Colombo
Let the Fun Begin!
In the days prior to my arrival to Sri Lanka, my research led me to the conclusion that I would have to alter my travel style somewhat. In Southeast Asia, I had operated on a “hub and spoke” system, to borrow a term from the airline industry. When I arrived in a new city, I used it as a base of operations from which I would explore the area. I would walk or use public transportation to navigate the city some days. Other days, I took day trips. In both cases, my baggage could stay at a single motel or hostel while I roamed and explored. Once I was out of time or had seen what I came to see, I would move on to the next city to explore sites in and around that place.
Before I ever arrived, it became apparent that I would have to explore Sri Lanka using “point to point” routing instead. Sri Lanka had many points of interest, but they were all spread around the country two to three hours from one another. It seemed like many of my cities contained sites I could see in a day or less, and they weren’t all that far apart. But I would have to see them in sequence, making a big loop around parts of the island. Sri Lanka is a poor country without much transportation infrastructure. There are buses, but they are slow. There are a few trains, but they are not altogether reliable, and don’t go to all of the locations I wanted to visit. Road travel was chaotic. Most tourists hire a driver if they opt for a private car. If I had three weeks to see the country instead of one, I would have been able to avail myself of the slow and almost free bus system. The buses, however, would take about a full day to traverse what could be navigated in a car in two or three hours. I decided I would attempt to rent a car and drive from place to place, but save the cost of the driver by driving myself.
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Unlike most other places I visited, driving in Sri Lanka requires a special Sri Lankan driver’s license. This can be acquired by presenting your home country driver’s license and travel documents with a small fee, but it has to be done at the Sri Lankan Department of Motor Traffic. It turns out, DMVs in other countries are even less efficient than those in the US. I took a bus from my motel near the airport into the city of Colombo. I found the DMT on my second attempt. After about four hours of waiting at or near several different desks and windows – some of them multiple times – I was the proud owner of a Sri Lankan tourist driver’s license.
I walked out to the main road and reserved a rental car while waiting for my lunch in a local restaurant. It was about an hour drive back to the rental car agency from my restaurant, and I had already used most of the day. I wanted to grab this rental car and get started on the four hour drive to Anuradhapura so I could start seeing all of the things tourists were supposed to see in Sri Lanka. I spent the extra money to hire an Uber to take me directly to the rental agency’s office. There was no office there. I walked into a shop near where Google Maps said the car rental office should be and asked if they had heard of such a place. This had happened often enough that the proprietor knew how to get in touch with the car rental office. I talked to the clerk on the phone. He initially promised to come pick me up, but later insisted I make my own way another two miles to the actual location.
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Once I arrived, the clerk was still dealing with another customer. He made me wait another hour while he finished lining up the other renter. Once he finally got to me, we had the aforementioned conversation in which he tried to convince me he had no cars available in order to up sell me on a car with a driver. He ultimately refused to rent me a car. This made me especially angry since he knew he was not going to honor the car rental agreement before he made me walk two miles carrying all of my baggage on a hot afternoon, then wait another hour in his office. All of the waiting was done simply in order for him to be able to try to rip me off by telling me he had no cars available unless I hired his driver, too.
This happened two more times before night fell and I had to simply give up and walk to a motel. Fortunately, my motel proprietor also had his own fleet of older vehicles for hire. I took him up on this offer. I had lost an entire day, but I did at least finally have the freedom of my own car. I could wander the country at my own pace. The process of getting my license and finding an honest car rental outfit ended up costing me one of the days I had planned to save by driving over taking buses. Driving in Sri Lanka was very stressful, and hiring drivers is a cheap and popular option. Something inside me, though, would not allow me to accept the driver when I felt I was being pressured into it by people who clearly were not being honest with me. Besides, once I had invested time, effort, and money into getting that license, I was all the more intent on renting a car I would drive myself.
So on my second day in Sri Lanka, I made the four hour white knuckle drive from Colombo to Anuradhapura. I was finally on track to see what all of the tourist hype over Sri Lanka was all about. I drove this twenty year old, manual transmission wagon on the left-hand side of the road. I avoided rickshaws and cars darting in and out of the blind entries on side streets. I rode bumpers so I could pass. I followed stock trucks, construction trucks, and whatever other lumbering traffic made its way down the busy two lane roads of this undeveloped country. It was an adventure, but I made it.
