Nepal, India and Sri Lanka: Our Honeymoon Adventure: Tissa and Yala National Park

After our morning hike to Little Adam's Peak in Ella, we hopped into a taxi for the 2 hour drive down to Tissamaharama, known to the locals as just Tissa. Out of the cooler climate of the hills we made our way south into the sweltering heat of the south coast.

Tissa was the capital of the Sinhalese Kingdom of Ruhuna in the 3rd century B.C. and its large artificial lake, Tissa Wewa, dates back to then.

Wirawila Lake

We arrived at our splurge for the next two nights - Priyankara Hotel (This is our honeymoon after all!) Our plan was to do a 5am safari the next morning in Yala National Park (famous for its leopards) and an afternoon safari in Bundala in the afternoon (famous for its birds). Upon arrival, our taxi driver had somehow picked up a friend who followed us to the hotel on his motorbike ready to sign us up for a "great deal" on a safari. Annoyed we brushed him off and took his card and told him if we were interested we would call him. That seemed to work until he came in and spoke to the front desk in Sinhalese basically telling them that we wouldn't be there for breakfast because we were going on a safari with him the next morning. I sent him away after that and told the hotel we hadn't booked anything yet and would decide our plans after we checked in.

On the drive down Dave had started to feel a bit sick. Not long after we checked into the room, he made way for the bathroom and his bout of vomiting (and everything else) began. A week and a half after my unfortunate night of being ill, Dave suddenly had the exact same thing (plus some fevers and chills)! We decided against booking a 5am safari and that we would just play it by ear the next day.

Our awesome room

The bathroom that Dave would end up spending lots of time in

Our private patio

Poor sicky - smiling despite feeling crummy

Lagoon and rice paddies

Pretty peacock on the roof

I'm not sure what was going on here but it looked like this one bird was getting gang banged by the two black birds.

Next morning at breakfast - Dave was able to get out of bed

Pool time

Checking out the workers in the rice paddies

Feeling much better, we booked ourselves on an afternoon safari at Yala and decided to skip Bundala. We hopped into a comfy safari truck and made our way to Yala.