Mel and Matt on the Move

Hello from Chennai, India! We arrived here yesterday after a memorable two weeks in Sri Lanka. The last couple of days we spent on the tropical island were unexpectedly two of our best so far, with a diverse mix of hiking, exploring ancient ruins, relaxing at the beach, and happening upon a huge annual Catholic festival. In Sigiriya, we heeded all guidebook and hotelier advice and woke up early to arrive at the   famous rock fortress when it opened at 7am. Sigiriya is yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site we were able to check off our list in the country, the location where King Kasyapa established his capital and built a palace in 477 CE. The area was also evidenced to have been inhabited by Buddhist monks in the 3 rd central BCE, with rock carvings and shelter structures still intact. The grounds were well-equipped for tourists (as they should be, with the price of $30 USD for each foreign visitor!), and we were handed a map detailing where we could tour the ruins of boul...

Matt, here! I decided to give Melanie the night off and will be writing tonight’s blog post. The focus of this post is Buddhism in Sri Lanka, something that has really interested me throughout our travels. It’s hard to emphasize how omnipresent Buddha is in the country. The religion was first introduced to Sri Lanka from India in the 3 rd Century BC. Now over 70% of the Sri Lankan population identifies as Buddhist. Melanie and I quickly lost count of the number of Buddhist symbols and depictions we saw after maybe the first day, ranging from small and giant statues of the Buddha to historic white stupas to monks riding on the back of motorcycles. We’ve also encountered a couple of intimate religious moments such as one of our drivers pulling over the car simply to say a quick prayer to a roadside Buddha or how the Buddhist monthly holiday, Poya, affected meat and alcohol sales one day when we were in Colombo. As Melanie mentioned in her last post, our memora...

My professional interests and travel experiences collided perfectly this week as Matt and I stayed in the wonderful, central Sri Lankan town of Ella —our favorite stop on the trip so far. As many of you know, I’ve worked in the agricultural development sector for a few years now, so Ella’s vast stretches of tea plantation-covered hillsides made me feel right at home. We arrived via private car from Tissa and checked into the Eden Guest Home , one of the countless guest houses in Ella that includes a homemade meal and sweet welcome from the Sri Lankan family that owns the property. We immediately hit the popular hiking trail towards “ Little Adam’s Peak ,” aiming to reach the top before the midday-heat kicked in. The trail winds through scenic tea fields, with unbeatable vistas of the surrounding green mountain range throughout the journey. Nature got real with us, however, when we were forced to turn back and speedily retrace our steps after a swarm of wasps started stinging hiker...

I’m writing this post beneath a pink mosquito net that is draped carefully over our bed in Tissamaharama (“Tissa”), a town just outside of Yala National Park in southern Sri Lanka. Matt and I are snacking on candy bars, nuts, and drinkable yogurt for dinner, because Tissa doesn’t have many (any?) indoor restaurants and we’re trying to avoid more bug bites. It’s not so bad though; we are content to relax after another adventurous day. It’s actually been an active few days since my last post! Relying on advice from our Lonely Planet guidebook, we ventured beyond the Colombo city limits on Sunday to Mount Lavinia, the closest town with a clean beach. We took a commuter train, which felt very much like a NYC subway car with long, orange plastic benches lining the sides of each compartment and tip-seeking musicians playing flute, drums, and a keyboard during the 40-minute trip. In Mount Lavinia we paid ~USD $10 each for an all-you-can eat lunch buffet and day-long access to the beach a...

Hello from Sri Lanka! I had anticipated that my first blog entry would discuss an exciting layover in Guangzhou, but in a classic, confused-traveler moment at the Chinese airport, our temporary visa request to spend a half-day in the city was denied. No explanation, no nothing! The immigration official simply handed Matt our passports and stated that we weren’t allowed to leave the airport. We brainstormed the many possible reasons for this: Was our layover deemed too short to warrant the temporary permit? Did the denial have to do with changing diplomatic relations between China and the US? We’ll never truly know. Regardless, we spent nine hours hanging out in the strangely empty yet massive Guangzhou airport, snacking on dumplings and moving from one hard plastic seating area to the next. Despite that initial hiccup, our travel was smooth. We arrived in Colombo, exchanged dollars for rupees, bought Matt a SIM card for his iPhone, and easily hailed an Uber to our AirBnB. We ...