Karen & Robert
USA, April 2025
What did you like most about Sri Lanka?
People, nature, temples, food. People there soooo kind.
What is your opinion of your accommodation in Sri Lanka?
All good. I liked seeing how people lived. One day at each enough. The Other Corner was also great. Wish the place in Colombo had had a pool since it was soooo hot.
[Waterland, Negombo; The Other Corner, Habarana; Hanthana House, Kandy; Meena Amma's Tea Experience, Nuwara Eliya; Clove Tree Cottage, Ella; Mailagama Cinnamon Residence, Kataragama; Villa Atulya - Ocean's Edge, Mirissa; Fort Bliss, Galle; Nyne Hotels - Lake Lodge, Colombo]
What is your opinion of your chauffeur guide in Sri Lanka?
Absolutely THE BEST. Kind, knowledgeable. Caring. [Nihal]
What is your opinion of your flights to and from Sri Lanka?
Just too long but can’t be helped. [Arranged own flights]
Any other comments?
Eastward from Philly
Karen and I started traveling after law school 50 years ago as tiny grains of sand in our oyster of the world. In what looks like our last trip east we left Philly two weeks ago on a 12-hour flight to Doha, Qatar which until about 1950 lived largely on pearl-fishing and trading. Now it’s a forest of unique high-rises baking in such heat that you have to take a taxi to travel 700 meters to either of two fabulous new museums, by I.M. Pei (2008) and Jean Nouvel (2019). Rich and ambitious as Qatar is, many of the women on the street still wear the black abaya. We had never had any desire to visit the Gulf, but this two-day stopover was just what it took to put a face on one of the places where oil-and-gas had changed everything.
Another flight of only five hours took us to the west coast of Sri Lanka where until yesterday we criss-crossed the island with a driver-guide. We played holiday games on Sri Lankan New Year's Day, studied the harvesting and processing of tea and stayed in little places converted from tea-picker’s huts. Karen took a “cooking class” which consisted of helping prepare a curry dinner on a mud-and-dried-dung stove over a fire of wooden sticks regulated with a blowpipe. Our husband-and-wife hosts were incredibly friendly and welcoming.
Elephants are allowed to run free everywhere in the country and we followed them in a safari-truck as they mashed up grassy terrain that would soon return to thick jungle but for their frequent tearing and munching.
Too much to say in this little space, except that the people are gentle and helpful, showing few detectable signs of their bitter civil war which ended in 2009. The cars honk less and are much less banged up than in the south of France! The food is delicious, and the nature and wildlife (like deer that are a constant buffet for leopards, mongooses, monkeys, birds and big monitor lizards) are amazing. Much of the transportation is by scooter-based tuk tuk carry-alls. We’re now enjoying the beaches of the south and west sides of the island, where our former landlords/friends from France are selling their beautiful house to be grandparents at home.
Though the heat is crushing and people are poor in Sri Lanka, the soil is rich and nature provides enough to eat. Buddhist philosophy (not “religion” they insist) seems to affect behavior in a positive way. Needless to say, the Trump phenomenon escapes them completely.
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