April 20th - How safe is Sri Lanka right now?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2022
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sri Lanka is a beautiful country full of discoveries to be made - but the political and economic situation at the moment is giving many of you second thoughts about your travel plants to the country right now. I've enlisted the help of adventure tour guide and wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein on whether now is the time to visit.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast, which is a little bit different. I am recording this in the streets of South London, walking along with an interesting character with whom I am going to have a discussion about the wisdom or otherwise of travelling to Sri Lanka. |
| 0:22.6 | This is Paul Goldstein, who you may have heard of as an adventure guide, a photographer. |
| 0:29.1 | He's also co-owner of Kichichi's safari camp in Kenya, but he's just been for a family |
| 0:36.3 | trip to Sri Lanka. |
| 0:39.0 | Paul, this is a country which is teetering on the brink of collapse, extraordinarily unpopular |
| 0:46.7 | leader, devastated by coronavirus. |
| 0:51.4 | That's enough of the UK. |
| 0:53.6 | And that an awful lot of people are contacting me at the |
| 0:59.3 | independent and saying, hey, I'm booked to go to Sri Lanka, but I really don't want to. Should I |
| 1:05.1 | cancel? What should I be telling them? It's an emphatic don't cancel. I'd love to know their reasoning. |
| 1:13.1 | You know, when you have a country that has or close to default, |
| 1:17.1 | your pound or euro or dollar will go further than at any time before. |
| 1:21.9 | This is a country that has suffered the ghastly trinity of civil war of the tsunami of course and indeed |
| 1:29.6 | COVID they were rigorous during COVID now's not the time for abandonment I have never felt |
| 1:36.0 | safer but I could say this always I've been in Sri Lanka to Sri Lanka since I think 1990 was the |
| 1:42.3 | first time I went I've never felt safer anywhere. |
| 1:45.5 | Tourists are not their enemy. |
| 1:47.8 | The blame for their country's parlour situation |
| 1:51.7 | is very lies at the doors of their Prime Minister |
| 1:54.5 | who should have gone a long time ago. |
| 1:56.5 | He's dishonest, he's corrupt, |
| 1:58.7 | and as are the coterie of ghastly ministers with their faces in the trough |
... |
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