Meet Me in Colombo

After many hours of traveling, my mom, brother, and I have all met up in Colombo, the sprawling city of 1.8 million and the capital of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. It's been nearly a year and a half of preparing and planning, but our adventure on the Rickshaw Run is about to begin!

Mom and Kyle had the furthest to go, having flown in on a 24-hour journey from Dallas by way of Doha. I had a much shorter 3-hour trip from Bangkok, but one that still had me leaving the house at 4am.

We are all feeling tired, but very happy to be together, and super excited to start our adventure! As I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel, I was struck by how green everything was, how quiet Colombo seemed, and how light the traffic looked. That was good news for me, and quite a surprise! I was expecting pure chaos, but the drive made me feel more reassured about driving in the country.

After checking in at our hotel, Kyle and I set out on foot to explore the neighborhood, hunt down an ATM, and pick up some bottles of drinking water.

It turned out to be quite an ordeal! It was Sunday, and each bank we walked to seemed to be closed, and their ATMs were not accessible!

After spending way too long walking under the blazing tropical sun, we finally came to a shopping mall where we were able to withdraw some stunningly colorful Sri Lankan Rupees.

As we were walking through the neighborhood, we couldn't help but peek into each rickshaw we passed, sizing up the minimal space and starting to worry a bit about how we were going to fit our luggage. Even though we had all packed very light for this trip, we were worried about how we were going to get everything inside our tiny little tuk-tuk.

Finally, we got back to the hotel and decided to take a refreshing dip in the pool to cool off, enjoying our last few days of comfort before hitting the road.

Because of the unpredictable nature of the Rickshaw Run, we haven't booked any hotels for our time on the road. We are going to have to be flexible and spontaneous, and we have absolutely no idea where we will be sleeping each night after leaving Colombo.

In the evening, we wanted to do something special for dinner. We crammed into the back of an Uber rickshaw and set off towards the beach.

Before leaving Thailand, I had been doing a lot of research about what to eat in Sri Lanka for my food blog, The World of Street Food. There were a lot of dishes that I wanted to try, but none more so than Sri Lankan crab curry at a famous restaurant called The Station, which is located on the site of an old railway station and situated between the still operational tracks and Wellawatte Beach.

It was a really nice restaurant, and we sat down with our feet in the sand and enjoyed a bottle of ice-cold Lion Lager. Lion is the most popular beer in Sri Lanka and is pretty much ubiquitous throughout the country. Established in 1849 by English explorer Sir Samuel Baker, Lion Brewery is a Sri Lankan Institution.

We ordered our curry and had a team meeting to plan out our first few days in Sri Lanka. We had arrived a few days before the official start of the Rickshaw Run to get over jetlag and get our bearings in a country that none of us had ever been to before. After a rushed and hectic day of traveling, it was nice to finally relax and decompress on the beach.

Because each curry dish is made from scratch when you order, it can take a while for your food to arrive. It's not unusual to wait for an hour or more for your crab curry to be served. We ordered a few beers and appetizers to tide us over while we enjoyed the sunset on the beach.

We started off by ordering a serving of The Station's famous cheese toast as an appetizer.

Triangle-shaped pieces of toast are topped with melted and toasted cheese, and small, finely chopped pieces of purple onion, red chili, and green chili. It's mildly spicy - not overwhelmingly so - and the aromatics give the cheese toast an incredible flavor.

Next, we tried pol sambol (usually just called "sambol"), which roughly translates to "coconut relish". This is a traditional Sri Lankan dish, and one of the country's popular national dishes.

Sambol is a sort of condiment made from fresh grated coconut pounded together on a granite slab with shallots, dried whole red and green chilies, salt, and fresh lime juice.

The sambol that we tried was served with our curry alongside slices of buttery bread, which were used as a vessel for eating the flavorful sambol. Sambol is sweet, spicy, slightly sour, and very umami. 

We also ordered a big plate of fried rice to share. Fried rice goes great with just about everything (especially seafood) and is a useful palate cleanser when you are eating something spicy, such as a curry.

All of this, however, was just a prelude to our main dish: Sri Lankan crab curry, which arrived in a sizzling bowl piled high with incredible crab meat.

We had an absolutely fantastic waiter who taught us how to expertly crack open the crab's shell to get out every bite of the rich, sweet crab meat.

The gigantic crab (this wasn't even the largest portion on the menu!) was cooked for an hour in a rich blend of turmeric, curry powder, black pepper, chilies, and other Sri Lankan spices. The flavorful curry soaked into the crab meat infusing it with all of the delicious flavors.

This was our first introduction to Sri Lankan cuisine, and what an introduction it was!

We returned home to the hotel, stomachs full, and Kyle's tongue (unaccustomed to spice) ablaze.

It was an early night, and we were all in bed by 7:30.