Sri Lanka - Day One

After a rather stressful journey into Heathrow because of a jack-knifed lorry on the M25 and booking in with 5 minutes to spare we made it onto our Qatar Airways A380 for Doha. With only an hour's transfer it would be a bit tight but we managed to get a lift with an electric buggy and were soon on our next plane to Colombo. None of us had ever spent so little time in airports on any trip.
We landed in Colombo at 8.15 and, after sorting out a small problem with one of the visas we collected our luggage and were soon out and meeting up with our guide Samon. Loading everything into the big yellow van we set off for Kithulgala.
A short roadside stop and we were looking across a rice paddy being harvested. There were Ashy Wood swallows, Sri Lanka Swallows and Barn swallows hawking and resting on the wires, the field was full of Cattle Egrets with an Intermediate flying in and a Pond Heron fishing in the small stream. A Crested Serpent Eagle flew overhead.

Arriving at the Rest House we settled in, had lunch and then spent some time round the grounds trying to learn some of the more common birds like Asian Koel and Jerdon's Leaf-bird. 

We also saw a Land Monitor and Green Garden Lizard before meeting up with Samon and driving up into the hills where we found a variety of birds including Chestnut-headed Bee-eater, and some saw Purple Leaf Monkey before returning to the Rest House for dinner in the restaurant by the open doors 100 yards from the river Kelani.

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