Pt. 1/4: ‘What I Did On My Holidays’ by Callum Fauser, age 24 and 11 months

Got back to the frozen wastes of Wakayama little over a week ago now, so ought to post some sort of Sri Lanka-centric entry really. Well, what was one of the most painstakingly pre-organised, logistically complicated holidays I can ever remember going on, happily also ended up being one of the memorable and enjoyable. By way of an extremely brief précis, I journeyed with good chum Mr. Mark Seymour from Kansai Airport, Osaka via Singapore (with a grueling 6 and a half hour transfer time) and from there to Colombo, Sri Lanka, whereupon we wasted little time in heading south to the west coast beaches of Bentota to meet with Mark’s parents.

An extremely chilled few days was had by all, after which the four of us journeyed back up north, met with Mark’s girlfriend, erstwhile housemate and uni chum Sophie, before bidding farewell to Mark’s folks, journeying east to Kandy city, north a bit more to see some sights and animals, back down again to the city in time for new year, further south and into the mountains to see tea being made and the high life being lived at Nuwara Eljia, before journeying westwards and downwards back to the beach for our last few days before the departure of Sophie and eventually Mark and myself, a somewhat lengthy 12 hours later.

There’s the outline – now, rather than go through it all in painstaking detail, giving a blow by blow account, behold my cheap, Nick Hornby-inspired list-tastic approach to expanding on what we did and saw over the two and a bit weeks that we were out there. Starting with…