Sri Lanka – 1st day Sigiriya

Sigiriya

Dec 21st - Dec 22nd

After dropping off the dog and cat to an Australian family we hopped a taxi to the airport.

Athaga Samadhi Buddha

The vacation started to get pretty rough, but has made a dramatic turn around. Our flight was at 9:40 pm and that is not a bad time to fly if you are going for a long flight like back to the states but it really is a drag when you are only traveling for 4 hours. A strange thing is the time zone is 1 and 1/2 hours different from the UAE. I thought that was interesting to have a 1/2 hour time zone.

Athaga Samadhi Buddha

In all my travels I had never experienced that before. Well we ended up getting into the hotel at 6 am and we were set to travel at 9 am that morning. Yeah! We caught a few hours sleep on the flight a few more in the hotel but did most of our sleeping in the ride up to Sigiriya.

As you can see from above our first stop was at Athaga Samadhi Buddha

 We decided after a 5 hour drive to take a pass on most of the schedule for the day as we were staying two nights in Sigiriya. We did take in an Elephant ride and that is where we came face to face with the true cost of the trip!

 The elephant ride ended up costing us $100 for the 5 of us- this was the picture that we used for our Christmas greeting. The ride seemed a bit expensive to me but Norman assured me this was a standard price he paid in Nepal, Thailand, etc. When we got back from the trip we took some photos in front of the elephant and as we were leaving the mahout - elephant trainer- turned and demanded a tip from Norman. I that it was pretty rude to DEMAND a tip after paying $100 US for the ride but then I was stunned when I heard from Norman that the mahout REFUSED his tip of 100 Sri Lankan Rupees and DEMANDED more of a tip!

 I know 100 Sri Lankan Rupees is not much but after you coughed up $100 US for a 45 minute trip it seems fair. In the end Norman had to give the mahout a 1,000 Rupees (about $10 US and way more than I would ever tip such a surly person who was far from nice to us or the elephant in question). The part that stunned me the most was when I mentioned in dismay the tip amount to our tour guide and he casually said "That's no problem." When I mentioned it was a problem for me that the mahout was so mercenary (well not in those words) the tour guide responds "That is no problem." I guess he did not understand me when I said it was a problem!