Trek to Sri Lanka

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Pedro had a great opportunity to practice spaying cats and dogs on his own, up to 30 surgeries in experience.  And the program happened to be two weeks located in Sri Lanka, outside of Colombo.  Not wanting to pass on this opportunity to do solo surgeries, and exploration of a new foreign country, Pedro and I decided he would stay an extra week.  Then I would join him for a holiday.

Pedro finished up on a Friday and I was flying the next day to arrive Sunday morning, planning on exploring Colombo before the next few days of multicity tours. Unfortunately, when I arrived to the Edinburgh airport over 3 hours early for my flight, the airport was in chaos. See, this was the line to GET in line to check in...which was about 3 flights behind. 

After some sitting around listening to the disarray, I learned they had a technical issue that led to manual check-ins only. Soon workers were going through the lines asking for flight numbers and pulling people out of the line to make way for sooner flights, including mine.  After finally getting checked in, I saw their technical issue had leaked over to boarding as well. The boards were frozen and announcement over loudspeaker took their place. They were holding flights due to the delays in check-ins, which messed up the gate schedules causing changes and last calls; the announcements were so constant they would frequently cut each other off.  Then my own flight was delayed, which had me worried for my transfer in Doha, Qatar. Delayed at the gate, delayed on the tarmac, delayed on the runway for takeoff.

I landed 10 minutes after my connecting flight departed.  It was almost 2am in Doha, and the next flight they were able to book me on was at 8:45. I suppose it wasn't the worst airport to be stuck in for hours.  It was beautiful, and I wondered around until I found a small garden center where other delayed passengers were napping in the grass. I quickly joined them to try sleeping a bit.

I woke up at 5am to the sunrise prayer playing on the loud speaker. Still half asleep, I decided to use my meal voucher to eat breakfast before finding my gate. Hamad International isn't the largest airport I've been too, but it felt a bit like a mall with half floors, multiple levels, and high end stores here and there.  It took a while to find the food court and then my boarding area. I was finally on my way though, on time for an 16:30 arrival in Colombo. 

Immigration at Sri Lanka was interesting.  A week before I left, the supreme court of Sri Lanka ruled to suspend the eVisa system due to controversy of a new system (price discrepancies), so the only option was now visa on arrival.  After landing, we were are shepherded into the immigration hall. There was the line for those with all their paperwork and a few lines full of confusion. Despite the many language barriers, we finally all helped each other follow the correct process. There was a line to apply for the visa, a line to get the visa, then a line to pay for the visa, before finally moving onto immigration...all according to the passport you held. but finally, success! I was through and eventually found Pedro.

After getting a SIM card and hiring a tuktuk, Pedro managed to get us to the hotel in time for dinner. 

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