We left via tuk-tuk to the train station for our 3rd consecutive day of travelling. The tuk-tuk ran out of petrol so he took our rucksacks out of the back and produced a litre water bottle filled with fuel, and a few minutes later we were on our way again. We had booked 1st class (which means air conditioning and reclining seats) and 8 hours later we arrived in Jaffna.

Jaffna, the capital of the far north, with its Hindu-Tamil history and 2000 temples (oh joy!). Jaffna has only opened up to tourism in the last 5 years and was a no-go war zone for two decades until 2009, and there is still a big military presence in the area.

It was firstly taken over by the Portuguese in the 17th century who destroyed all the Hindu temples and built Christian churches. Jaffna then surrendered to the Dutch and in 1795 the British took over sewing the seeds of future inter-ethnic unrest by "favouring" the Jaffna Tamils. In the early 1980's and for two decades, Jaffna was variously besieged by Tamil guerrillas trying to create and independent state and the Sri-Lankan Army. The city lost much of its population to emigration and in 1990 the Tamil guerrillas forced out most Muslims, though around 3000 have now returned. There is a lot of history surrounding the civil war, but not for the blog ………… But it makes for a very interesting area to visit, especially as there is so little tourism.

Jaffna was also sadly hit by the 2004 Tsunami which killed over 220,000 people in 14 countries. The hardest areas hit were the eastern shores of Sri Lanka and later the southwestern shores.

We had two full days here and on our first day we explored the whole of the peninsula for 9 hours, passing fields of palmyra palms where they collect the sap to make "toddy" so we saw quite a few "shebeens". 1000's of pink flamingos although quite a distance away, and also Heather's favourite, the painted stork. Technicolour temples, holy springs (separate for men and women and famed for its curative properties), miles of coastline, fishing villages and ending up at Point Pedro, the most northern point of the Jaffna Peninsula.

The second day we resorted to walking the city, not such a good idea in the heat. We visited the fort, originally built by the Portuguese and later expanded by the Dutch. There was an inter-college cricket match going on for 3 days which seemed very excitable, so we popped in to the cricket ground to have a look. A colonial and impressive clock tower which was built to commemorate the visit of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales to Ceylon in 1875. Badly damaged by the civil war, Prince Charles visited Sri Lanka in 1998 and offered British assistance in restoring the tower and was re-opened in 2002. Our final visit was to St Mary's Catholic Cathedral which was unfortunately shut and by this time we were baking, so we made our way home to the air-conditioning of our room where we could see a lot of these sights from our 7th floor balcony.

To end our stay here we went to a local restaurant called Mangos for dinner and enjoyed vegetarian curry and Lassi - no alcohol served so a healthy meal.