Sri Lanka Holiday Part 02: Safari-Sigiriya, Peradeniya - Botanical Gardens , Ceylon Tea Plantation

A long overdue continuation post from our August Sri Lanka Trip. 

We went on a Safari!!!
Chief was so excited about this activity. I don't know if I mentioned before about Chief's fascination with animals, from primates, to lions, to tigers, crocodiles, komodo dragon, leopards.. etc! So imagine his excitement for this Safari.
Originally we planned to go to Madagascar or Serengeti in Tanzania instead of Sri Lanka. But the problem was trips to those countries require a lot of preparations. We need to do a lot of research, take some precautionary shots for illness, research on insurance etc..etc.. 
Due to this, we ended up deciding on Sri Lanka. It was near, less than 5 hours on the plane and we'd still get to do the Safari that Chief wanted. With a very minimal research, we went for it. In the end, it was a very good trip.
Enough of talk, let me share the photos of our adventure.. 
This is the drive to go inside the park..

This is the transportation for the Safari. We hired one vehicle just to ourselves. 

As you can see the top part of the vehicle is open so you can stand and have a better view of the park, the animals and also to take photos..

The first stop led us to this area with elephants..

which is adjacent to a river where we saw more elephants..

There's this cute baby elephant that slipped face first in the water.. it was so cute!! Chief caught it on his camera, I didn't  because I was laughing too hard lol!

This is when it finally stood up and gained his composure..

and here it is trying to go back up out of the water..

and finally succeeded..lol! It was so cute!

as we drove off after this part of the park..we saw a meadow far ahead.. 

Then we passed a small shallow river with an alligator..

 More elephants from afar..seeing this gave us a sudden rush of excitement..imagine seeing these animals out in the open.. it was like a mini "Serengeti" my man was ecstatic.

Some Birds..

As we go near them..

we encountered another herd of elephants..

and when you turn back to where we came from this is what you see..

Isn't it spectacular?? It was so beautiful..These times make you see how beautiful the world is..
And as we move away to go back.. I took another photo of where we were..

We were exhausted. We had to drive 5hours back to Kandy after this and our butts were so sore from the long drive.
We are planning to go back but this time to do the Safari in Yala National Park. Experience sleeping on tents and the adventure of being surrounded by animals hopefully have he chance to see Sloth Bears and Leopards.
The next day we went to see some water falls..

There was a lake above where the water was coming from. We had lunch at a hotel where the same lake was the view before trekking to see this waterfall.
Then we hired a Tuktuk to go to the Ceylon Tea Plantation.. Another beautiful place.. I will let the photos speak for itself..

It felt like you were in a different country.. somewhere Europe maybe.. but not! We are still in Sri Lanka..

We trekked around the big lake. It was beautiful!
By the way, this lake is on the top of a mountain!

I personally love the succeeding shots I did from my phone..

Isn't it beautiful?

Looks like a perfect place to shoot a commercial right?

just full of lush green..

yeah.. that would be me..

This is from the other side of the lake where you have the pine trees..

Overall it was a good less than an hour trek for us including the stops to take photos..It was so calm and beautiful.. All that green bush you see are tea plants.. You will see ladies with big baskets on their backs harvesting tea leaves..
The place was just so calm.

The next day was a trip to the Botanical Gardens.. We've taken few photos..

Pathways were like this..

and more trees..

Oh. And let me give you a glimpse of the boutique hotel we stayed at Colombo..
This is the hotel lobby..

The pool..and you can see several archways that leads to rooms..actually two rooms per archway..

That's it for Sri Lanka! If you have questions regarding vacationing in Sri Lanka you can write your comments below and I will try to answer as much as I can based on our experience in discovering this country.

I hope you guys enjoyed  this post and going through the photos as much as I did writing it for you. In a way, I am hoping that this helps out people who are planning to visit this beautiful country one day.

CIAO!

-CARMI