Day 1 Travel to Sri Lanka

Our overnight flight to Columbo, of 10 hours and 45 minutes, departed and arrived on time and we managed to nap on and off. The temperature on arrival was a very warm 33 degrees, with 80 percent humidity and very strong sunshine. We are pretty near the equator so day and night will be of near equal length.

After imigration and collecting our suitcases we met our guide and half of our fellow travellers, the others had arrived on an earlier flight. Despite the war in the Middle East everyone has made it here.

We boarded our small coach for the 30 minute drive north to our first hotel in Veyangoda. It's quite luxurious by Exodus standards!

The view fom our room

The pool at night

Had a dip in the very warm pool and covered ourselves in Deet to hopefully fend off the mossies which apparently put in an appearance in the  late afternoon. We have a small lake outside our balcony and spotted some beautiful birds in the early evening, including a kingfisher. Even with Neil's long lens we didn't get a decent photo of any but lovely to watch them, especially as they were feeding on the mossies!

In the evening we had a welcome meeting followed by a buffet dinner which was delicious, then sat chatting with our fellow travellers before heading off to bed for a well deserved early night.