Sri Lanka and the incoming cyclone

Leaving Sigiria in Sri Lanka we were very concerned about the weather forecast. The skies had gotten darker and darker over the last few days and the rains had started. In truth, they hadn’t really stopped. Have you ever wondered how the skies can hold quite so much water? Yeah, me too. And this was setting new records. Records for the amount of continuous rain I had seen. And, records for how much Sri Lanka had seen. Records I wasn’t keen on holding.

Excited to be heading to Kandy

Our taxi to Kandy must have heard that records were there to be broken. The record he was going for was the land speed record. Or at least that is how it felt. It turns out that the taxi ride into Sigiriya was just a practice run. Those of you that have travelled in Sri Lanka will know that most of the roads are single lane in each direction. This feels more like a challenge than a constraint for the majority of drivers, ours included. Even in dry conditions this would have been terrifying.

But with the rain beating down, the blowers in the car on full blast trying to deal with the condensation, the inside of the car was freezing. How is your holiday going? Overtaking multiple buses, on blind bends, and with the windscreen wipers going like the clappers, I sent a silent prayer upstairs.

Cursing other drivers as “maniacs” who had the temerity to overtake and thus be in our lane heading straight towards us he was doing the exact same thing for almost the whole drive. We finally arrived in a rain soaked Kandy, greeted with a hot pot of tea and a chance to reset our nervous systems. Never has box breathing been so effective.

Kandy is a beautiful, scenic town, located in the central hills area of Sri Lanka and is the cultural capital. Home to the “tooth relic”, which to be honest, doesn’t sound that appealing to me. However, it was on our list of tourist things to do whilst in Kandy. As was the sunset walk up to the giant buddha. Both of which we didn’t get to do. I wonder if you can guess why?

Cyclone incoming in Kandy

If you had given me 100 hundred guesses I would not have landed on “the worst cyclone Sri Lanka had experienced in a generation”. How about you?

Despite the rain, we knew we only had three nights in Kandy and wanted to make the most of it. So, in rain jackets and with our umbrella we headed to the hotel reception to order a tuk tuk through the “Pick Me” app, a local version of Uber. Strangely, nobody would pick our ride up. We assumed it was the weather. Over the course of the time we were in Kandy we discovered that it wasn’t the weather hampering our attempts to get transport. It was the tuk tuk mafia.

Tuk tuk mafia in Kandy

Yes, the tuk tuk mafia is a real thing, and not only in Kandy. Local drivers unhappy with the competition that ride hailing apps bring to places threaten drivers who use them, with violence. This is nothing new to us. We have had the same problem in parts of Bali. Before technology, before apps, for those that remember, local taxi and tuk tuk drivers could charge exactly what they want. These vehicles didn’t have meters. I have certainly been ripped off across the world in the “pre-mobile” travel days. I still bristle at the price I paid in Cordoba, Argentina for a short ride to the hostel. Not familiar with local currencies and not having a frame of reference of how much rides cost it is only in retrospect that you realise you have been done up like a kipper.

Remember that time in Hanoi?

This does still happen to me. Done up like a kipper. Like the time in Hanoi and I paid off a street vendor’s mortgage when buying two bahn mi. Anyway, enough of that. I’m not bitter. They are trying to make a living and I need food. We all win.

Today, kippers were off the menu, as were our hopes of getting a tuk tuk. We started walking, in the rain, and within 30 minutes we were having a very good Sri Lankan lunch at Cafe 1886. In fact, it was so good we called again the day after. And we thought it was closed as the dining room was in the dark. In fact, even though the power was out, the chefs were cooking on a gas hob by the lights of their mobile phones. The food was just as good, eaten in the dark of the unlit dining room.

As is common in Sri Lanka, the restaurant was not licensed so the strongest thing we could drink on each visit was water. Sat in the window with excellent views of the Red Mosque we looked at each and without words we communicated our thoughts. Would it ever stop raining?

The best laid plans in Kandy

It didn’t. And it got worse. What we soon discovered was that Sri Lanka was about to experience its worst cyclone in almost 100 years. And Kandy was in the eye of the storm. We fell asleep to the sound of rain pounding down. We awoke to the same sound. Our three night stay became four as the town of Kandy became inaccessible, in or out. We had tickets for the Kandy to Ella train ride, a train ride in the world’s top 10 train rides, and that got cancelled. Along with all the trains across the country. It really was not looking good.

At some point we lost wifi. And as all travellers around the world know, wifi is our lifeline. Lifeline to the next bus reservation. The next hotel room. The next tuk tuk. Without wifi life on the road is very difficult. Heading to reception we anticipated a very simple solution that would be quickly resolved. Not so, it turns out that wifi was down across the whole country with no timescale for its return. My saviour, my lifeline was an esim that allowed me to access data on my phone.

Bunkering down in our hotel room, between games of Uno I was reading of fellow travellers in Kandy sharing stories on a Facebook group. Through one of these stories I connected with a traveller from Aberdeen, Scotland who was travelling with her husband and in a very similar situation to us. In Kandy longer than planned and very keen to leave as soon as the roads opened up again.

At some point in the early evening we lost power. The whole hotel was in darkness. And was for sometime until we heard the click of electricity being returned to the room. Followed by the bedside phone ringing. It was the hotel reception letting us know that we were now on backup generator power that would only be on until 10pm. We quickly plugged our phones in so we could get some juice before we lost power again.

A way out of Kandy?

On that fourth evening Lyn messaged to say there could be an option to leave in the morning. By private taxi. We had to wait until at least 9am when hopefully a local will have confirmed the state of the roads. Waking the following morning I had an early message from Lyn. The roads appear to be open and we are leaving at 8am. Cue us frantically packing, rushing a cup of tea, and packing up.

Unfortunately, access to our hotel was cut off due to a couple of landslides so the taxi couldn’t come to us. We had to walk to them, wheeling our bags in the rain, under our umbrellas. Finding them parked at the bottom of the hill and after some quick introductions, we headed out of Kandy, four of us in the back of a minivan and the driver.

The roads out were a lot worse than I even imagined. Trees down, across the roads. Some roads were completely lost to landslides. Homes devastated by landslides and fallen trees. Traffic was down to one lane. In a couple of places our road was closed and we had to take lengthy detours through small villages. Our two hour taxi ride became 6 and a half hours but we did manage to make it out of the hills and to the coast. I know from the Facebook group I was part of that many other travellers weren’t as fortunate and had extend their stay in Kandy by a number of days.

Here comes the sun in Galle

In the taxi, once we knew we would make it out safely, I booked a hotel for one night in Galle. It turns out it was the only hotel I was trusted to book, but we did have somewhere to sleep for a night. We would regroup there and work out our next steps. The first week hadn’t gone to plan but we now had blue skies and sunshine. Things were looking up.