MAR-07: Colombo, Sri Lanka to New Delhi, India

ROTTERDAM arrived at the pier at 0800 clearly occupying space used primarily for on-loading and off-loading cargo. There was some impressive cargo-handling equipment along the pier.
Colombo is the commercial center and largest port in Sri Lanka.

After gathering in one of the ship's lounges, we disembarked about 0930 and boarded a bus for what we were told would be a 35 km trip to the airport that would take upward of an hour, perhaps closer to two if traffic was heavy.

In general the structures on both sides of our route looked shabby. There were exceptions and more notably a number of the shabby buildings had storefronts full of expensive merchandise. Set back behind the buildings on this thoroughfare that is likely busy and noisy at all hours of the day and night we got peaks of nicer structures that appeared to be homes. We saw a modern divided highway under construction that may relieve some of the traffic congestion on the road between the seaport and the airport.

We quickly came to realize that driving a bus on the streets of Colombo was not for the timid or faint of heart. On multiple occasions we saw the window of another bus or the side panel of a truck literally inches from our window...and coming closer. It appeared we were destined for a repeat of the traffic accident we experienced in Thailand, but amazing we arrive at the airport without a ding or dent just slightly over an hour after we left the pier.

Check-in at the airport involved passing through three metal detectors, two friskings, x-raying our carry-on luggage twice and four presentations of our passport. Carry-on luggage was limited to one item weighing a maximum of 15 lbs. Pam & I each had two with one weighing 25lbs but managed to get "cabin" tags for all of them. The efficiency of keeping them with us evaporated when several of the people in our group (including our HAL tour guide who had recommended we all try to have only carry-on luggage) had to check their baggage.


The Sri Lankan Airline plane was modern and the service good. Other than a near-miss on being seated next to a member of our group who had complained about literally everything since we gathered on ROTTERDAM the flight was uneventful. Flight time to New Delhi was 3 hours 20 minutes.

Immigration and Customs went smoothly. A 40-minute bus ride brought us to our hotel - Taj Palace. A bomb-sniffing dog, barricades that lowered into the roadbed, x-rayed luggage and passing through a metal detector before reaching the lobby reflected lessons learned from the attack on major Mumbai hotels several years ago.