Monday 6th January 2025

Having only left Sri Lanka, with my wife, Valerie, on Tuesday 3rd December, I have returned today on my own for what has become my regular stint in Sri Lanka in January and February each year, I flew out of Heathrow Airport around 22:00 last night, and landed at Colombo Airport around 13:30 this afternoon. It's only a 10-hour flight coming, but a 12-hour one when you fly back the other way because of the effect of the jet stream, and it went surprisingly quickly.

I was met by Nilanga, a regular driver for me now in Sri Lanka, who took me to the Grand Orient Hotel, where I was staying for one night. We had a little detour on the way to pick up Gavan Goulder's laptop, so that I could take it up to Nuwara Eliya with me tomorrow. Gavan is doing an amazing fundraiser - walking 480 miles from the northern to the southern tip of Sri Lanka -  to support the mental health charity MIND in the UK, and Tea Leaf Trust in Sri Lanka (see the link below).

Having settled in at my hotel, enjoying a hot shower, a shave, and a change of clothes, I took a tuk-tuk to 1 Galle Face to do a specific bit of shopping for a close friend, then took another tuk-tuk to visit my friend Aruni, her husband Babu, and their baby boy Yeshwanth, as I wanted to drop off some baby clothes for them before I headed up to the Hill Country tomorrow. It was lovely to see them again, and I also saw her good friend Kirushanthini and her husband.

Ragu, another good friend from the Hill Country, picked me up from Aruni's, as he lives very near to her, and we then had a short drive to a local beach, where we enjoyed a delicious evening meal, whilst having a good catch-up. It was a pleasantly warm evening, and the most perfect setting to end my first day in Sri Lanka, with my bare feet in the sand as the waves of the Indian Ocean crashed onto the shore directly in front of us. What an amazing contrast from the UK it was!

Here is the link to Gavan's charity fundraiser walk: https://imanoutsider.substack.com/p/sri-lanka-end-to-end-step-by-step

Today's photographs illustrate the contrast between the UK and Sri Lanka perfectly, with a photo taken outside some very good friends' home in Bath today, plus a couple of me on the beach this evening, ordering my food on my phone! There are also three photos that I took earlier on in the afternoon of the view from the top-floor dining area of the Grand Orient Hotel, showing the very industrial landscape backdrop of the port.







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