{"id":15953,"date":"2017-02-08T17:10:57","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T17:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geoffjones.com\/?p=15953"},"modified":"2017-02-08T17:10:57","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T17:10:57","slug":"jaffna-to-kilinochchi-via-point-pedro-on-lifeday-25397","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/?p=15953","title":{"rendered":"Jaffna to Kilinochchi via Point Pedro on Lifeday 25,397"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today was a feast of Hindu Temples and seeing the mindless destruction of the civil war coupled to a visit of Sri Lanka&#8217;s northern most point.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15969\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15969\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/4-2017-02-07-08.18.14-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15969\" src=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/4-2017-02-07-08.18.14-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15969\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Temple<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t leave Old Park Villa until well after 8am due to the dilatory nature of the staff. I don&#8217;t think they are used to folks wanting to dash off. Amazingly the route I had planned took me straight past the stunning Nallur Kandawamy Kovil, so impressive I stopped and went inside after been made to take shirt and shoes off!<\/p>\n<p>Once leaving I spied a ice cream parlour &#8211; yummy yummy huge bowl of ice cream to keep me going for the day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/3-2017-02-07-11.43.59-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-15968\" src=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/3-2017-02-07-11.43.59-300x297.jpg\" alt=\"Geoff Jones at Pedro Point with bike\" width=\"300\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/3-2017-02-07-11.43.59-300x297.jpg 300w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/3-2017-02-07-11.43.59-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/3-2017-02-07-11.43.59-768x761.jpg 768w, https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/3-2017-02-07-11.43.59.jpg 933w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The route then took me past at least 10 more temples plus some pleasant fishing villages some still with tsunami damage others blown up in the war! I suspect there will be aland grab going on soon for all the empty plots overlooking the ocean, I eventually made it to the northern most part of Sri Lanka, Point Pedro. Did my selfie then moved on as not a lot there.<\/p>\n<p>I started heading south the wanton destruction everywhere, whole villages blown up and flattened. I came across the HALO mine clearance encampment, what a job! they&#8217;ve cleared tens of thousands of them but still 100s of thousands more. Staggering. Apparentlt it was like WW1 with trenches, barbed wire everywhere.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15970\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15970\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/1-2017-02-07-18.09.02-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15970\" src=\"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/1-2017-02-07-18.09.02-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Blown up water tower\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15970\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blown up water tower<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I made it to Kilinochchi and stayed at the first hotel AKR basic but OK. Walking through the town later I came across the blown up water tower, now a memorial, one of the last acts before the town was taken by the south. It reminded me of my Danube trip and V<a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/photos\/111882957452855371846\/album\/5926498104330587377\/5926498980267726098\">ukovar shot up water towe<\/a>r left as a memorial.<\/p>\n<p>A bigger shock then came in that the town is a dry one \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Days <a href=\"https:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/858115862\">Strava is here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/sc\/k962cbz0pbz5gq1\/AAAhsi2yUkI9lc1BrRKVdNGqa\">days pics are here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today was a feast of Hindu Temples and seeing the mindless destruction of the civil war coupled to a visit of Sri Lanka&#8217;s northern most point. I didn&#8217;t leave Old Park Villa until well after 8am due to the dilatory nature of the staff. I don&#8217;t think they are used to folks wanting to dash [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking","category-personal","category-sri-lanka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}