Sri Lanka Travel

Sri Lanka is an island nation located off the coast of India. One of the worst things about traveling is going to third world countries and passing by the poverty while you continue on with your trip to a rainforest or where ever you may be going to. When the tsunami happened in December 05 I decided to go over and do as much as I could. Sri Lanka has had lots of problems aside from the tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people on the eastern and southern coasts. The country has had a civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels in the north fighting their own country. Sri Lanka has had suicide bombings, skirmishes, problems with land mines and more because of the conflict.

Sri Lanka Links
	The official capital of Sri Lanka is called Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte which is located on the western side of the island. Aside from being very difficult to pronounce, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is a small suburb of the larger city Colombo, which is usually considered to be the capital. As a matter of fact, I never heard of Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte until after I left Sri Lanka! These photos above are from one of the markets in Colombo. As you can see its a very busy place, I saw people using cars, trucks, wheel barrels, wagons and other tools to transport goods back and forth. The person above is a friend I made while I was in the city. On the left is a family from Colombo who were helping send supplies to the victim of the Tsunami.

	Much of Sri Lanka is made up swamps and wetlands. I took a boat tour through one of the swamps and saw a lot of wildlife in a short time. I saw some animals such as monkeys, reptiles and many species of birds such as this heron.

	I came across some canals in Sri Lanka that I explored with some people. On the left is a monitor, a large type of lizard found in the old world. The shack on the right is someone's humble house in the jungle.

	Here are some pictures of the ocean not too far from the Capital Columbo. These pictures are from the western side of the country which is opposite of the side that was hit by the tsunami. When I was in Sri Lanka helping for the tsunami I had to ride with the supply trucks going from the capital to the east side of the country, and many of them were being hijacked. We were pulled over literally about 10 times during our drive that took us the whole night. Usually police pulled us over, but several times the military would stop us to, sometimes asking me for my passport, other times making us open up the back to inspect what we were carrying, but they were always straight to the point and were polite about it. In the city of Batticula there was a grenade attack on a church while I was in the city that left some people dead and dozens injured. The violence and danger in Sri Lanka is definitely there, but almost everyone I encountered were extremely helpful and polite. Once when we were delivering supplies my driver stopped and we went to a restaurant that was packed with nothing but Sri Lankans. They eat with their hands there so I was being watched by many people as I tried to do this. There was a TV on the wall and about 5 minutes after I had sat down it was changed it to English, which I'm sure someone thoughtfully changed it just for me. Another time I had a problem finding my hotel because I had it written down as the India Regent but no one heard of it and it was not in any phone books. Someone I didn't know took me to his home and stayed with me until I was able to finally locate it. Later it turned out that the hotel was the Indra Regent and it was bran new so not listed anywhere.
	I even heard of story of some Sri Lankans who worked at a hotel and went out to rescue some tourists and saved them but lost their own lives. To help out with the tsunami was the only reason I went to Sri Lanka, so of course I will write about my experiences with it. Here are the pictures of the tsunami damage in eastern Sri Lanka. I spent most of my time packing supplies like food and clothes and then at night I'd ride with supply trucks to deliver everything. The rides took all night and the roads were terrible, I don't think we got over 40 mph on any of the supply runs. When I got to one camp some Sri Lanka guy came into the bathroom I was using at 5am and closed the door and tried to sexually assault me. He held the door shut and whispered some nasty things to me so when I started yelling he took off running and that was the last I saw of him. On the left you can see some metal railings that were twisted from the force of the rushing water. I also saw a radio tower that had to be at least 100 feet tall and it was twisted up into a ball. The material you see in the trees is clothes from the victims, many of them were found naked because their clothes were ripped off after being swept through trees.

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