Holla guys! Whats up you people?? Today i am finally sitting to write down my Sri Lanka blog as alot of you guys asked me about this trip of mine! Well it was a really impromptu one planned by my friends and i just happened to join in the last minute!So I will list down few to do points you need to keep in mind before your trip and then I shall share my pictures and what all we did !

CHECKLIST

• Applying for your visa is really easy as it is done online and you get a permit to stay there for 30 days . I have attached the link  to make it easier for you –visa website and the rest of the process is written on the website .
• Make sure to carry dollars as its easier over there to use them , yes you eventually do need to convert it into  Sri Lankan rupees but they do not exchange Indian currency much over there so DOLLARS it is!
• Sri Lanka may seem tiny on the map but the places over there are really far off located and keep atleast a weeks time if you really want to see and explore the country (we mistook it to be a tiny country and hence thought we could cover the entire area in 4 days but out of those 4 days you can say 2 went in travelling only).
• Carry food items with you like snacks cause you wont find any super market while going from one place to another(ps: places are 2-3 or even 6 hours away).
• Get your flight tickets and the stay booking done via various agents that are there online ( ** make sure you do your study and go because or else they leave no chance to loot you by making an amazing itinerary for you before you reach and once you land they tell you half the places arent possible -happened with us :/ **), but yet again the travelling and hotel stay there is kinda complicated so its better to give it to the agents .
• Carry an umbrella! Cause it rains there so randomly all the time!
• Clothes i will prefer you carry light and easy to go as its really humid there and do not forget your sunscreen and a hat/glares as it also is really sunny too along with the rains .
• Our entire trip cost us 14k for the tickets and 11k for the stay+ transport , and along with other expenses of food and stuff you can say it came upto 30k. So its quite worth the trip without worrying about your pockets!

DAY 1:

So we had booked our ticket to Sri Lanka from Goa Via Indigo , it was a connecting flight through Chennai , so we left from Goa at around 5 in the morning and reached 7:30 in Chennai , then we had our flight to Colombo at 12 and landed around 1:30 in the afternoon( ps: there are no direct flights ). Then our cab took us to Kandy and initially the plan was to take us to Pinnawela Orphanage on the way , do elephant back ride , visit spice garden, visit Cultural show ,Visit Temple of tooth relic – sounds pretty cool right? BUT GUESS WHAT? we could not do a thing as it rained really heavily the entire way and Kandy is around 4 hours away from Colombo,also on the way we didn’t find even one supermarket to buy food but luckily we all had got stuff to munch on although we were still starving. The agent had booked hotel SKYLOFT –hotel for us ,the hotel is located on top of a really steep hill .The rains had made it really difficult for us to travel and due to narrow steep roads on the way to Kandy even stopping anywhere was difficult . As we moved up the hill higher and higher we could see the thunder bolts suddenly lightning up the completely dark city and we literally thought for a moment that we couldnt make it as no one had range in their phone ,it was so dark that no roads could be seen on the hill and thrice we had to go right down back to the bottom of the hill on reverse to take a new road everytime,(was quite a scary experience trust me) but eventually the view was worth the efforts it took to reach on top which we realised the next day! So that was how our day1 looked like! Much more like a rollercoaster, writing this made me feel like this excerpt came out of some Nancy Drew I would read decade ago !

Oh how could i forget to mention my ootd?

Top- H&M

Jacket-H&M

Jeans-Vero Moda

Shoes-Adidas Originals

 

DAY 2:

Day 2 started off on a brighter note ,we woke up early around 6:30 in order to catch the view and it was so amazing!!! We were amidst the clouds! The clouds were literally floating all around us and we could feel the chill trickle down our backs! Within no time the sky cleared up by 7 am and we could finally see the beautiful town that was hidden beneath those clouds , in one room we had the view of the green lushed mountains that gave us a typical feel of Manali/Coorg and from another room we could see the entire town of Kandy,it was indeed serene. We quickly got ready clicked a few pictures and then went down breakfast .The food was really good there even for the previous nights dinner . We clicked some more pictures and checked out from this hotel . We first decided to visit the Tooth Relic Temple as we had missed it from previous day and it is the main thing to visit if you are going to Kandy , its a really huge temple and very beautifully built. Make sure you wear clothes that completely cover you like a jacket and  even the pants/skirt should be below the knees. Now none of us knew about this and so few of us had to change our outfits before entering the temple. In order to enter the temple further inside after walking another 1 km or so one has to pay rs1000 in Sri Lankan currency as entry fees .We were there for sometime and then left to go to Nuwara Elliya . If i am not mistaken it took us 3 hours to reach there , on the way we visited the Ramboda waterfalls and had lunch there and were greeted by a lot of monkeys haha! Nuwara Elliya is completely green and majority of the tea plantation takes place here ,the weather was very uncertain so  we were advised not to go down to the waterfalls so we sat back and choose to enjoy the view with our lunch instead. Once we reached the small town of Nuwara it was just 5 in the evening and still had time to kill so we spent the time by lake Gregory , it was really chilly here around 12 degrees or so! We just had some good time enjoying the quiet lake ,snapped some pictures and surprisingly you guys loved those pics the most! We then went for our hotel checked in and just chilled . For dinner half us choose to have food ordered at the hotel and the other half chose to order from Pizza Hut , if you know me well you very well know which category i belonged to! Yes duh PIZZA!

 

 

TOOTH RELIC TEMPLE,KANDY:

ON OUR WAY TO NUWARA ELLIYA/RAMBODA FALLS :

 

LAKE GREGORY , NUWARA ELLIYA:

 

 

DAY 3:

We left from our hotel after breakfast and headed towards Bentota. On the way we visited a few tea plantations and continued ahead! (Ps:You are going to get very tempted to go inside the plantation and click pictures but let me warn you there are tons of leeches there inside :/ and we were unfortunate enough to get them on ourselves 😪) so make sure your excitement to get typical shots does not get over you and you are careful enough ! Bentota was 6-7 hours away and it took us an entire day to reach there ,darn .Hence i am telling you KEEP MINIMUM A WEEK if you really want to enjoy this place because it is really beautiful and worth the travel. So basically our entire day went in travelling and oh i forget to mention ,on the way we found so many avocados! They were selling 3 for 100 sri lankan ruppees, like what?! Yea you know what happened next .. the greed came over us and we bought them (you cannot judge us teehee) ,we reached Bentota around 4:30 in the evening and our driver wasnt agreeing to take us to the beach ( yea we had a jerk driver who would never listen to us ugh) ,so we decided to spend that evening by the poolside and hog cause we were damn hungry! Bentota gave us major Goa vibes with our hotel by the sea side and lot of water sports activities taking place out there .It was a sudden transition from Cold and chilly Nuwara Weather to hot and humid Bentota weather. We decided to just loiter and spent the next 1-2 hours in the pool and had a nice happy dinner! Later on we decided to take a stroll outside and were so happy to find a proper supermarket finally- it was like life literally! We did infact shop alot of food items in order to restock the snacks that were over by now and yes the one thing we all will remember buying is chocolate milk! 2 cartons of it we purchased and had a jolly time in our room playing various games replacing alcohol with chocolate milk (We are the next cool slot of this generation :P) ! And then just decided to chill in our balcony outside our room which gave us a wonderful view of the riverside with the light of the moon shining on it,till late night. So basically day 3 also we did nothing much but did end up creating great memories with each other and getting to know everyones darkest secrets!

 

BENTOTA:

 

DAY 4:

Today we decided to wake up a bit late as we were really exhausted with all the travelling of the last few days ,and decided to take it easy.While deciding what to do next we couldn’t decide if we wanted to go to Galle or Colombo as both were in opposite directions and we didn’t have time but finally thought its better to visit Colombo as it would be closer to the airport. We took around 2 hours to reach Colombo from Bentota and once we reached there it was so amazing! Like a complete contrast from a village to really fancy high tower buildings , it was a transition indeed. We ate our lunch at some local restaurant indulging in some prawns curry which was so damn spicy , i mean yes Sri Lanka is famous for its spiciness so why complain!! And then we just roamed around a bit , saw the magnificent trade centre, went shopping around there buying few souvenirs and random stuff as all of us had a lot of money left cause the only thing we spent our money was on food the last 2 days .Then there was this one Korean shop called Kimo which had super cute stuff there and i have to tell i lost my senses on the “save money” thing i had on the last 3 days! There were super cute stuff there like cute bottles,diaries,usb cords ,cute cuttlrey,stuff for room decor all in baby pink, pastel blue – IT was like PINTEREST come alive!!( All those who are die hard pinterest fans know it all!) .So umm yea thats is how majority of our day was spent and then we headed for the airport. What we do regret the most is that we didn’t keep a night for Colombo and i have major regret of not being able to visit Galle and travel in the train, definitely going to do all this the next time il be back here! But one of the best things that happened was I made new friends for lifetime, and I don’t think there is a feeling better than that <3 .

And to the people who made this trip an amazing one ,worth remembering life time- Neha, Nishi,Nima, Mayuri,Raveena, Saili ,Richa!!! And to my amazing parents for funding me and letting me go alone!

I hope you guys really enjoyed this post of mine as much as I did while writing it . Do not forget to share your views about it in the comment box below and like it!