale watching tour. And there's a chance today we could see a blue whale, the largest animal in the world, which is very exciting. But again, still waking up cuz it's it's
6:00 a.m. So, I'll be more excited once we get going. Well, it's set up. Beautiful morning for it as well. The sea looks really calm, so hopefully it be quite easy to spot some whales on board. We've been gone for like a hour and a quarter now and still no signs of anything. But it's such a smooth, clear day that should make sightings very, very easy. As I said, they're around. Proud of those bastards. Oh, they're from the boat. Got some dolphins swimming alongside the boat here. Well, we got a decent sized pod there.
There's a whole bunch of them just surfing in front of all the different boats around. Beautiful. Well, we've been driving for ages. There's a big collection of boats up ahead which suggests that there's something there where we've been going for like 3 and 1/2 maybe 3 hours now just to catch up these other boats. Maybe got a whale. Which one was it? The finale. The second biggest animal in the world. Very cool. It's around somewhere but no luck yet.
Still there. Keep watching. Coming up. Do you see the whale? Everyone see the whale? After about 6 hours out at sea, we finally made it back to port. Well, whenever you're doing a wildlife watching tour, it's a bit of a gamble, a bit of a roll of the dice. Uh I think today if we'd seen some blue whales and had a really good look at some other things, you sort of say, well, it was a long journey. It was worth it. But we got a little glimpse of some dolphins and the tiniest glimpse of a fin whale for a very long time out of sea. So in some ways it doesn't feel worth it. But that's just that's the chance you have to take when you do
these things. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I'll also say when I've done whale watching tours before, there's usually just been one or two boats out, but having this whole fleet of boats chasing after this one whale felt a bit Yeah. a bit off. So yeah, make all of that what you will. Anyway, we got the rest of the afternoon just to chill and relax at the beach now. So, that's going to be fun. Unfortunately, the rest of the day was a complete wash out, but luckily the next morning the weather was perfect. The problems you have of going from air conditioning to hot weather is that you get all the condensation on the camera.
This morning, we're not checking out till like 11:30 to move on to G. So, we got plenty of time to experience the beaches. So, what we're going to do after some breakfast is head to Turtle Beach, which is just a few minutes walk away. Uh where hopefully, as the name suggests, we'll see plenty of turtles. So, we're going to give that a go. Bit of snorkeling, hang out in some of the beaches before we hit the road. But yeah, it's such a beautiful place. Oh, anyway, you can probably see me better now, which is maybe not a good thing, but it's such a beautiful place here. So, I could easily spend just a week just hanging out, chilling out, enjoying the surfing, enjoying the vibes.
All right, we're at Turtle Beach. Let's go find some turtles. swimming with a t-shirt so my back doesn't get absolutely fried in the sun. Yeah, the visibility down here is pretty terrible. So, I was just swimming along and then only one swim right past Straight after that first turtle swam away, I immediately spotted another one. But then after that, I swam around for like another half an hour and didn't see anything, which made me realize how lucky I was to see those two in the
first place, given how bad the visibility was. We're now heading to the town of Gaul where we'll be spending the penultimate night of our trip. And it was just about an hour's drive to get there. Yeah. On the drive there, we went through all these little beach towns, little surfer towns. They might be really cool to check out on another trip to Sri Lanka, but the town of Gaul is something different altogether. Well, we've just made it to G where we'll be spending the next half a day and just about to go explore the town and then this has happened.
Absolutely chuck it down. Hopefully, it's just a quick little tropical storm that I can get out and about. Fortunately, the rain stopped after a couple of hours so we could go explore the town. So, we're just about to start our evening tour on Gaul. We got a whole bunch of monkeys in the tree right here. What kind of monkeys are they? This is purpleface leaf monkey. This is the endemic one. The rare sighting only Sri Lanka we can see. All right, let's go for a wander around the town. Gaul has a rich history shaped by centuries of maritime trade and colonial influence. It was a major port city before European arrival, frequented by Arab, Chinese, and Indian traders. The
Portuguese captured Gaul in the 16th century, followed by the Dutch in the 17th century, and they built the iconic Gaul fort, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Later, the British took control in 1796, but much of the Dutch colonial architecture and layout remains preserved today. The cobblestone streets are now filled with boutique shops and cafes. And walking along the fortress walls provides fantastic ocean views as you walk between the 14 different bastions. This is the typical sunset spot, but I don't think I'm going to get that today.
You see a peacock perched up on the church spire way over there. Well, we may just get a sunset after all. The turtle down there just popping around the rocks as well. Well, I like go actually. Uh when we pulled up here was kind of like, oh, maybe you should just spend another night at the beach. But you have a wander around and sort of get a nice sense of the vibe of the town. And it's it's really cool. I think a half day here is like what we're doing is enough. this shop, see the cafes, the shops, get some souvenirs, and then wander around
the fort and enjoy the beautiful sunset. That's all you need. But, uh, yeah, really glad we've come here, actually. To finish off the evening, we went for a drink at the local tap room near our hotel. It's now the final day of our trip and we'll be finishing up in the capital city of Columbbo. But firstly on the way, we've got one last activity to do which is go kayaking on the Jing Ganga River. Yeah, we're going to drift down
for a couple of hours and hopefully see lots of wildlife. We're right in the jungle here. So yeah, should just be a nice chilled cruise along and see what we can see and hopefully not capsize. Oh, it's graceful. I'm just using my life jacket as a seat cuz there's no seat otherwise. Plus, I can swim. Jim's got his raver hat on. She brought his speakers.
Oh, the sound of some wild dogs. It keeps drifting like going around in circles. Obstacle course. Come on, Dana. Paddle harder. Paddle Oh, Cliff's going for it. Cliff is going for it for Florida. Hello. Have a little relax there, buddy. It's nice just to pause and drift every now and again, but yeah, there's there's hardly any current. You stop paddling and you just kind of go minimal speed. To be honest, the kayaking was a little underwhelming. Like, I thought we were going to be kayaking deep in the jungle, seeing loads of wildlife, but in reality, we were on a river beside a busy road, drifting between people's homes and farms, and didn't see much of
anything at all. But it was still fun. But it's still really pretty. We all had a good time. And I have to say at the end of the kayak was a really special treat. They've got a swimming pool here at the boat house. So we're just going to jump in there. Getting pretty toasty in that kayak. Do this. Yeah. Cheers, guys. Cheers. Ching. W. You see viewers, we have non-drinkers on the trip. It's fine. I'm drunk on light. Drunk on life, you see. And I'm not the only one this. Yeah, there's tuners on this trip. So, yeah, we've just been relaxing and cooling down the pool for a bit. And now they brought out this incredible lunch for us to feast on.
After we'd had our lunch, it was time for the final drive of our trip. And it was about a 3-hour journey to make it to the capital city of Columbbo. All right, I've made it to Columbbo, which means it's the end of my trip in Sri Lanka. Um, all that's left to do tonight is go for our sort of farewell dinner and drinks for the rest of the evening and then I fly out first thing tomorrow. So, guys, mate, just have to go home. We had such a good laugh at our final meal. The food was amazing once again. We said a big thank you to our guide to Shana and then the drinks just kept flowing all evening.
Got to order more. And then the next morning it was time for me to head home and say goodbye to Sri Lanka. Had an incredible time here. Like this country is just it's so amazing. It kind of blew already high expectations out the water and it's just so beautiful. If I had one word to describe Sri Lanka, it would probably be green, which might sound a bit simple like say what you see like, oh, it's green, but it's just everything from the jungles, the tea plantations, the rice patties. You're just seeing bright green everywhere you go. But yeah, I can't recommend Sri Lanka enough. I mean, it's super easy to travel around. I mean, yes, we were on a tour, but there's like tons of buses and trains connecting everything. The people
are super friendly. The food's amazing, and there's just so much to do. Like, so much variety in a relatively small place. This is beautiful. Check this out. Love it. So, I'd easily come back here. Anyway, if you've enjoyed this video, then first of all, make sure you've hit that subscribe button. But if you want to see more of my adventures from South Asia, then make sure you check out my four-part series from Pakistan from 2022, my two-part India series when I was solo backpacking there back in 2016, and you can see Nepal in my old Quest for Everest series, which includes the Everest base camp track. How lucky are we to be here?
And coming up next on the channel, I've got my island camper van road trip from April that I did with my mate Kev. That was loads of fun. Stick off. Just straight airplanes. And then I've got my Switzerland trip from June. The first half was with Jamie and a few of our close friends. The second half I was traveling solo. And that's not because we fell out. It's just that's the way the trip was designed. And then I've got two more adventures coming up that I'm going to be filming in September. So at the start of the month, we're going to be hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland. And then at the end of the month, I'm going to be starting my big Canada coast to coast trip. So there's loads to look forward to. So
make sure once again that you've subscribed and I'll see you on the next adventure very soon. Heat.
