Another unreleased episode from early 2019 as we parked the Troopy up in India and did a visa run to Sri Lanka.
2019:We left the Troopy in India (Cochin) and caught the short flight to Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo! We would of loved to have taken the Troopy over though unfortunately there's no ferry running the short skip across which means the only other option was to ship, and for the short period of time we spent there it just wasn't a viable option.
The start of our trip involved a few days getting our Sri Lankan e-visa extended before sending our passports back to Australia with a completed visa application form for Pakistan. Applying for visas is generally pretty easy as you can just apply online though when travelling by land it's fairly common that at land borders the officials will only accept an old fashioned visa that you've applied for in the embassy. This alone can be a time consuming process as the processing time can be anywhere from 1 to 10 days for which you're without your passport. Think that's an inconvenience? Well, let me fill you in on the deets for the Pakistan visa; you can only apply in your country of origin and the processing time is 4-6 weeks! So, as it's illegal to post passports from India internationally we flew to Sri Lanka to courier them home to Mark's parents where they then forwarded them on to the embassy in Sydney. Then it's just a waiting game until we have to get them back to us!
With the visa stuff sorted we caught the next train to a quiet village on the south coast, Midigama. The plan is to spend some time surfing, editing videos and enjoying a bit of down time. We found a great place to stay for 1000 rupees/night at Daya's house (Mendis Cottage - http://www.booking.com/Share-1fLkXM) which isn't even 100m from one of the most popular breaks on the south coast, "Lazy's".
To go and check out other areas along the south coast we rented a scooter for the day and rode 40km east towards Hiriketiya Beach. Although not very far it took almost 1.5 hours to get there as the traffic was pretty slow going. Arriving at Hiriketiya we were welcomed by a beautiful beach with crystal clear azure water which is quite protected by the horseshoe bay that it sits in; the only downside was the amount of people there. Maybe we were a little naive going there thinking that it'd be quiet as we'd been very lucky with the local beach at Midigama that was relatively quiet and not overly touristic. We went for a swim and enjoyed the lovely water though didn't hang around too long as we were keen to go somewhere a bit quieter.
Heading back to Midigama we stopped in at Cape Weligama to watch the sunset which did not disappoint. In the afternoons there was usually a south-southeasterly wind that would pick up, though this lovely beach was protected by the headland making it a great place to swim and watch the sunset.
Although not a great deal happened, it was really nice having a base for a couple of weeks and surfing every day because shortly we'll have some guests arriving and will be on the go again!
Thanks for watching! In the next episode we'll be doing a loop around Sri Lanka with our special guests.