Sri Lanka Diaries – Day One -The Journey

aeroplane photo The Sri Lanka - the journey

The Sri Lanka Diaries – Day One,

April 17th, 2017

The  Journey

The day had arrived. I was on my way to the airport for my journey to Sri Lanka! Wahoo! I was dropped to Heathrow Airport by my boyfriend to embark on this journey. I dunno what I expected to discover but I’ve wanted to see Asia for a while; I’ve wanted to experience travelling on my own for even longer. I just knew if I didn’t do it now I was likely not to. Sri Lanka was calling and I was coming.
I’ve already done the usual, researched blogs, planned my itinerary, visited the travel clinic at my GP surgery, (I will make a separate post about my prep), I was raring to go! I was also sh*t scared and incredibly nervous!
As J kissed me goodbye, told me to stay safe and that he would see me soon, I entered the terminal, checked the departure board found my flight before heading to the check-in desk.
A bubbly lady informed me that I was sitting in the middle of the row and asked if I would I prefer the aisle seat. I dunno what I did when I checked in online cos I thought that is what I had done but clearly not. I said thanks and took my bag to the drop and walked through security.
Question for ya! Have you ever travelled, walked through the detector turned around only to see your bag ejected to the left and thought lord why me? I’m not religious or even a believer I just want an easy life. I was asked to confirm the bag was mine before being carted to another desk.
‘It’s just a liquids test mam’, the security personal informed me.
‘Oh right. Okay’ I replied.
He pulled my liquids bag, took out my antibacterial hand gel put some into a machine and told me ‘it’s fine, You are free to go’
I found my gate number and headed over to it, sat down and took the requisite photograph of the passport for the gram!

passport photo

 

The nerves I had earlier were beginning to disappear and I just wanted to get there already!

Boarding Time!

Finally, it came over the tannoy, our gate was boarding! Wahoo! Before getting on the plane I took another pic for the gram (obvs!)
aeroplane photo
Finding my seat I took one more, this time a selfie.
I was more than ready to go! Fast forward past all the safety checks, blah blah blah (although definitely listen to it when you travel, it just doesn’t make for an interesting blog post. Well unless you know which football team Qatar Airways sponsors, they did the safety video. Think I recognised Suarez!).
Up up and away. The seat next to me was vacant then a girl mid-twenties,  I imagine, was heading to Perth said ‘Hey’. She was next to me bar one.
On the plane I watched two films I missed this award season; Lion with Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, Hacksaw Ridge; starring Andrew Garfield and Sam Worthington and an episode of Black-ish, Tracee Ellis-Ross, and Anthony Anderson. Had a quick snooze before eating dinner, wanted the pasta ended up with the chicken (air hostess gave me a whiskey with a splash of coke to make up for it! Think she was trying to put me to sleep!) and it was time to disembark!

Dinner Menu

I had arrived in Doha, Qatar.
On board, it stated my gate was number 6 (to transfer to Colombo) however gate 6 was a flight to Johannesburg. The girl that was on the plane next to me but one,  stayed with me until I was able to find someone to ask, thank you so much for that! I’m sorry I didn’t get her name. I logged into the complimentary WiFi sent a couple WhatsApp messages, logged into Facebook (as you do) and it was time to board again.
By this point, I was absolutely shattered. I got on the plane and promptly fell asleep. I was awoken by an air host asking me if I wanted dinner, I said no and fell asleep again the woman next to me on this flight kept elbowing me as she ate and I was starting to get p*ssed off. I actually snapped at her something about refraining from touching me and how much space do you want!?
Oops!
At this point, it was about 3 AM BST and way past my bedtime. There were two screaming babies and not even they could deter me. It just reminded me when my Welsh friends say I could sleep on a chicken’s lip!
I awoke to the same air host trying to put my seat into the upright position we had arrived and the plane was beginning its descent.
We touched down smoothly I had arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka

    

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.