Cycle day 8 - Monaragala to Pottivul/Arugam Bay - Far too much luggage - Sri Lanka

March 28, 2025

Cycle day 8 - Monaragala to Pottivul/Arugam Bay

Monaragala to Pottuvil/Arugam Bay = 70km (Total distance on this trip so far = 461km)

Weather = Cloudy this morning but that soon burnt off to a sunny hot day (the usual) last night low of 22 with todays high 30 degrees.

Accommodation = 20 House Villa = 2400 rupees ($12.87 AUS)

just thought I would put this here to say yes this is one of the 54 public toilets Sri Lanka has - in fact this was at Kataragama where the massive pilgrimage that occurs in August occurs - hence the public toilet. There were 4 near the temple and another one at the highway intersection to town.

After yesterdays exhilarating blog todays one is a bit ho hum! After posting last nights blog it absolutely poured with rain. If rain does happen it will happen in the late afternoon early evening. It is quite refreshing and fortunately it occurs at a time where the sun is not likely to come back out and make the humidity unbearable. Today we have come to the east coast of Sri Lanka to Arugam Bay which is a surfing mecca but we have not seen too many people as we came through town but more on that later.

Last night after the rain finished we went into town to find an optometrist to see if they could fix his glasses – they did free of charge. We then carried on to Cargills supermarket to get our papaya, bananas, water and we found some brown bread! This is our first brown bread loaf we have seen and I have to admit I am going through some sever carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms! I love my sweet buns in the morning but I do miss brown bread

I looked this Kurrakan bread up and apparently it is a gluten free grain from Ethiopia. But upon looking at the ingredients this is not a gluten free bread (nor is it meant to be I think! As its first ingredient is wheat flour. Nevertheless it is delicious!

Dinner last night was Chicken Kottu. We are coming to the conclusion that each place we go to will have their own version of common meals. Tonights chicken kottu was delicious. More a dry kottu (kottu is just veges, meat and chopped up roti bread) and the spices used made it remind me of the taste of KFC of all bloody things! Gosh I have never eaten so fast in my life I just gulped it down so quickly

Got an early morning wake up call at 5am – mosque chanting that went on for about 2 hours! Fortunately we are awake at 5am and just lay there waiting for the sun to pop over the horizon. We check out the Ramadan dates and it is finishing this Sunday 30 March. Since we are over on the east coast the towns are primarily muslim, still lots of non muslim or hindu people but when we got here we noticed there are alot more muslims in the town.

We have our breakfast on the balcony and we can see a tall tree with lots of peacocks in them and there is one right at the top

Set of at 7.30am and we know it is going to be undulating for a while. We have to go around Peacock rock and it is hard to get a good shot of this rock as they don't believe in building viewing points! But I did manage to get this one which is part of the Peacock Rock group

So it is up and down for about the first 10km then is tapers out a bit with more longer gradual hill going up then down. Everybody is now saying hi to us and waving so we yell out hi as we pass them. The traffic is ok, not exactly heavy but there. Quite a few trucks carrying rice or food supplies to the east coast. We assume the traffic will ease of once we get to Siyambalanduwa which is the turnoff to Ampara which is more popular for people to go to and more scenic. The East coast road doesn't exactly follow the coast line exactly but slightly inland.

Today what was on the road was quite a few tractors hauling a cart of cut sugar cane

I even got stuck behind one on the down hill. It was pointless overtaking it as it was going to be faster than us on the upcoming hill! Looking at the cart of sugar cane obviously it is all cut and stacked by hand. Every now and then as we cycle through these villages we get these snippets of what lives are like and riding past a small group of people I see these men with kindling and stacking them on the ground and then lift and position it on this womans head

Crikey they are tough people here! Unlike how I feel in this photo in a break on the side of the road. Here we are about the 40km mark and I am pooped!

Once past Siyambalanduwa the traffic really drops of but so does the condition of the road. It becomes a wee bit broken up and rough to ride. I get the impression that this east coast side of Sri Lanka is ignored in all aspects of government. Even when we mention to Sri Lankans that we are going over to the east coast and up to Jaffna they seem somewhat shocked and concerned that it is not safe. Which is NOT the case. I think there is alot of bias towards the north due to the civil war they had, some people just won't let it go!

We pass through another National Park – Lahugala. Upon entering they do say watch out for wildlife so our elephant radars go up (we did realise that we don't have any bananas and hope the elephants don't mind!) Alas it wasn't to be, plenty of poop but no elephant sightings. We did see plenty of shy monkeys in the trees

Riding through the National Park is nice as there are tall trees either side of the road and so plenty of shade. Once you leave the town of Lahugala you are into open flat land and exposed to the slight headwind breeze.

There are massive areas of rice fields all be fed by this artificial lake (also known as a tank). It is like this all the way to Pottuvil.

When we get here we are hot and tired and the town is busy and there are people every where tooting at each other (not aggressively just letting us know and others that they are overtaking). We pull up to an ATM and while Neil is in the bank I wait out with the bikes and I look around and I notice there are alot more hijabs and women wearing leg coverings and men wearing those small hats that all signify they are muslim. I am a little self conscience in my cycle shorts but they don't seem to mind and look at me and continue on. A few smirks as although this is a surfing place it is more down in Arugam Bay a few kilometers away that is where the foreigners will be. There are not many out and about in the town of Pottuvil itself – hence the looks!

We find our accommodation and it is a cheapie – less than $13 Australian so brace yourselves!

Yeah I can hear you all now while you look at the shower! It is ok, the toilet is a bit dodgy and continually runs water into the tank and then leaks out. But on a hot day the cold shower is lovely.

We do have to set up the mossie net and that is Neils job while I do the washing!

Had to move the bed around to accommodate our mossie net

Not once while I was doing this did I think shit I wish I was at home putting this in my washing machine!

So tomorrow we have a short day, around 50km to a town called Addalaichenai to break up the long haul to Batticaloa. We are not expecting much along this part of the coast as very few tourists venture here so what accommodation there is it is more geared to the local market.

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 180 km (112 miles)

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