The Adventure Continued: Colombo, Baby Elephants and Kandy

Traffic speeding by below the apartment

After the beach we headed to Colombo for a day or so. The heat there was astonishing as the sun beat down and reflected off the buildings. It is not a beautiful city but it was still interesting to wander round. We visited a fascinating Buddhist temple that seemed almost like a museum, with shelves filled with jewellery or watches or coins or some other valuable that had been donated over the years. We were staying in an apartment block in what seemed to be the city's equivalent of South Kensington, sandwiched between the presidents house and expensive hotels. One of my favourite places was the Galle Face Hotel, which exuded old-world, colonial charm and is a perfect spot for a couple of (very reasonable) cocktails with the sea lapping at your side. It is one of the oldest hotels of its kind, predating Raffles in Singapore and has hosted many famous people over the years such as the writer Chekhov.

Bath time for the young elephant at the temple

The Wanderer Returns

The holiday was typified by amazing views such as this one over the sea from our apartment in Colombo

Yet another sudden absence, just when I thought I was getting the hang of this blogging lark I get out-of-sync again. At least this time I have a good reason, at the end of August I went to Sri Lanka on what was probably one of the most wonderful holidays I have been on.

And the other direction

I decided to visit the country as one of my friends' family is from there, although he grew up in England, and another has recently moved there for work. I have to admit that before deciding to go there it was a place I knew virtually nothing about other than flickers from the coverage of the civil war and the tsunami a few years a ago. However, as soon as I had got up the Wikipedia page that mentioned its status as a place of leading biodiversity and seen a few pictures I knew I had to go.