Sight-seeing in Galle, Sri Lanka

A wee bit of a town, with a strong history, Galle, is for people who like to see the ‘ordinary’ in a country and yet find it extra-ordinary. You will find here an overwhelming leftover of the Portugese and Dutch occupation. And although we were staying in Unawatuna (Read: Review of Coco Bay Resorts in Unawatuna), we drove down to the Galle town three times…

First, to see the Galle Fort. A remnant of the strong Dutch legacy, explore the fort both in the morning when there aren’t many people in its streets, and do go back during sunset to see how the sun lights up the town in its orange glow as it makes its way into the distant horizon of the Indian Ocean. I have written extensively in my previous post. Read it here – Tour of the Galle Fort.

Second, to see how they catch fishes! Well, yes! We did that. Since we had gone to loiter the streets of the fort early in the morning, we found many fishermen flocking the sea-shores, off-loading the fresh catch from their jetties, putting them up for a bargain in the nearby fish stalls. We stopped by a section of the shore where about 25-30 men were pulling long ropes of the net. In what took them more than 45 minutes, we stood watching how they worked in tandem to bring their huge net to the shore, empty the contents, fling back to the waters those fishes that they didn’t need, sort the fishes and put them up for sale. As I said, this is for you if you find the ‘ordinary’ just as exciting as the ‘extraordinary’ 🙂

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We also went whale-watching in Mirissa. Well, our daughter had made it almost the highlight of our Sri Lanka trip. Exactly a year ago, she claimed, she had seen the king animals of the land when we were in Maasai Mara, Kenya, and now was the turn of the king animals of water. I have covered this too in a previous post –read it here – Whale-Watching in Galle.

If in a quandary whether to include Galle in your Sri Lanka itinerary or not, ask yourself this – do you like to see and understand every aspect of a country, both its cultural-religious richness and its natural beauty? If yes, go to Galle.