The Road Less Planned

I am sure many of my loved ones were surprised to learn that it took as long as 48 hours for me to take the first wrong turn of my travels. With all of the confidence that being a twenty-one year old graduate brings I had left them all behind and set off on a 10 month solo trip, first stop Sri Lanka.
Like many rookie backpackers I had a carefully planned itinerary with an overly ambitious ten days to see as much of Sri Lanka as possible.
A little over a day after flying into the capital Colombo, jetlagged and overwhelmed by the frenetic pace of life punctuated by the blaring of tuk-tuk engines and bike horns I decided to get straight on the road. All I had to do now was pick which direction to start: north, to the mountain town of Kandy and its Sacred Tooth festival, or south in search of the endless pristine beaches and fascinating wildlife that had drawn me here.
In the end culture won and I duly purchased my ticket to Kandy. However it wasn’t until I began chatting to an Australian couple on the platform that I realised my destination was in fact Galle, on the south of the island. I had mistakenly asked for the wrong ticket - to a town hundreds of kilometres from where I had intended to be.
Laughing off my mistake while inwardly berating myself for my stupidity I decided against changing it and instead joined the friendly Aussies on their journey to the house they had been offered in Bentota, two hours down the coast by train from Colombo.
We arrived at our destination around lunchtime, a property in a rainforest clearing set back from the main road. I was immediately struck by the peace and quiet, such contrast to Colombo. I had traded chaos for tranquillity, where the only disturbances came from occasional monkeys or birds calling between trees to each other. Our first floor rooms led onto a balcony with views across the surrounding forest in one direction and a glimpse of the sea in the other. A cool breeze danced across my face as I sat back and drank in my first tastes of paradise and wonderful Sri Lankan hospitality.
Staying with locals is, in my opinion, the best way to experience unfamiliar places. My friendly hosts gave me a taste for the delicious food on offer on the island, from fresh fish and seafood to coconut-filled crepes for breakfast, and led us on a midnight search for hatching baby turtles.
A wrong turn followed by a chance meeting led to two wonderful days in paradise. Perhaps the road less planned is the road best travelled.