Travel Day 1128 – Trincomalee, SRI LANKA
After only managing to go for a short dip in the sea yesterday, we really wanted to make this day a Travel Daycation at the beach…
Uppuveli Beach in Trincomalee
Unfortunately everything in our resort hotel was so extremely expensive that we already knew we would have to move-on tomorrow and so we had to use the day today not only as a Daycation, but also to do some sight-seeing. Since the heat of the day seemed to be the worst time to be running around town, we rather had an early start and headed directly towards the center of Trincomalee with a friendly rickshaw driver who gave us a lift almost entirely free of charge…
Going to town did not only have the advantage that we could walk around and visit Fort Fredrick before it got too hot, but we could also do some errands and have breakfast as well as lunch for a normal price in one of the many local restaurants. So it all seemed to work out pretty well and after an amazingly delicious breakfast of curry, daal, string-hoppers and parotta, we were finally walking over towards the cliff fortress with the Swami Rock and the Dutch Fort Frederick…
Dutch Fort Frederick in Trincomalee
Fort Frederick had the usual history as the Portuguese built a small fort first in 1624, the Dutch came and destroyed everything while building a bigger, more modern fortress in 1665 and the British took finally over 1795 while keeping Trincomalee until the independence of Sri Lanka. The same had happened in Colombo and Jaffna as well and here too, nothing was left from the Portuguese times. All that could be seen today was the Dutch fort with the British coat of arms above the exterior entrance…
While the history of Trincomalee and Fort Frederick seemed pretty much the same as in other places in Sri Lanka, there was still a quite unique twist as also the French and even the Danish were involved at certain times in history. Trincomalee had apparently a natural deep sea harbor that was usable all year round, making it a very valuable sea port and a prime target for European powers of the area. Additionally the natural setting of Fort Frederick took full advantage of the cliffs rising from the ocean, leaving only the slim land side open for protection…
Shady Lanes inside Fort Frederick
When we were approaching Fort Frederick, we checked in our guide books for the mentioned restrictions since the fort was still an active military base, but none of the “bring passport” and “take no photos” suggestions proved true and we could actually wander around quite freely. It was really quite amazing to see the interior of the fort, especially after having been to Jaffna. Here everything was still intact and the entire fort appeared almost like an old Hacienda. All the buildings seemed to be nicely preserved, colonnaded colonial structures and the streets were shady lanes, covered by huge trees…
The whole fort looked more like a nice park than a military base and after we roamed around for a while we finally visited the Shiva temple on Swami Rock, the tip of the cliff peninsula. After that we just so managed to visit two remaining churches in town and then we really had to head back to Uppuveli, so we could at least spend the remaining time while having a short Daycation at the nice and really empty beach…
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