March 12, 2025
Introduction - getting closer to departure!
It is now Wednesday morning and we are 4 days from our departure day on Saturday. Over the past 2 months we have been buying, sorting out and putting aside all that we need for this trip to Sri Lanka and it is not much!
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We fly Sri Lanka Airlines directly to Negombo, about a 9-10 hour flight I think, all other airlines had stop overs at various ports and it was dragging out to 16 hours with stop overs - hence our choice of airline.
This is our first international cycle touring in such a long time (25 plus years!) We have done the odd NZ tour (but again that is a while ago and besides we don't count NZ as international since it is my 2nd home!)
So Sri Lanka it is - we hope to cycle around the whole island and we have a plan but by no means do we expect to actually stick to this plan as circumstances can and will change our itinerary. Nothing is booked apart from our first few nights accomodation in Negombo. Even with that booking we are not quite sure if is secure as we arrive after midnight at our accomodation and they regard that as a Sunday check in even though I have stated that we are happy to pay for the Saturday booking as it is a late check in - they couldn't quite grasp that .... so we shall see if we have a room when we get there!
Preparation for this tour has been somewhat different compared to our preparation for our numerous Australian cycle tours. The most noticeable difference is our luggage or weight carried on the bike (you will have to wait until we get there and start cycling to see a comparison photo of our bikes in Sri Lanka vs our bikes in Darwin/Western Australia trips!) Lets just say I should rename this blog to "Where the heck is my luggage"
Training prep has been very easy as we only have back pannier bags so we could just leave weight in our panniers and ride! There is no tent gear, no cooking gear, minimal water (3 litres compared to 23 litres leaving places in last years tour) and minimal food carried.
We did have to get a few vaccinations to protect ourselves and we did this on Christmas Eve!
Our vaccinations included Japanese Encephalitis, Hepatitis A, Typhoid and Neil got an extra one - Tetanus (I had one previously when I decided to sew my finger to what I was making!) While most of the vaccinations were reasonably priced - the damn Japanese Encephalitis was not and unfortunately this was 1 injection we did not want to for go!
Needless to say there has been an absolute flurry of activity here in Huntly this week. We don't leave things to the last minute and have been routinely preparing our gear, I have been busy sewing my clothing (which is very light cotton loose shirts and pee cloths - although they don't have many, if any, public toilets so I will have to be brave and pee in the jungle and watch out for leeches? which is a bit better than worrying about snakes and spiders!)
Despite approaching this last week feeling organised and prepared I feel like Monday and Tuesday have just been messy with absolutely everything! I am not a stressful person but I have had a unforseen issues so far ... for example - currency, we organised this very early on and upon investigation as to what is now used to travel long term overseas (other than the credit card) and I asked myself "what has happended to the good ole travellers cheque!" Yip it sure has been a looooooong time! We will carry our credit card and use it if we have to but we have got an UP card (Bendigo Bank) which is a debit card, but it doesn't charge transaction fees. Since Sri Lanka is predominantly a cash economy we will be using cash. And what do we carry our cash in? Yip the good ole money belt! In our Op shopping sprees we came across these brand new under clothing money belts so we grabbed them. 1 was an around the neck and the other is around the waist. The neck one was poorly designed and the zip broke while the waist one is good. However I hate shopping and didn't want to drag my arse around the shops looking for a waist money belt, so out comes the money belts from 30 odd years ago that we used in our international travels - now I grabbed mine and clearly I had not considered at any point in the past 2 months of preparing that 30 years ago I was 23 and slim so imagine my surprise when I got my money belt out and what? ... I it is too small and doesn't effin' fit! Crikey back on the sewing machine to add elastic to extend it so it can fit and yet still be comfortable - but it was such a rush job that I had cut off to much webbing and the adjuster didn't work with the elastic so I grabbed Neils old one and that had wide elastic as the belt and that was over stretched and had lost its elasticity so back on the sewing machine to replace it with webbing and voila! success!!! Whew!
Also adding to my stress is the fact that I had decided early on that I was going to treat some of my clothing with Permithrin (yeah sheep dip!) so upon investigation I got 20ml bottles from Snowys (an outdoor store) because I made my 3 shirts and was very indecisive about what t shirts and pants to take - this treating of the clothing and my sleep sheet was done late yesterday afternoon - fortunately we had hot temps so the sheep dipping of my clothing dried very quickly! Why treat some of my clothing? I am a sweater and it is going to be hot and steamy in Sri Lanka where the human population is about 22 million and the mosquito population is 22 gazillion so clothing treated with permithrin helps with repelling them as well as bed bugs (so my bed sheet was done). Now this permitrin is very toxic and you wear gloves and follow the proportions down to the drop. It stinks and with the videos I watched about being careful not to do this inside, becareful leaving it around with children and animals etc, I was somewhat nervous about handling this stuff so you can imagine my stress levels when Neil comes out and asks me something just at the time I had just spilt some on my leg and all I could think was this was going to be like some acid that burns your flesh to the bone - needless to say the hand came up and very sharp "not now!" came out of my mouth!
And another thing which I really had to vent and at the end of the day was just fed up with it all and Neil let me have a really good man bashing session - why target men? well who else would design a mosquito net that is (design wise) inept! Most mossie nets are single and we managed to get a double but it is a pyramid one that hangs (I would have preferred a double stand alone that is small and compact and fits in a tiny space in you pannier bag - but alas that doesn't exist due to a very small market size of just me!) So putting up this mossie net is quite straight forward if:
1. You are hitching it in the Sistine Chapel with its' high ceilings.
2. You have a hook above the bed.
3. You are allowed to attach a hook above you bed if there is none available!
So if we have no mossie net at our accomodation then we will have to rig it up so it stays up. We tried this in our bedroom and lets just say we nearly had to cancel our trip as we were heading for the divorce courts! So we are taking a door hanger to give us 1 definite anchor point and are hoping that there is a suitable anchor point opposite the door used! Fingers crossed they have taller door jams and we can get the net high to give us coverage.
For me, as someone who is relatively organised, I feel the past 2 days have been too chaotic for me (and the above is only the tip of the iceberg on what has happended!) and upon typing this I might look upon this with reflection and feel a smile coming on as I suppose this is all part of the travelling experience and I will look back on this with starry eyes and giggle and be all lovey dovey and learn to love this part of pre travel ... Nup, I don't think so! I will do and prepare things even earlier than what I normally do!
Ok so packing my stuff was relatively easy as I have nothing! Dragging it all out to the living room floor this is it ....
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and here it is all packed up ready for the bike ...
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So it is near the break of day and I have been at it since 3am this morning - packing and doing this blog (familiarising myself again with the workings of creating this journal). Hopefully I will be able to add background photos early in the piece once we get there.
I will do another post on Saturday from Tullamarine Airport with photos of the bike boxes.
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2 weeks ago
2 weeks ago
Gosh here I was thinking when we chatted last how cool, calm & collected you were about your pack up lol 😂 I laughed when poor Neil got the “hand up not now” 😂 bet you smell nice with your new protective scent, better than mossie or bed bug bites though!!!!
Well done getting through the pre travel pack up & we can’t wait to enjoy these new adventures through your blog 😍
As they say in Sri Lanka “Ayubowan” 😍
2 weeks ago
1 week ago