TikaWeeks #26/2025: Sri Lanka update
Posted by John on 25th June 2025
“Travel broadens the mind” is a maxim I hold very close to my heart. I travelled solo through Asia for a year from the end of 2000 to just after ‘9/11’ in 2001, visiting old ground as well as new nations. This trip changed my life.
I flew to Burma for the first time and experienced one of the most profound feelings of connection to the local people ever. On my first morning, I visited Sule Pagoda in central Yangon where I met two Buddhist monks, Ashin Sobhana and Ashin Sujanaka. Gentle and smiling, they chatted to me for a while before inviting me to take part in their afternoon spoken English class, which I duly accepted with relish. There, I was in front of a mixed class, including many Buddhist monks and nuns, of about 50 or so students running through English axioms and vernacular, which the Burmese love to use! To cut a long story short, I revisited Burma three more times over the next couple of years, brought Brother Sobhana out of Burma to study in Sri Lanka then on to Sweden, initially to help run a Sinhalese Buddhist temple in Stockholm and now an additional Burmese Buddhist temple about 4 hours’ drive from the Swedish capital. We have a very special relationship that transcends the distance between us, and we were lucky enough to have his blessing at our wedding ceremony in England many moons ago.
I was also given the kernel of an idea to start Tikalanka. Travelling on a bus in central Laos, I got chatting to a couple who were researching for their own travel company. Mark and Wi had a nascent travel business running group tours of South-East Asia from their base in Chiang Mai. Laos was their next country offering. After lots of reminiscences of our travels and tales of derring-do, we agreed to meet up again in Bangkok before I flew out. There, Mark convinced me to develop Pathi and I’s putative travel business (JB Pathi Tours) into something much more serious – Tikalanka. (As an aside, Pathi and I had met over the Millennium New Year on my first trip to Sri Lanka when I was travelling independently, too!)
So, you never know what is just around the corner when you travel solo and what opportunities may lie ahead. According to a recent article in The Guardian, a newfound love of solo travel may begin from the most trivial, and apparently frustrating, situation.
In fact, one of our first ever customers was a solo traveller, and Ali has become one of our closest friends! However, don’t just take it from me, please read the reviews of solo travellers who went on holiday with us such as Keith, Sandy, Hadi and Rod for their own individual and special experiences.
Categories: Culture, Sightseeing, Sri Lanka, Travel tips
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