There is a saying I love so much – it goes like this: “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance.”
And that’s so true.
I traveled alone to India and Sri Lanka, but I was never alone. I met great people and I am very – very grateful for that.
In India I lived together at the same hostel with the other volunteers, so we spent a lot of time together, there was always something to do – and Sri Lanka brought something new every day.
In Udawalawe, a German girl became my companion, with whom I had the most beautiful moment, when we had dinner 10 meters away from a safari park.
Imagine a nicely set table with candles, a pleasant summer evening – it was dark, no noise, all silent and calm … – we only heard the footsteps of animals passing behind us or the tree branches slip under their feet.
That was the most beautiful evening in a long time for me.
In Ella I shared an 8-bed room with other backpacker travelers like me – I loved it from the first minute , the mood was so good.Everybody welcomed me lovingly. There I met a Dutch girl who is a crossfit coach, an American girl who makes jewels, an Australian girl who is a hairdresser and there was a French guy and a Taiwanese guy.
After Ella, Nuwara Eliya followed – it was my biggest adventure. 🙂
When I arrived to the city and landed from the bus, many people came to me offering taxi or accomodation. Since I had no reservation for the night, I listened to their offers and decided on an accommodation.
The price was ok, which included a shuttle, so I decided to stay there. I quickly checked on the internet if it was a real place – it was- it even got 4.5 rating on booking.com, so I got calm and got into the car.
The place was approx 7 kilometers far from the city center, the owner droove me there.
Outside, the building was quite beautiful.
But when I entered……. it was very cold, it smelled really musty, old furniture, carpets, sofas …. and I was alone with the guy … …I had a really bad feeling… I felt that I wanted to leave very quickly, I started to back away slowly- and I was just about turning around to leave when a young guy ran downstairs from the floor above on the stairs with a huge speed, questioning the owner where he was because the wifi was not working. 🙂
And I was so happy …. finally someone and European. 🙂
Immediately I asked who he was, if there are more people here . It turned out that there were three of them, three Dutch guys, only that they were upstairs. 🙂
The three of them came down to talk to me. Two are in the army, paratroopers, they showed me many videos and pictures of their work and the third guy is still learning.
I stayed at that place just because of these guys. They were very nice, they told me really interesting stories, we were laughing a lot.
After the conversation, we had dinner together in a very cozy little restaurant, and in the morning they took me to the train station by their tuk tuk they hired.
I might say that my “thoughtless” decision has become my most memorable one.
In Kandy, a young guy accompied me as I was walking up to the thirty-foot tall white statue of Buddha. We were visiting this great monument together, he tour guided me around the city, went along with me to the local market and stayed with me until my train left.
Kandy really stays as a nice memory for me because of him – he helped me very kindly.
I would have countless similar stories, but what really matters is that I met really good people – every day, without exception.
