It was
12 in the night. I was half asleep-half awake and trudged to my closet. After
changing in my travel clothes I went to hail a taxi to take us to the
international airport, to meet my cousins. We heard the trolley before we saw
it. My cousin came hurtling at me and I jumped out just in time, and he hit a
pole. We trudged to immigration and were on the flight.
Sri Lanka was hot and moist (perfect place for
fungus to grow :)). After getting out and renting our fifteen seater van, we
started towards Kandy. On the way, we visited the elephant orphanage. I was
stunned at the idea of it, and was gaping in awe, but my mom rushed to the
elephant feeding centre. Just for you to know, never step into the enclosure of
a hungry elephant, he'll go completely nuts. After feeding him watermelons,
bananas and oranges, we went to the bathing centre. We scrubbed the back of the
elephants and I got hit on the head with the trunk. We came in at our hotel,
dropped our bags and rushed out. We first saw the Buddha temple. It was huge
you could have fitted in two cricket stadiums. In the temple, they say that
there was a tooth of lord Buddha, and it's officially proven by Raghav Agrawal
from the it is proven department.
The
next day, we left for Bentota. On the way we stopped at the botanical garden
which was huge. We were going to see the orchids as there were many types of
them. There were about 50 types of orchids there. We moved around for a few
hours and finally were going to the
camper. My dad challenged me to a race to the exit which 100 metres ahead. We
took off. I was in the lead when I didn't notice a trees root and fell. Badly
hurt I limped to the camper with the
help of my mom. We stopped for lunch at a weird place called woodlands. We
continued and reached our hotel, The Bougain Villa. After dropping our bags we
headed for the beach. After the beach we went to the dinner place, Golden
Grill. After the food, since it was my mom's birthday we called for a pineapple
surprise which was basically a pineapple cut in half with ice-cream on it. When
they served it they put some alcohol on it and lit it on fire. It was cool. We
headed home, and crashed.
The
next day we woke up early to go to the beach, catching two auto's. We had loads
of fun on the beach and went back, and seeing the breakfast table, my stomach
did flips. We started our journey to the Galle fort and on the way stopped at
the turtle conservation. Over there we saw many endangered species like the
Olive Riddley. These people buy the
turtle eggs from fishermen and keep them for until they are two days
old. They kept handicapped turtles too. We continued our way to Galle. It was
basically a whole city. There was a cricket stadium where Mahilla Jawardaneye
had made his highest score ever. It was a fort from the Dutch period and inside it was a new city. We walked for a
few hours and then settled down to eat lunch. We then walked around the place
and had some homemade ice-cream and shopped for a while. We bought post cards
and wrote on them. It's always my mom's crazy idea about sending postcards
home. We went to the post office which was dingy and pushed our postcards in
the box. We started for the hotel but on the way my mom insisted on stopping to
watch the sunset. We stopped and took a route to the beach. We watched the sea
for twenty minutes and trudged back to our camper. But then we saw something
that I would never have done in my life. There were tall coconut trees. One
tree was tied to the other by a string. Then on that string a man was walking,
from one tree to another. I didn't know that was possible. But I knew I had
lost 20 Sri Lankan rupees. I had bet that the strings were not for walking.
After grabbing our seats we drove for the temple. The Buddha was huge. That's
all I can say. You could see it from a mile away. Then we went for dinner. We
were going to a very famous restaurant called Bentota Lake. We ordered and
waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And finally
got angry. We went to the kitchen to find that no one was cooking. We were so
angry that we sat in our camper all grumpy as we were very hungry. But our
spirits were lifted when we stopped at Golden Grill. We ate like a pack of
wolves. Finally we reached home and crashed.
The next day was again started the
day with the beach. After having fun for three hours, it was time to leave for
Colombo. We left and on the way we played Antakshri on the journey. We came in
only to be greeted by the noise. After 3 days of peace, we had to be welcomed
like a Mumbaikar. But the holiday was not over. We first started our search for
a restaurant. We searched. First
place . No. second place . No. third place . No. like this we went around and
around. My dad joked " in search of food you find the whole city." We
saw the ground, the trains, on the beach and much more. Finally we found a good
5 star hotel coffee shop that served us some vegetarian food in its pastry
shop. We ate like there was no tomorrow. Finally, after a the long drive we
went to our hotel to freshen up.
Sitting
back in our camper we split. The moms would go do some shopping and the dad
would come with us. We first went to the museum. Outside the museum there we
two men with really big remote control cars. They were racing them and they
were going so fast that all you could see was a cloud of dust. We went into the
museum and I actually had fun. We were going out when my dad insisted to talk
to some Chinese woman in mandarin and so I did. We then caught an auto to the
lake and grabbed our boats. We were finishing our round when the propellers of
our boat got stuck and didn't budge. We got our boat and went to the docks to
call for help. After pushing we finally got it harnessed to the man's motor
boat. We all had some ice cream and coke and caught some more autos and went to
Galle face park. Over there we saw many kites. We bought one and flew it. The winds
were good and it was the first time I had flown one. We then sat then, watching
the sea. We had to then leave for dinner. We found a very nice Indian place and
were welcomed straight away by the smell of dosa's. We wolfed the dinner like a
pack of hungry wolves. When we reached the hotel we immediately crashed.
The next
day I was awoken with my uncle looming over me already with his swimming gear
on. I quickly put on my swimming gear and was in the pool within minutes. After
having a hearty breakfast we were going to say bye-bye to Sri Lanka. We drove
to the airport and with nothing to declare we sat in the plane.
I was
greeted back in Mumbai with the usual noise and pollution. When we reached home
I sat down and ta-da. I wrote the thing that you have just read.
