This post is part of a series following my friends and I crossing Sri Lanka in a Tuktuk. You can find the intro post here and the previous one here.
We started our day early with a dead Tuktuk. Tried to start it normally : nothing, tried to jumpstart it : nothing. The staff of the hotel managed to help us get started by pushing us for a few meters and told us to get the fuel filter changed asap.
We then crossed the tea fields on our way to the Horton plains national park.
Although Sri Lanka is not that small of a country and we all went our separate way, we manahed to have three Adventurist Tuktuks arrive at a small intersection at the same time. Great occasion to discuss our breakdowns and planned routes.
Later down the road we started going up, in a mountain road specifically designed to try and kill Tuktuks. As passengers, we had to get out a few times to push the tuktuk and help Julien, the driver make it to the top.
We somehow made it to the top and found 6 other teams in there. Since it was still early, we decided to do the 10k hike around the park.
The park is over 2000m high and really different from what we saw before. Farmlands and jungle gave place to a savannah type of landscape, home to leopards, monkeys and many other wild animals.
After the hike was over, we started to go down the mountain on the way to Haputale.
On our way down, we passed by an old forest home of very tall trees and finally reached a small city. We were running on fumes and we definitely needed to repair the beast at that point. We got the fuel filter changed and the carburator cleaned before resuming our journey.
Well, compared to other teams it could have been worse ^^
After the repair we finally made it to Hatupale, just in time to be greeted by this view:
All the rewards of this post will go to CoolEarth NGO.
I knew Sri Lanka is a beautiful neighbour country to us and surrounded by ocean 🌊 all around. But never thought I would see such heartwarming high lands and waterfalls! Obviously the tuktuk had enough of hill-road adventure and now you gotta take care of it’s health (i.e. changing furl filters etc) before running again😅.
And my gosh I also got mesmerised while viewing the last photo of the Hatupale town, wish to travel there at least once in my life😍
It definitely deserves a spot on a bucket list :)
In the Philippines especially in Southern Mindanao, Tuktuk is very famous too. One of the many names we call it is baobao which means turtle in English. 😁
I recently went to Mindanao and most of the time, I'm traveling in a baobao.
What really surprised me is how powerful the engines of these vehicles were, we went to waterfalls at the tops of mountains and the baobao showed no signs of weakness! Or maybe I just rode a newly bought one. 😂
Yeah these are pretty tough beasts!
I was in Mindanao a few years back ( Cagayan and Camiguin), it was a lot of fun!
Those two poor guys! Hope they weren't in the tuk tuk when it toppled over!
They were but somehow both the tuktuk and crew are alright.
Wow, man. I bet you forgot all your tiredness when you saw the view in that last photo. It looks amazing. I hope you never have another car problem XD.
Problems are part of the fun :D
Beautiful country. Those waterfalls are amazing. I could live right there above them.
It's a very beautiful place yes
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Lovely , I will love to engage in such adventure someday too.