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Our return is 05.31 in early April – yes it’s brutal! I’m not sure if it’s even worth going to bed the night before! How long before the flight do you recommend being at the airport? We’re in Club – is there a dedicated check in desk and fast track?
We were through checkin, immigration and in the lounge in about 30 minutes. Yes, there is a club queue, the lounge is OK by Indian standards, there was plenty of room whilst we were there and it’s very close to the gate we used.
Sounds like an epic trip qc, hope Nandika lives up to expectations. Have a great time.
Reporting back – Nandika did indeed live up to our expectations so thank you very much for the recommendation.
I wouldn’t stay at the Leela Palace again – it’s a bit blingy and the beds are hard. We actually kind of wished we’d stayed longer at the IC instead as the ‘club offerings’ on the beach which we also managed to blag as our friend @strickers had recommended it😅
After our return from Sri Lanka/Maldives we had another 4 nights (well 3.5 if you count getting up in the middle of the night to catch the BA flight at 05.30 and we prevaricated over where to stay in the end choosing the Taj Connemara which turned out to be a lovely hotel and quiet oasis in the middle of the city – very reasonable too.
We were in Club world on BA – can’t remember the food on the way out so it must have been ok but on the return it was awful – so much so that the CSM made a report about it.
We will definitely go back to Sri Lanka – the people are lovely, it’s clean, service is good everywhere and the country needs tourism.
One tip if you stay at Cinnamon Yala Wild the laundry is so cheap – have all your washing done there. Prior to that we had been washing a few things as we went along so this was a treat to have it all back neatly pressed! Might apply to all Cinnamon hotels there.
QC, glad you had a good time there.
Can you tell me how you prepared for the 05:30 departure out of Chennai?We went to bed at 10.30 and up at 2.30 for a 03.00,departure to the airport. It wasn’t great but we got to the airport at 3.30 to find empty check in desks – we got escorted to security by a BA employer who told us had we been there earlier there would have been queues at security and immigration.
@strickers – forgot to comment on this –
‘ some odd behaviour as we departed, lots of locals standing up and passing multiple bottles of duty free and cash amongst themselves. I couldn’t fathom it, looked very suspicious’
On our flight out of MAA too – it’s preordered duty free – on our flight there were bags and bags of it being doled out in the galley! One guy had 8 bottles of whiskey!
On our flight back CMB-MAA the other strange behaviour was that as soon we touched down virtually nearly everyone stood up and got their bags long before the seat belt sign went off – when it did go off there was no point in us standing up as we could never have reached the overhead bins – eventually we had to push our way out! They looked like they were workers possibly travelling to the Middle East.
We retired to bed at 10:30, only to rise again at 2:30 in the morning for our 3:00 departure to the airport. While the early start wasn’t ideal, we managed to arrive at the airport by 3:30, only to discover vacant check-in desks. Thankfully, a British Airways staff member guided us through security, mentioning that had we arrived any earlier, we would have encountered long queues at both security and immigration checkpoints Sso.
@qc, the standing up behaviour is common in those parts of Asia. They think that’ll save them a few mins in the immigration queue by trying to beat others. It’s a scarcity mindset where people are used to thinking they need to get ahead of others. Yes, they are wage workers returning home likely from Middle East.
Passing bottles of liquor – it’s effectively a mule operation, where merchants pay cash to get the liquor that they can sell at much higher rates in the shadow market.
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