April 1, 2025
Cycle day 11 - Batticaloa to Trincomalee
Batticaloa to Trincomalee = 145km (Total distance on this trip so far = 716km)
Weather = ah the usual – a low of 25 with a top of 31 degrees and hot! A cloudy day to start and then turning sunny day with no rain forecasted again. A helpful tailwind breeze coming as a southeasterly at about 15km per hour.
Accommodation = Pleasant Park Holiday in = 4300 rupees ($25.91 AUD)
Yeah that total distance today is correct! But more on that later.
We had a lovely rest day in Batticaloa. The room we were in was always very hot and you always had to have the fan on full speed to cool it down. But come night time the fan was too loud and so you put it on normal speed and soon enough the room really heated up. The first night I realised the sheets on the bed didn't have any breathing possibility at all as we both repeatedly woke up sweating and the mattress was saturated and so had a poor nights sleep. The second night we dumped the sheets and used the cotton blanket to line the mattress and our sleep was a little better.
Now yesterday was Eid public holiday so alot of things were closed. But we cycled around and had a look at the outside of the fort – not as impressive as the one in Galle but still good enough
In the afternoon we waundered down to the beach – it was packed our first night just before sunset – Eid celebrations. In the afternoon there weren't so many, we had intended to go for a swim but once there we realised that it probably is not a great swimming beach. Lovely to look at but the waves were breaking with no long run in or out and you could see that basically you stepped into the water and due to the constant dumping of the waves the sand just dropped off and was very deep. So we just left it and came back to the accommodation.
So dinner while we were at Batticaloa was at the same place both nights. We found a superb vegetarian restaurant and we had no idea what we were having or eating but one was a vege kottu and the other was some sort of fake meat (soy strips) and veges both were delicious and as well as a vege samosa and donda (potato in ball and deep fried). The second night was the same basically but at the end we got a tea and before we could say black tea he was away and preparing it and when he came back it had milk in it ... but this one is for you Michael Goff – it had evapourated or condensed milk and it was sweet but crikey it was delicious. We immediately thought of you but we couldn't remember if it is evapourated or condensed milk that you had with you drinks. It is something that we wouldn't do at home but definitely do again here while in Sri Lanka
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We also spent our rest day extending our visas which was sucessfull – we just need to wait for them to email us the bill. We also mapped out the changes to the route – kandy at the end. Which leads us into todays ride. Between Batticaloa and Trincomalee there is very little accommodation of booking.com There is some on Google maps which are more suited to local. We had a plan to try for Vakari (pronounced Va-hair-ri) if the accomodation is ok (that is at about 63km) if not then onto Seruwawila which has an entire 6 bed villa for 14000 rupees (around $65AUD). Seruwawila is 100km from Batticaloa. Hence the 6am start just after sunrise we left. It was nice and quite and cool for the 2 first hours then the traffic really picked up.
Not long out of Batticaloa we saw these people
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LOL yup they are either searching for land mines or training - practising setting up and dealing with landmines. We think it might be the later as there were no warnings or public exclusion zones as it was beside the road. Then again I am not sure just how conscientious Sri Lanka is with regard to health and safely! We did go through a past military zone just after Verugal and we were stopped and asked a few general inquiry questions about where we are from, we were are going and how long we are here in Sri Lanka – you know more sticky beak questions rather than are you carrying military equipment on your bike! They were pulling over everyone!
So it was a very long day for us and Vakari didn't turn out for us -there was no accommodation and Seruwawila – we thought a 6 bed villa was a bit of an overkill so we opted to try for Trincomalee as we both felt good and we had a good tailwind with us that allowed us to sit on 20km per hour comfortably. I thought it was only an extra 30km after Seruwawila so 130km. But Neil tells me later it is 135km -where the extra 10km comes from is our Batticaloa accomodation is further south of central Batticaloa and at Mutur we missed the sign to turn to go to Trincomalee. Now that is something very easy to do here as the signs are not always there or something more than likely was parked in front of it and blocked us from seeing it – there signs are not up higher than truck height so it is overhead but more at eyelevel so very easy to miss (if there was one at all!) If there is one it is usually on 1 warning and that is usually 5m from the turning point! We must have done an extra 5km there – We didn't realise until we got around a corner and there was ocean and no 5km long bridge for us to cross over to get to Trincomalee! Checked on Google and yip we were miles away from out turnoff.
From Mutur (at about 115km) we were beginning to tire but still ok to go (no choice really!). The traffic was thick and heavy all day as families were returning from a major festival celebrating Eid. So there were heaps of motorbikes, trucks, vans and buses and tuk tuk all carrying muslim families back home and the majority all waved at us and smiled and some even pulled up along side for a chat – we had a group of 2 motorbikes all really interested in us and we even had to stop for selfies with them. They were 2 very progressive muslim couples. The men had no issue chatting to me and shook our hands even the women shook our hands. But so many muslim people waved at us and they even knew I was a woman – after being in Pottuvil and getting a few tsk tsk moments when waiting outside the supermarket for Neil I became very self conscience of wearing cycling shorts (albeit wearing the longest ones I own!) But today I felt alot better with their reaction tome. So that made my day – although after nearly 8 hours on the bike and 10 ½ hours on the road it was somewhat hard to maintain the “Hi” smile and wave attitude but we perservered!
Again I am going to give you a snippet of our day as there is really no major story.
The weather north of Batticaloa has changed it is no long oppressively humid hot but just what we called Australian dry hot! I kid you not! How else could be do the distance today. There is no way we could have done it if is was its usual oppressive humidity that we have had South of Batticaloa! In saying that even the landscape has changed – gone are the massive rice fields and banana trees and more pastoral (beef) and small vege farming plots with alot of poor farm houses and we think they just eek out an existence. The green at the side of the roads looks decidedly like Victoria in Spring! And we came across a solar farm – yeah that is Australian! And to make it even more like we were back cycling in Aussie we had some stones that looked remarkably like “Devils Marbles”
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Other things today included lunch – more vegetarian samosa type things and some sort of cake that was tasteless but had sugar which is what we needed! So I ate all of mine but Neil wasn't keen on the cake
Saw a bicycle that was carrying a very high load of kindling- very expertly packed and carried
Saw some government sponsored farming houses – yeah had a run on blue paint. The owner of the accommodation in Batticaloa said there was some for women with children after they war ended and they needed housing as their husbands had died during the war.
There is alot of poor people living a very subsistence sort of life out here
Between Mutur and Trincomalee we passed through many seaside villages all had their fish out to dry and I spent the whole time unsuccessfully trying to hold my breath while riding through these villages -alas there were too many of them and they were spread out to far – I didn't know if I was going to pass out from the stench or from lack of breathing! Gosh I almost dry wrenched again! (I am my Mothers daughter – now I definitely know she didn't pick up the wrong baby!)
A lovely looking mosque in Trincomalee
A lovely looking hindu temple just out of Batticaloa
And an over loaded hay stack on the back of a tractor
Relieved we found our accommodation just after 4pm. We were exhausted and I even had some heat rash on my legs!
Had a lovely cold shower, bought some plastic cups and had a cuppa strawberry tea and found another great vegetarian restaurant to eat at. Had no idea what was what so it was easier to say we don't know so you just suggest to us and he did – All I heard was marsala, rotti, samosa etc. But we ate it all!
Accommodation is sensational – yeah I will get use to the pink and we have the airconditioner included this time and the bed is so comfy! I think we will sleep tonight. We will stay here tomorrow since we have just cycled 2 days worth and are a day up. Besides after todays effort I doubt if I would be able to go far tomorrow!
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Today's ride: 145 km (90 miles)
Total: 198 km (123 miles)
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