21 February 2017 It’s 7.20am and I’m sitting on the balcony of a stunning villa up in the hills of Kandy. I awoke around 6 to a beautiful chorus of birdsong and a call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque. Our accommodation for the first half of this week must be the AirBnB find of the century: a 4 storey air-conditioned villa with balconies, incredible views, atrium, garden, en suite rooms, and other amenities I’ve yet to explore – all at the equivalent cost of £20 each a night. It’s very hard not to wax rhapsodically about the morning soundscape, so I apologise in advance. The birdsong in particular struck me as symphonic. Rather than a chaotic cacophony of chirping, it sounded more li
It was something of a shock to experience the blast of humidity when steeping out of the airport in Colombo some 18 hours after leaving the almost sub-zero temperatures of Glasgow. Climbing into a small minibus, my driver took us on a knuckle-biting journey through the streets of Colombo and eventually onto the long stretch of motorway to our destination of Hikkaduwa on the south-western coast of Sri Lanka. Having not slept for a long time, I found myself nodding off, but I was half-aware of the radio playing softly in the background. It struck me that the DJs sounded vaguely Gaelic and I had to listen carefully to check that I wasn’t in fact listening to a show on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal.
