Day 2: January 20

It was stuffy in our little room. We couldn’t sleep all night. We kept waking up, then drifting back into some half-sleep from which you wake up even more tired, but you can’t get up, so you lie there and sink again into a short, very fragile sleep.
For breakfast we drank tea and finished the gingerbread cookies that Volchy’s mother, Galina Antonovna, had baked for us for the road. We regretted taking so few gingerbread cookies.

We set off around 11.

We barely got out of Negombo — the traffic here is terrible, and they really don’t know how to drive at all.
We turned onto the road along the spit — there were fewer cars here, but we still kept running into trucks that, in my opinion, don’t understand their own dimensions at all.

If I had to describe my impressions of Colombo in one word, it would be hell. There’s no bypass around Colombo, so we had to force our way through the city. And there it was — a mess of cars, mopeds, tuk-tuks, buses, and trucks. The roads seem wide, but there are so many cars that you’re stuck in a traffic jam the whole time. Sri Lankans вообще don’t keep their distance — they’re always pushing, trying to squeeze ahead.
Many roads are one-way, so we constantly had to come up with new escape routes out of this city. In the end we got out, and it became a little better. But here one city smoothly flows into another. Along the highway there are some shops, cafés, and other things.
We were tired of riding, and it wasn’t clear where to eat. We passed some local eateries, but they were all empty and looked sketchy. We went into KFC — there we had rice and two ice creams. By the way, the ice cream was very tasty.

We kept going. It was hard to ride. I don’t know how Volchy manages. I’m already not even glad that I came up with this moped trip here. We should have just taken trains like normal people… I thought it would be like Bali — we rode there for three weeks and everything was fine. But here, these crazy roads and drivers… The roads stink of exhaust fumes — it’s hard to breathe. Everything is nothing like the rosy picture I had imagined at home. One thought keeps running through my head: if things get really bad, we’ll change our tickets and fly home.

We decided to try looking for a place to stay in Wadduwa — Volchy checked the map and saw there were hotels there. On this trip we decided to try looking for hotels on the spot. We’ll see how long we can last.
We turned off the main road onto a tiny local street. It’s very strange here — houses, houses, palm trees. A deserted little street along the railway.
Soon there were lonely signs for hotels. We turned down one of them. It turned out to be an old man’s house. A shabby little room for $10 — basically fine for one night. Before our strength completely left us, we decided to look for more options. The second “hotel” was even gloomier for the same money. We drove on.

We turned into yet another alley that brought us almost all the way to the ocean, and there was a hotel — nice-looking. A beautiful white house with a veranda. The guy at the reception showed us the room — a great, large one with huge windows. At first he wanted $35 for it, but in the end I bargained him down to $15 :) Volchy was shocked and said, “Remember how you did that.” What’s most interesting is that later we found this hotel on Booking.com and it really did cost $35. I was delighted that we were so lucky with the hotel and that we had such a beautiful room. The melancholy that had been weighing on me all the way there disappeared.