Mayke and I travelled to Sri Lanka as our honeymoon.

(click on the photo for all photo’s)

Things I loved most:

- Palagama Beach resort on Kalpitiya peninsula, bare foot luxury at $75 per night for a wonderful cabin (probably cheaper if you book direct) in a region that is still very unspoilt (used to be a bit unsafe there in not too recent history). The first ten or so photo’s (after the fish market) are taken at Palagama Beach.

- Yala Nature reserve, camping in a tented camp hosted by Leopard Safaris. Quite expensive but definitely the most fabulous way of enjoying the nature reserve (all the nature photo’s I took there)

- Tea country. Book a train ride from Colombo or Kandy up into the hills to Ella or Nuwara Eliya, stay a couple of days there (we stayed in a tea pickers bungalow, old english style, but there are plenty of options I think)

We didn’t go North (Jaffna) nor did we go to the northern East coast (Trincomalee). The beaches are supposed to be excellent there. If it wasn’t my honeymoon I would have gone up North, apparently not very touristic yet but all the more beautiful for it. Sri Lankans are all going up North as they haven’t been able to for about a quarter of a century.

South coast (around Galle) is really nice but more touristic. Expect to be hassled a couple of times (nothing to fear but you have to be alert). The simple reason is that this place has been open to tourism far longer than other parts of Sri Lanka so some touts have learnt the tricks of tricking tourists out of their money. Same goes for Colombo, be slightly more alert than elsewhere in Sri Lanka. By the way, it’s nothing compared to the hassle you can expect in e.g. Delhi.

Some general tips and observations:

Sri Lanka has 2 main monsoon seasons, one from one side and one from the other. Both last about half a year. This means that for one half of the year one side of the island offers a better beach experience, for the other half of the year the other side of the island. The differences are really quite noteworthy: in the calm season (when the monsoon blows on the other side) the seas are calm and blue, you can go snorkling diving and whale or dolphin spotting. In the other half the sea is rough, you don’t generally want to go swimming in it due to strong currents and there’s little chance of spotting anything. If you like surfing then that’s an advantage. You’ll have to research which side is good when you’re there, or if you can’t find out I know someone in Sri Lanka who can advise on this.

Sri Lanka is really a buddhist country. The main “tourist attractions” are the old buddhist civilizations from about 300 AD to 1200 AD. The center of all this is Anuradhapura, Kandy and Polonaruwa (“cultural triangle”) If you’re interested in archeological sites (some quite perfect) and buddhist stupas and rock carvings then spend lots of time here, otherwise just go there for a few days to get an impression and spend the rest of your 2 weeks exploring the country as it exists today. Sri Lanka today is to my mind much more interesting than the remnants of the past, although I don’t want to belittle the impressive remnants.

Sri Lanka is really the island of smiling people. This is no cliché but simple fact. People like to catch your eye and exchange smiles. Which is great!

Public transport is probably all right but I can’t tell you out of experience. If you’re interested I can recommend a great driver/guide who is extremenly knowledgeable on everything Sri Lankan and drives very calmly.

If you’re looking for a great place to unwind for a couple of days I can recommend the Beach Hut near to Galle, which sleeps 2 (intimate) adults (+ kids if necessary), comes with a phenomenal cook and a houseboy and a nightwatchman. See my photo’s near the end. It’s owned by an English couple who’ve really got an eye for style. When they’re not in it themselves its rented out. Again, if you’re interested I’ll give you contact details.

If you want a top top top notch hotel in Colombo go for Tintagel or if you want old colonial grandeur go for Galle Face (which has a lively sea side terrace in the late afternoon and evening). All in all I didn’t find Colombo worth staying for longer than one or two days.

Aruba tot nu toe: een klein eiland met een heerlijk klimaat. Een ruwe noord-oost kant en een toeristische zuid-west kant. Nog niet veel gezien behalve heel veel vuurwerk en de twee kitespots. Vandaag was namelijk voor het eerst goede wind (22 knopen) dus het nieuwjaars uitslapen ging even niet door. Boca Grandi is een kleine baai aan de ruige noord-oost kant, met een rif er voor zodat er niet al te grote golven in komen maar het golft toch aardig. Aanlandige wind. De foto’s zijn daar genomen.

Daarna langs Fishermen’s Hut, aan de zuid-west kant. Glad water, mooie kleine rollende golven maar vrijwel pal aflandige wind. Voor gevorderden of zorgen dat er een bootje stand-by staat. Op deze spot wordt gelest maar het is er erg vlagerig, tenzij je verder uit de kust gaat (met alle risico’s van dien). Er ligt iets verderop ook een scheepswrak en daar staan mooie golven.

Morgen misschien nog genoeg wind, daarna de hele week te weinig. De trade-wind is dit jaar niet zo betrouwbaar als anders. Het heeft de afgelopen weken . maanden ook veel meer geregend dan normaal dus overal grote plassen en het eiland schijnt veel groener te zijn dan normaal.

Later meer.

Het was heerlijk nazomeren verleden week, maar de wind was niet zo best voor kitesurfen. Mayke nam deze foto met haar iphone tijdens een strandwandeling ten noorden van Scheveningen. Ondanks de luwte onder de duinen met oostenwind kwam een vlieger die Adriaan eerder strandjutte en Jan vervolgens uit de knoop haalde prima de lucht in.

Kiteboarding is echt verslavend. Na een paar lessen van Adriaan heb ik gisteren bij Oostvoorne m’n eerste volle slagen gemaakt (en de nodige wipe-outs). De foto is van Terschelling afgelopen woensdag, m’n eerste succesvolle waterstart. Klik op de foto voor nog een paar foto’s en foto’s van Adriaan aan z’n kite.

My parents invited Mayke and me to join them on their orchestra tour of Budapest last week. Budapest has changed lots since my last visit (about 8 years ago), the city seems to have turned into a fun culture-rich and fashion-aware modern capital. Highlights were (of course) the thermal baths (Gellert and Széchenyi) and the impressive statue park with impressive socialist statues, and excellent restaurants! (Dio as top-pick).

A daytrip by car to Eastern Eger, a small town surrounded by vineyards, was also rewarding, although the weather was less cooperative that day. The Hungarian motorways are top-notch, the coutryside is beautiful and they make good wine!

Click on the photo for some impressions.

Spent the past three weeks travelling around Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh together with Mayke. India is a very special country, full of contradictions. A lot of beauty that goes seemlessly together with a lot of grime. It took a while to get used to the busy traffic (incessantly hooting at everything that moves) and the unavoidable cows, cowdung and litter. Once we got the hang of things we started to fall in love with this beautiful country though. See some photo impressions here.

Karen & Cobi’s wedding in Abbadia a Isola was the perfect excuse to spend a week in the countryside between Siena and Florence. I’ve posted a couple of pictures here.

This year has had a promising start with two weeks of Kenya in January and more recently two weeks of snow in Austria. The first week was in Kirchberg (Kitzbühler Alpen) in the great company of fifteen friends including Mayke, which was a week of great fun, great weather to begin with but not so great weather later on with some rain-skiing (enjoyable for those that enjoy getting wet and going slowly). Fortunately Olaf K. and I had a second week lined up in Saalbach-Hinterglemm which turned out to be a week full of fresh snow. Halfway through the week we were joined by Adriaan, who turns out to be an absolute powder addict.

His powder addiction brought us mostly off-piste and often through woods, which occasionally also gave rise to (minor) complications involving ski-throwing, sliding, stumbling, hanging onto trees, sliding through barbed wire, wading through mountain streams and skiing on what looks initially like snow but turns out to be soil with a thin layer of snow to cover it up. I personally discovered a new turning-method by jumping into a tree and swivelling your ski’s round – great if you need to turn around but the slope won’t allow you to. Adriaan discovered a new way of going past fallen-over trees, which involves a summersault over the tree in question. Best executed by starting off with a jump over another fallen-over tree higher up.

All in all, great fun, rounded off with a day of head-deep powder in Kaprun (and unfortunately for Olaf a rock that got slightly too friendly with his snowboard) and a fun-in-the-woods filled Easter Monday in Zell-am-See. The homeward journey also turned out to involve lots of powder, on which we felt very comfortable thanks to the previous week of powder-only skiing.

Click here for all the photo’s.

Mention Kenya today and everyone thinks of riots and mayhem. Judging by the media, Kenya is not a place you would want to be for your relaxation around now. Last January, Mayke and I faced the choice whether to trust the media and cancel our visit to my sister, or trust my sister’s info and get on the flight. We chose to fly and arrived in the Kenya as I’ve always known it, only improved in some ways (more modern mostly). Everywhere we went we met people who were strongly opposed to the violence and basically just wanted to get on with life. Which is what most people seemed to be doing: try to go about business as usual. Unfortunately, a small elite of power-crazed self-centred ugali-for-brains doesn’t seem to care about te country one bit and has chosen to fight out their differences at the expense of the 99% innocent standers-by.
It was a strange sensation to on the one hand have a thoroughly enjoyable time with my sister, her husband & new-born daughter around Nairobi, a few days in the Masai Mara and a few days at the coast, while on the other hand you witness first hand the complete drainage of tourists and the subsequent closing down of most tourist-related businesses. A heart-wrenchingly large number of Kenyans that work in sectors such as tourism are all losing their jobs and income because Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga are both too selfish to put their own people first. One can only hope that sense will come to them soon and Kenya will return to the beautiful and peace-loving nation it’s meant to be.
Check out some photographs taken while our media would have us believe the country was in flames.

Are both quite worth a visit when the weather’s right (and it was