Wintertime in Switzerland. I have enough of the wet-cold gray weather and bad-tempered people I have to get out of here! But where to? For the sake of convenience, I actually wanted to travel to a country I already knew, but in a somehow unfathomably way, Sri Lanka had been in my head for some time. But in fact, what is important to me is to travel to a country with a tropical climate. So, Sri Lanka it will be. In January I book a flight to Colombo.

The goal is not to travel around a great deal but to have a base somewhere and to make short or even a-few-days-lasting-trips. For this, Sri Lanka seems ideal because it is not too big and has a lot of diversity . I wanted a strategic place by the sea, so I did some research and found Unawatuna in the south of the island. Although the place is very touristy, my former aversion to such regions has subsided somewhat, on the contrary, today I prefer places with some infrastructure instead of too remote places. Usually I only book the flight and look for a hotel on arrival. But, as already mentioned, the convenience currently predominates, so I booked a Hotel room online for the first five days. This gives me enough time to look for a suitable accommodation for my stay of several months. After checking out many Hotels and Pensions I finally find a nice hotel that stands 30 meters from the beach, away from the busy road and with a reasonable monthly rent. After settling in comfortably I spent most of my time in and around Unawatuna, with occasional excursions into the nearer and slightly further surroundings, every once in a while heading to nearby Galle to do some shopping and Sightseeing. On this trip I only stay in the south of the Island, the north I wand to explore on another trip. I made a few trips to some National Parks and up to the mountains, which are described in separate articles.

At half-time of my stay I had to go to the capital Colombo to extend my visa, but that’s another story