Destination Sri Lanka 2022 - Our Anxiety Filled Journey to this Beautiful Island

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Sri Lanka, ever since we stumbled upon the Budgeteers YouTube channel, Sri Lanka had been where we wanted our adventure to start. We had been delayed by a pandemic, and briefly distracted by an amazing week in Istanbul, but now was finally time. After a final cheeky pint of Efes on “Bar street” and one quickly downed kebab, we bundled ourselves into a taxi bound for the airport. Our nerves jangling, unsure if we would, or even if we should reach our destination.

John stands in front of a departure board at Istanbuls International Airport.

Okay, time for some context.

Visiting Sri Lanka in a time of crisis

Sri Lanka was, at the time of writing),in the throes of its worst financial crisis since independence in 1948. Fuel scarcity, inability to import goods and political tension are everywhere. The UK government's travel advice was changing frequently due to the political unrest. Before we departed to Istanbul the government had just removed its advisory against travel to Sri Lanka. We breathed a sigh of relief. Then the mass movement, and uprising against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa happened. The President’s home and political offices were occupied. His private swimming pool was no longer so very private with protesters taking a dip and cooling off from the sun. Some protesters held pillow fights on the Presidential bed whilst others snapped selfies in his offices and rooms. The uprising was peaceful and bloodless (in the most part) and the President fled the country and later resigned. This all however led the British government to reinstate its travel advisory recommending against all but strictly necessary travel to Sri Lanka.

Damn…

We were in Istanbul as Ellie had found a deal with plane tickets whereby it was actually cheaper to get to Sri Lanka by spending 7 days in Istanbul than it would have been to fly directly from London. As these tickets were not booked directly through Turkish Airlines but via a third party, these tickets were non refundable and non transferable. Just to further add to the anxiety, we heard that there was a decent chance that our flight would be partially cancelled leaving us stranded in the Maldives (there may be worse places to be stranded, but the Maldives doesn’t look budget friendly).

Damn again…

What we did now, may not be the wisest move and we’re not recommending you ignore your government's advice to travel. But we did some research, spoke to fellow travellers on the ground and checked our insurance. The general consensus was that if you could work around fuel shortages (we thought we could manage this by using public transport) and as long as you weren’t going to be actively involved in any protests (definitely not something we had planned to do) then Sri Lanka was safe and still possible to travel. Our insurance also confirmed that they would cover us (to an extent). So we decided we would go. We had backup plans to fly out of Sri Lanka if the situation deteriorated but the decision was made, we were going. All we had to do now was to board that plane.

So there we were at Istanbul’s massive international airport. Bags checked in, boarding passes printed, waiting at the gate and not to put too fine a point on it, second guessing every decision that had led us there.

The flight stopped as scheduled in the Maldives, and at least 90% of the plane left. Leaving us, a few Dutch families, a couple of travellers, Sri Lankan’s and nearly the same amount of air hosts bound for Colombo.