This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Most travellers are of the opinion that the only real way to see Sri Lanka is by train. And that of all the rail journeys through the sparkling tropical island, the most beautiful is the one from Nanu Oya [near Nuwara Eliya] to Demodara [near Ella] in the heart of ‘hill country.’ They are not wrong. 🙂

Built in the mid-19th Century by the British colonizers, the train’s primary purpose for the longest time was to transport crates of tea leaves and coffee from the mist-wrapped estates to Colombo Port. The segment from Nuwara Eliya, a colonial town, to Ella, a village steeped in Hindu mythology, is a tourism institution of sorts today. Continue reading →

At the historic Anglo-Zulu battlefields in northern KwaZulu-Natal. What you see behind me, to the right, are sand storms in action.

Day 1: Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift: Where heroes were made

An endless expanse of dusty plains and stunted thorn trees sprawls for miles in front of me. We’ve been driving for five hours now. I’m on my way to Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift and am told it is just beyond the last mound that shimmers in the horizon.

It is incredible that these barren expanses in the middle of nowhere, absolutely nowhere, were once the scenes of key battles fought during the Boer-Zulu, Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer wars.

The few travellers who trickle up north to make this journey tend to be British, military buffs, or those tracing their family tree. But you don’t have to be any of them really. Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift are a celebration of the human spirit during war, of courage against all odds. In the former, the valour was that of the Zulus. In Rorke’s Drift, the heroes were the British. Continue reading →