Sri Lanka is entirely new to me. I once pictured it as something similar or maybe tamer than Nepal, but as our plane flew over its land and I saw all that expanse of greens, I knew it would be quite different from what I had in mind. Indeed, Sri Lanka has its fare share of temples, both Muslim and Buddhist, some of which are listed under the UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it also has a unique culture, in terms of food, architecture and practices. But most of all, what it has, up its sleeves, are its unspoiled natural environment. Here wild elephants still graze the plains, its long beaches are almost always deserted and its tea-laden hills and mountains, pristine and blanketed by constant mists.

The old train chugged onwards, slowly climbing upwards and upwards into the mountains. Fine mist swirled and enveloped us, making the trees surrounding the rail tracks seem like ethereal ghosts, its limbs and leaves almost lost in the whiteness of everything. We passed through a dark tunnel cut into the earth, compressing our view. And as we emerged from the darkness, a vista of the plains below opened right before our unglassed windows, clouds gently flowing like the sea over ridges of the mountains, a white stupa barely able to peek through the cottony blanket.

TAKING THE BUS TOWARDS ELLA TOWN

Knowing that we’re in for a ten-hour train ride going back to Fort Colombo, we started our day quite early. Packing our bags from the Ella Jungle Resort, we navigated the make-shift cable car up, then piled into the 4x4 truck that would bring us back to civilization.

“Where the heck are we heading?!” I asked C as we rumbled through a dense jungle at the back of a 4x4 truck. After what seemed like a very long time of twisting and turning along a dirt path, the driver pausing once to chop a hanging branch blocking our path, the monster of a vehicle finally came to a stop. On a ravine, what looks like a makeshift cable car waited for us and our backpacks. We obediently boarded and were soon creaking and careening down to the plains below.

INTO THE JUNGLE OF ELLA

Apparently, we were heading to our home for three days in Ella, a mountain town at the Uva Province of Sri Lanka. It wasn’t easy getting there from the east coast of the country. It took us a total of three correct bus transfers, one incorrect drop-off (which added another trishaw ride), the better part of the morning, and a lot of patience to get from Arugam Bay to Monoragala (LKR249.00), then to Welawaya (LKR49.00), and finally to Ella in Badulla (LKR69.00).

And we weren’t about finished just yet.

More than an hour later and we were no closer to the gleaming white stupa we saw at the far end of the beach. The heat was intoxicating as we trudged across the sizzling golden sand of Arugam bay. Above, a rare sun ring glowed, on our left, bushes and trees, and on our right, the might of the Bay of Bengal, its waves several feet high, booming as it meets the carved sandy shoreline of the beach. Our feet were starting to get confused, do we go ahead or turn back.

For days, we stayed in Arugam Bay, a coastal town east of Sri Lanka. We wanted to sea the ocean. And indeed, we saw it. In its full might.

The waves tore the beach to pieces; pushing it, sculpting it to a near-forty five-degree slope. We stood at the edge of the mini-precipice, gawking and wondering if its possible to actually swim here. Instead, we sat down, the sea lapping our feet every time another batch of waves comes in, snatching our bottles of Lion Beer overhead whenever a particularly huge one slams into the shore, and simply enjoyed the setting sun without ever dipping down the raging sea.

GREEN TRISHAWS AT THE MAIN ROAD OF ARUGAM BAY

It was the surfing season for Arugam Bay, a stretch of sea east of Sri Lanka. We found our way to this surfer haven after almost half a day of changing local transports southbound from Kalkudah to its main town by trishaw (LKR250.00), then a bus to Batticaloa (LKR44.00), and another bus ride to Kalmunai (LKR59.00), a bus to Pottuvil, where Arugam Bay is located (LKR93.00), and finally a trishaw (LKR200.00) to our lodging, Seahorse Inn. Surprisingly, even with Sri Lanka’s outdated transports, everything is well organized and getting from one place to another was a breeze. We were, nonetheless, totally bushed as we arrived at Arugam Bay.