Cycle day 25 - Badalgama - Pinnapolegama - Far too much luggage - Sri Lanka

April 21, 2025

Cycle day 25 - Badalgama - Pinnapolegama

Badalgama to Pinnapolegama = 78km (Total distance on this trip so far = 1614km)
Weather = Low of 25 with a high of 32 degrees. Yeah back to the hot sweaty days and nights again!
Accommodation = Lucky Homestay = 5850 rupees ($30.74 AUD)

I had a good nights sleep last night. The homestay had made us a fried rice dinner and served it on the verandah overlooking a well kept garden and again in the morning she made us breakfast. Normally she doesn't offer it but if you ask they may oblige and so we did last night and she was more than happy to make it. She is a lovely woman and spoke very good English.
We left just before 8am and with the homestay tonight our check in was suppose to be 4.30pm. Which is really late for us and would require us to sit out quite a few hours on the road somewhere. Doing this in Australia is fine as there is always a local park to hang out but here those sorts of things just don't exist and if they do the are a childrens playground and it is not an ideal spot to hang out in!
As much as we rode slowly it was incredibly hard to go slow even if we tried. We had a gentle tailwind behind us and there was alot of rolling hills. Not hard steep undulation like yesterday by long gradual climbs with long gradual down hills. We were predominantly on B roads again today and there was alot of traffic but the road surface was really good, not so broken up like the A roads can be. So on our downhills we were able to go fast and not brake as they were straight and smooth. At this point we could keep up with the slower traffic and those that are going faster than us really had to use their judgement on just how much time they had to overtake us. We could sit on 40km per hour going down a hill. I must admit there was one point were I caught up to and could have overtaken a slow motorcycle if it wasn't for the small truck behind me wanting to overtake me!
So not alot happened today, but it did drag on a bit! So here is a snapshot of our day ...

lots of rice fields and coconut palms today

this reminded me of the river (the name escapes me) near Charters Towers Queensland

In monsoon season the water must be cascading through here as check out the lean on that tree!

we did find a spot along here that had concrete bench seats for us to have our lunch/dinner on. Unfortunately there were alot of stray dogs about.

Did spot our lovely kingfisher in on of the many trees that gave us shade

So we hung out at the lake in Nikaweratiya and had a late lunch/early dinner there. We could see we had emails from the homestay tonight but when we replied the emails just bounced back so we gave up and just go there on 3.30pm. We had to go 12km off the main road to get to this accommodation and even then we missed it as they don't have signage and if they do it is in Sinhalese! So the owner must have seen us ride past and caught up to us and so we only had to backtrack 500m or so!
He made us a lovely drink – water, sugar, lime and passionfruit gosh it was so delicious and refreshing as the water in our bottles are not warm and not very nice to drink!
Yeah the place is ok, unfortunately not ceiling fan and only a wall mounted pedestal fan which is not the greatest and so we are just sitting here sweating straight after a shower as the room is very warm. We do have the side door open but that will have to be closed soon due to mossies. So I think it will be a sleepless night for me!

Tomorrow we are at the beach – yay!

Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 270 km (168 miles)

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