No tour will work well unless the Guide is right. Upali was absolutely outstanding

Cynthia, Upali the tourguide, and Ted

14-29 Nov 2012 

We arrived several hours late in Colombo due to various delays on the outward flight. Despite this, and after a fairly confusing phone call to Jith from Doha our guide/driver Upali was waiting for us. We were very relieved to see him. The 3 hour transfer to our hotel in Kitulgala had to be driven through the ‘rush’ hour. There wasn’t a lot of rushing but it was a real experience enduring the driving conditions in a new country. Upali quickly gave us confidence in his own driving skills and it remains a mystery how he avoided all manner of hazards on this and all subsequent journeys.

Our alternative hotel (2 nights) at Kitulgala was fine with particularly friendly staff. The food was good.

Our second stay at Martin’s Lodge (3 nights) was a completely different  - even unique – experience. It was certainly ‘basic’ accommodation and not for the squeamish but perched high in the rain forest it gave the perfect feeling of being there. It was the one place we stayed where all the guests (English, Dutch, French and Czech) joined in to share the excitement of their time in the forest and a feeling of real camaraderie and friendship. The traditional food was fine though a week of it may have seemed a long time. Martin was an excellent host for whom nothing was too much trouble

The Hibiscus Garden Hotel at Tissamaharama (3 nights) in comparison, offered us pure and welcome luxury. Good food, excellent packed breakfasts and lunches and very comfortable accommodation. There was little time to enjoy the facilities because the birding was so good.

The Binota Residency (2nights –room not serviced) at Nuwara Eliya gave magnificent views over the surrounding countryside. The food on offer gave less choice than other places and had a more European slant. We were however offered the chance to see some of the England/India Test match on the television!

The Nature Walk Resort (1 night)  was quite basic but with spotlessly clean accommodation  and a stunning outlook.

In the above 2 ‘resorts’ we were given quite ordinary rooms when there were clearly better rooms available. At the Binota Residency we were the only guests.

2 nights at the Sigiriyra Village Hotel returned us to luxury and to really good food. We could hardly have hoped for anything better though we would clearly have found it on our last night at Ranweli Holiday Village. Unfortunately our flight out from Colombo was at 0430 hrs so we didn’t see much of this particular place.

We thought that the accommodation provided gave us a good cross section of what was available and a very good impression of the standards of hospitality in Sri Lanka. It was particularly interesting to stay in the differing styles of accommodation. This was a really well planned tour.

The Guide/Driver

No tour will work well unless the Guide is right. In this respect we can only say that Upali was absolutely outstanding. That he safely drove the entire route (without taking a wrong turn) was little short of a miracle but of course his main mission was to get us to the best places for birding – and then to find the birds we had gone to see. We all know that birding is an imprecise art and that nothing is guaranteed. It helps a great deal if your guide has real experience of the habitats involved and the best techniques and flexibility for finding the birds that live there. Upalis ability to get us into the right places and so often to then entice birds out of the  densest undergrowth was an object lesson in highly developed field skills. He did it time and again. He made our tour into something very special.

Yes we failed to find some quite common birds,  but did manage to find most of the endemics in a total list of just over 200 species. We would have settled for less than that.

The only regret is that we never found time to finish the bottle of Arak we started at Martin’s Lodge nor indeed to start the next one which Upali’s efforts so richly deserved.

Ted and Cynthia Jackson