Day 10 - Batticaloa

18.10.2024

Day 10

Today we travel towards east coast of Sri Lanka - destination is Batticaloa, which is about 160 kms east of Dambulla. We checked out from Jetwing Lake hotel at about 9.30 am. 

We are on the lookout for a breakfast place and soon found a cute cafe, which offered breakfast, but to our disappointment it took over an hour for them to serve us. After breakfast we are behind clock by 1.5 hours.

We are back on the road and it is a two lane highway, but traffic is light and we made good progress. We had booked our stay Karpaha Sands, Kalkudah which is about 20 kms before Batticaloa. 

Our drive from Dambulla, the terrain looks like a drive in Kerala, sans the mad traffic on our highways. As we are nearing our destination, we started seeing more Tamil shops, but noticeably majority of shops had their sign boards in English and Tamil - Sinhalese was conspicuously absent. 

Our plan was to tour Batticaloa first and then check in, but since we were back on the clock, we decided to check in to the resort first.

Karpaha Sands turned out to be a beautiful property on the beach. We checked in at 2.30 pm. After unpacking we went out for a late lunch. Kalkudah seems to be the place for resorts. Most of them are really good properties overlooking the sea and we met a number of tamils. 

Tsunami - East was badly affected by the Tsunami in 2004 and more than 3,000 were reported dead, but we did not find any trace of the damage and the place seems to have completely recovered from the effects of Tsunami!

Civil War - East was also affected by the civil war, which raged between 1983-2009. Batticaloa was a stronghold of LTTE and several bloody battles were fought between them and military. Fifteen years after the defeat of LTTE, the country has bounced back from the effects of the civil war and people are living in peace.

We had seafood dinner at the resort - what a treat it was! Fulltankers were overawed by the seafood platter and the jumbo prawns were the best we have ever had. 

The resort is one of the finest we have stayed in, though a bit off the main road (3 kms) we would recommend this property to anyone travelling to this part of the world. A few photos of the place.

End of day ten.