SRI LANKA GUIDE: COLOMBO TO GALLE : TRAVEL ADVICE

Featured
Nomad of the week
Wednesday, 02nd October
SRI LANKA GUIDE: COLOMBO TO GALLE : TRAVEL ADVICE

Advice:
Talk to people; other travelers. It’s remote enough that the people who are in Sri Lanka really want to be there and are happy to share travel tips.

As a woman, don’t travel solo. Most of the Sri Lankans I met were incredibly kind. The women are lovely but the men are a little aggressive. It’s not safe in the way that Thailand or Laos is safe. A foreign woman’s relative sexual invisibility in most Buddhist countries does not exist here. If for whatever reason, you want to meet other women who have been traveling and are looking for advice, go to a large hotel and sit on the veranda. If you see a woman, talk to her – ask questions; the backpacker scene hasn’t hit Sri Lanka, so there are no hostels- the best place to find fellow female travelers, for advice or company or conversation without expectation, is a hotel or restaurant catering to foreigners.

Learn the basic customs of Sri Lanka (eat with your right hand, take your shoes off at the entrance to a home, cover upper arms and legs to the knee, greeting someone with arms in ‘Namaste’ position with a smile and slight head bow) and how to say ‘Hello’ (āyubūvan ) and ‘thank you’ (istuti ).

Even if it’s a dreary day, the sunset in Sri Lanka is beyond description. Begin each day with everything coming alive; end each day with a phenomenal sunset. Traveling brings you to your best self – and Sri Lanka very much does exactly that. Paradise makes grumpiness dissipate fairly quickly.

April 2013