Sri Lanka: Sigiriya >Trincomolee

Mar 25-26 2025 |

Segment 2 of my Sri Lanka journey. Not much to say about the ride, so the focus here is on "Trinco".

I climbed Sigiriya in the morning, picked up my bags at the homestay, and rode 90-minutes to Trinco, basically a straight line as shown on the map.

On arrival I went to Uppuveli, the beach area north of town. Booked a room at Dot Bey Beach Cabana, about $15/night, basic but decent. As it was the end of low season, few tourists were around - I was the only customer at dinner each night.

When I first visited Sri Lanka in 1999, Trinco was off-limits to tourists, a civil war hot spot. Fortunately, those issues are over these days, and Trinco is an amazing place to visit.

First day, I took in the tourist attractions. While there is nothing super-wow to see (unlike Sigiriya), the history of the place is unique. Trinco is a major Tamil/Hindu center and is the historic eastern gateway to Sri Lanka. A major attraction is Koneswaram Temple located on a cliff promontory, a site estimated to be thousands of years old, mentioned in many famous historical records, visited by famous travelers including Marco Polo, Zheng Ho, and Ibn Batutu, destroyed by the Portuguese, with artifacts re-discovered underwater by Arthur C. Clark. I also checked out the maritime museum, housed in a gentrified Dutch building with some impressive before and after scenes. To get to the temple you need to enter through a fort, which is larger than the one at Galle (huge). The old section of town has many colonial-era houses and buildings, a high percentage in disrepair. Trinco is home to a huge population of "omnivorous" feral deer, they're all over the place.

On day 2 I went diving with Blue Water Sports, a great day out. Look for a separate write-up on the diving. After diving in the morning, I rode on to my next stop, Batacallao.

An interesting aside for Vancouver Islanders (and anyone): in 1817 the British launched the HMS Trincomolee, named after the 1782 Battle of Trincomolee with the French. From 1852-1856 the HMS Trincolomee was part of the Royal Navy's Pacific Squadron, based in Esquimalt, now the Canadian Navy's west coast base, a suburb of Victoria, British Columbia, where I was born. In honor of the ship, the passage between Galiano Island and Salt Spring Island, in the Gulf Islands of Vancouver Island, was named the Trincomoli Channel.