…and welcome Sri Lanka!

Life in Sri Lanka in general is almost an opposite to the peace and quiet of Namibia: people zigzag in the busy streets, air is filled with smog and honking sounds from tuktuks and buses. Everywhere you look you see people with a smile on their face, and a curry stand in every other corner. Welcome to Asia!

It might not be the best idea to travel 5 hours to Dambulla in a local bus after a 20-hour flight, but we wanted to have a more peaceful option to Colombo, so we just had to bear it, and it turned out to be a great way to experience the local way of living and traveling.

Buses run regularly from Colombo’s main station to almost every corner of the country at the most reasonable price (from 0,3 € to 3 € for a 6-hour bus ride!), but there is a hidden side for the cheap cost. Busses are very crowded and you are lucky to have a seat, so it’s good to get on the bus from the first station. The traffic in Sri Lanka is an experience of its own, so it might be better to sit in a seat without visibility to the road, as sometimes you are almost scared to death! But, you can usually count on having a local Karaoke show playing on the bus TV or radio, so it won’t get boring. Somehow the locals manage in the traffic, and you can always honk your horn if otherwise it’s difficult to get pass the three vehicles already blocking the road side by side.

After a well-earned rest in a beautiful Golden Rainbow Guest House we headed to the magnificent UNESCO World Heritage Site, Dambulla cave temples, which have five different-sized temples carved inside caves, and more than 80 documented caves in the surrounding area. The Dambulla cave monastery is still functional and remains the best-preserved ancient edifice in the country. The temple caves have been built under a massive overhanging rock, which even has a drip line to keep the interiors dry - it must have been a state of art engineering work during the first century BCE.

Tempel guards - cute, but steal your food whenever possible

The murals cover an area of 2,100 square metres

There is also another UNESCO World Heritage Site close by, Sigiriya, so it was obvious to pay a visit there as well. This ancient rock fortress, which was built, according to a legend, by King Kasyapa to form his new capital, is also known as the Lion Rock, as there is a gateway inside in the form of an enormous lion. As the weather was quite misty, we decided to climb to the nearby Pidurangala rock instead, from which we were able to witness the same stunning views with a tenth of the cost.