Shane

As Rosa and I usually do, we started our holiday without an itinerary. We'd been given advice by various friends and colleagues who'd been to Sri Lanka in the past but even sifting through emails was proving difficult. It'd been a long school year--decision making was the farthest thing from our minds.  We had a hotel booked in Colombo for the night; we were going to figure it out from there.

Fate had better plans for us. We struggled out of airport arrivals, past the duty free peddling large kitchen appliances (I'm talking ovens and washing machines here), had a free Sri Lankan SIM card shoved into our hands and must have reeked of lost tourists on holiday. A man we thought was a taxi driver approached us and bid us come over to his taxi stand business. 

His name was Anura and as he ordered our cab, he asked us our plans in his beautiful island nation. He nearly squealed with joy when we told him we had none and proceeded to write down a two-week itinerary including stops at national parks, historical monuments, religious relics and the beach. We quickly got the gist that he was trying to sell us on some kind of tour, a thing neither of us particularly wanted.

But then he got to his bottom line. Six days with a driver-cum-tour guide ('A very nice man, very polite, very knowledgeable, yes indeed!'), six nights hotel accommodation ('Including breakfast! Including air-conditioning!'), zipping around the country in a private car for $275 each. 

This is how we became acquainted with Shane.

After 24-hours in Colombo, not the world's most exciting city, Shane came to pick us up. After introducing himself, we got in his car and he handed us his recommendations, a notebook filled from front to back with the sloping handwriting of happy tourists the world over. They boasted of his friendliness, his helpfulness, his friendship. And over the course of our six days together, these things were proven again and again. 

He became our older brother, our translator of cultures and an honestly wonderful man. He humored our place-intensive itinerary and even stopped to give us a personal tour of the closed-for-the-day tea plantation.

On our last morning, we filled the last page in his notebook with our glowing recommendation and a promise that if we ever were to return, we would be in touch. I told him about my blog, something he claimed to only sort of understand not being part of 'that technological world.' But I also mentioned that I would spread his name and phone number to anyone looking for the world's best Sri Lankan tour guide driver. 

Thus, if you're looking for an amazing human being to show you around the country, give him a call: + 94 776 336 535. Shane has no email, but he'll call you straight back on his dime. He's just that kind of guy.