Sri Lanka – fka Ceylon

Is Sri Lanka really worth a visit?

Well, basically, almost every place on earth is worth visiting. But we wanted to go to Sri Lanka mainly for the following reasons:

• There is supposed to be a spectacular train connection from the capital Colombo over the central mountains to the east side of the island to Ella, which has become so hyped by the Instagram community that even locals find it difficult to get tickets.
• In addition to wild landscapes, there are also said to be very natural national parks with elephants, birds and leopards.
• Apparently, incredibly friendly people live here.

These are at least three reasons to book a long trip to Sri Lanka. If you have ample financial resources at your disposal, getting there shouldn’t be a big problem. However, if you need to plan a little more carefully and effectively, you’ll have to dig deeper into your bag of tricks to find reasonable flight connections at acceptable prices.

Arrival

From Germany, there are routes via Turkey, India, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) or Singapore. Direct connections are rarely offered by holiday airlines. We opted for the route via Singapore, which we also want to visit on this occasion.

At Singapore Airport, we check in at the SriLankan Airlines counter. We notice that there is apparently still room for improvement when it comes to German thoroughness: the lady asks us several times whether we have power banks or other devices with batteries in our suitcases. And although we assure her this several times, we still have to sign a form at the end confirming that none of the prohibited items are being sent on the journey in our suitcases.

Unfortunately, however, the SriLankan lounge is rather disappointing: the furnishings are uninspiring; comparisons with the much-cited railway station concourse come to mind, only with carpet and upholstered chairs. Furthermore, the selection is not overwhelming, but this is not a major issue given the early hour. So we don’t linger here too long, but take the Sky Train to our gate, wait there for a short while and look forward to the short hop of about 2575 km to Sri Lanka.

On board the plane, we are treated to exceptionally good catering: we are welcomed with champagne, or alternatively juice and water. From the menu that follows, we treat ourselves only to the small bites offered as starters. And we are perfectly happy with that. Afterwards, it’s time for a relaxing nap before the plane touches down on time at Bandaranaike International Airport after an extremely smooth flight, despite being shaken by strong crosswinds.

This airport is located approximately 35 km north of Colombo and can be reached from there via a toll motorway for most of the journey. Due to the toll, traffic on this motorway is more than tolerable compared to other road conditions in the Colombo area.

For this transfer, we also use the services of Welcome Pickups, whose driver takes us to our hotel in Colombo reliably, safely and in a clean vehicle. All in all, it’s a relatively relaxed journey, taking just over three hours to fly from Singapore and then another half hour to drive into the city.