=== the weather app lied and we believed it === My wife Ingrid an I had planned this trip for eight months. Sri Lanka in July and August. The southwest monsoon was supposed to be winding down by late July. The ten-day forecast on every app we checked presented scattered showers at worst. We booked a driver, reserved boutique hotels, packed mosquito repellent, baby sunscreen rated SPF 50, and a portable crib that weighed seven kilograms and took up half of our third checked bag.
We flew Emirates from Stockholm to Colombo via Dubai, arriving at Bandaranaike International Airport on July 27. Our daughter Astrid was six months old and had just absorbed to sit up unassisted, which we weighed a major developmental milestone relevant to travel preparedness. She could not yet crawl, which meant she could not yet escape us, which was the only advantage we had.
six months old and already a better traveler than expected
Our driver, a Sinhalese man named Chaminda who had been doing this for nineteen years, met us at arrivals with a sign that read "Lindqvist Family." He took one look at the sky, which was the color of a bruise, an said, "Bad monsoon this year." I assumed he was being conservative. He was not.
=== the road to galle was a swimming pool === The drive from Colombo to Galle, our first stop, normally takes about two hours on the Southern Expressway. It took us four and a half hours. Rain fell in sheets so thick that Chaminda could not see more than ten meters ahead. We crawled along the expressway at 20 km/h while other vehicles pulled over to wait it out. Astrid slept thru most of it, either unbothered by the apocalypse outside or wisely choosing unconsciousness as a response.
the galle fort stood its ground
We arrived at our hotel, a converted colonial-era house inside the Galle Fort, soaking wet. The hotel owner, a Dutch-Sri Lankan woman named Liesbeth, greeted us with towels and hot Ceylon tea and said, "Worst rain since 2011." The fort itself, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built by the Portuguese in 1588, was handling it better than we were — the massive stone walls shrugged off the monsoon like it had been doing for four hundred years.
Our room had a view of the ramparts an the Indian Ocean, which under normal circumstances would have been stunning. Thru the rain, it was a gray blur punctuated by the occasional coconut palm bending nearly horizontal in the wind. I sat on the bed with Astrid while Ingrid squeezed water out of her hair and we both silently questioned whether we had made a catastrophic parenting error.
=== the elephant orphanage was worth every moment of misery === We had booked visits to three wildlife sites, an by day three the rain had relented enough to attempt the first one — the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, about two hours inland from Galle. The drive was thru lush countryside that was aggressively, overwhelmingly green from weeks of monsoon rain. Rice paddies stretched on both sides of the road, flooded to the brim, reflecting the sky like mirrors.
The orphanage houses about 90 elephants, many of em rescued from the wild after losing their mothers. At 10 AM they are walked to the Ma Oya river for bathing, and visitors line the banks to watch. We arrived early enough to get a spot near the water.
Astrid had rarely seen an elephant. Her reaction, when a two-ton adolescent splashed thru the river thirty feet from us, was to open her mouth so wide that I could see every one of her four teeth, and then to make a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a scream but was entirely delighted. She kicked her legs. She grabbed Ingrid's finger. She made the sound again.
An older elephant, a female named Sama who had been at the orphanage since 1998, walked past us on the bank and stopped. She looked directly at Astrid for maybe five seconds. I know anthropomorphizing animals is intellectually lazy, but I swear this elephant acknowledged our daughter. Astrid squealed. Sama moved on.
=== that single moment rewrote the entire trip === She looked directly at Astrid for mayb five seconds. I know anthropomorphizing animals is intellectually lazy, but I swear this elephant acknowledged our daughter. Astrid squealed. Sama moved on.
That moment alone justified the entire trip — the sleepless flight, the four-hour drive thru a monsoon, the wet clothes, the jet lag, the diaper situation in a country where we could not read the packaging on baby wipes. All of it.
=== colombo at the end was a different country === Our final two days were in Colombo, where the rain had mostly stopped and the city was drying out like a dog after a bath. We stayed at a modest hotel in Cinnamon Gardens and laid out our time eating hoppers at the Barefoot Garden Café, browsing the bookstore at Barefoot (where Ingrid snagged a handwoven silk scarf), and walking through Viharamahadevi Park with Astrid in the stroller while monitor lizards sunned themselves on the grass.
The flights home were Emirates again, Stockholm via Dubai. Astrid slept for seven of the eight hours to Dubai, stayed awake for the layover — she was fascinated by the airport fountains — an slept for six of the nine hours to Stockholm. She handled the 17-hour journey better than either of us.
Ingrid and I agreed that we would not do monsoon season again. We also agreed that we would go back to Sri Lanka in February, during the dry season, and that we would bring Astrid. She was already a better traveler than most adults I know.