“What a prawn!”
Janie (Daisy) & I decided we needed a complete rest break after the circus that was much of 2025. Through our favourite agents for this sort of thing, Healing Holidays, who arranged our most recent previous rest cure for us…crikey…nine blithering years ago…
…we arranged the simple January 2026 Sri Lanka trip explained in the itinerary linked here.
We’d been to Sri Lanka several times before – firstly in March 1995…
…and secondly on a cricket-strewn trip to India and Sri Lanka in 2011…
The 2026 Tangalle trip had no cricket planned and indeed no cricket ensued. I did, however, on the day of departure from London, head to my health club in the morning, as the weather was icy, making the idea of tennis with Daisy too reckless, even for us. Towards the end of my workout, I spotted a gentleman who looked uncannily like Virat Kohli up on the mezzanine. When he descended to my level, a closer look confirmed that he WAS Virat Kohli.
In the good old days, Alex Bowden (King Cricket) would have cherished this small moment in his “cricketer spotted” column.
But icy London felt positively warm compared with our seats on SriLankan Airlines. Nothing the steward-folk tried to do to the air conditioning made much difference where we were sitting. We resorted to coats, scarves and (in my case) even my beany.
We’d had a relatively event free check in, although Janie had her hand luggage singled out for a comprehensive search for the second time in a row. She’s hoping to avoid the metaphorical hat trick ball next time. Formalities at Colombo were a breeze compared with equivalent formalities at Boston Logan a few months ago.
We got to Anantara in Tangalle before 16:00 which was good timing. Our host Prashan showed us around and took us to our villa. We arranged a late dinner in Verala – the Asian/fusion restaurant. That’s where Janie’s enormous prawn comes in:
I won’t write up too much about this holiday but there are some good “food porn” pictures (only some are food porn/prawn pictures) and wildlife pics too.
Here are the six follow-up pieces – each can be clicked through from here or by clicking the next piece button at the bottom of each piece: