When our family first moved to India, Adam and I came up with a game plan to try to see as much of India and other nearby surrounding countries as we could during our short 3 months stay. We figured this was probably a once in a lifetime chance and that we should make the best use of our time. Our game plan was to try to go and see something new every other weekend. We even made a list of some of the places we wanted to go to and had a tentative schedule on when we’d hit each place. It seemed like the perfect plan. But of course life never sticks to any sort of personal schedule and things come up and delays happen, kids get sick, church callings require your attention, and before you know it plans get pushed off longer and longer.
So when June was upon us, Adam got pretty serious about our plans and started booking flights like crazy to make sure we got everything in that we wanted to. But we didn’t really sit down and logistically figure things out and so what ended up happening is that flights got booked back to back and before we knew it we had completely filled up every single weekend for 5 weekends straight! This also meant that we got home from a very long (and wonderful ) 12 day trip to Thailand, only to be home 3 day and then take off again for a weekend in Sri Lanka, and there wasn’t anyone wanting to do that! We were all exhausted!
Adam tried everything he could to move our Sri Lankan flights around to a different weekend, or to cancel them all together, but it was going to cost us a butt load of money to do either option, so in the end we just figured we’d better go – and we made a pact to be HAPPY about it! Despite our exhaustion.
Things started out a little rocky though when we arrived at the airport only to discover that we had miss-read our departure time and were 3 hours early! Whoops. Then we had to laugh again when we got held up at customs and immigration because Adam’s Visa’s (that I had applied for online) was off by one number. This required us to pay Adam’s Visa application fee of $35 AGAIN (they couldn’t just change it to the right number in the system) and to have a lengthy delay at the Sri Lankan airport. Then once we finally did get through it had been so long that our luggage was now in a different place requiring us to go and pick it up! Aye yi yi!
THEN we ended up getting a taxi, who refused to turn the A/C on unless we paid him almost double what he had quoted, and then it took us until almost 1 am to finally find the hotel (which ended up being more of a hostel) because we had no address and were going off of maps alone. It certainly didn’t start our Sri Lankan trip out on the right foot! Then once we arrived at our hostel hotel, we discovered that the place didn’t have A/C like advertised which made for a pretty miserable nights sleep because Sri Lanka is HOT! Even at 1 in the morning and we were all dying. We ended up having to take cold showers and put cold towels and 2 fans on us to even be able to sleep! Needless to say, we at first were wondering why we just didn’t pay the cancellation fee and get most of our money back!
But as the day went on, things got better, and we started to feel more grateful that we’d made the decision to fly down. It certainly was a beautiful country, with lovely people, and a rich history.
Here is just one reason that I love India! Prayer rooms at the airport? You wouldn’t see that in America! But I love that they offer them in India and encourage people to make that connection with their God each day!
We found a sweet spot in a lounge near our gate to wait out the 3 hours until our flight departed. We got Pizza hut pizza for the kids for dinner and played lots of games of hide and seek in the small area we were in.
I had to get a picture of this girl because this was exactly how our stuardists on our flight on Indigo Air were dressed! I sure do love India and their beautiful Sari’s! đ
Because it had been dark when we arrived at our hostel hotel we had no idea what the place looked like. You can imagine our surprise when we woke up to being surrounded by water on 3 sides! Amazing. This was the view out our front door.
The tall house was where they had a lounge area and where breakfast was served. Then the smaller houses with green roofs were where we slept. We had 2 of the 3 rooms.
The view from the breakfast area.
A front view of our hotel.
The Lounge area of the hotel.
Waking up in a beautiful place like this sure did lift our spirits and helped us to have a better attitude about our rough start in Sri Lanka.