ETA delays ?

Yes I experienced a delay last time - this was my fourth application and all the others had been approved in minutes. Luckily for me I'm applying for a business entry so I emailed our secretary in Colombo and she phoned Immigration and I had approval before she emailed me back. It appears that sometimes applications get lost in the system.

Has it arrived?

An update would be useful. thanks.

Simon
Sorry for delay. I've been in SL! Just returned
The ETA did not turn up so I called them; surprisingly (to me) they were open late into the evening SL time.
The phone call resolved the issue very speedily and the ETA arrived minutes later.

as a digression, I've been intrigued by your own situation. I've read in other of your posts that you travel by bike, and that you are (or were) in the hill country.
As a keen cyclo tourist myself, I've been wondering what it's like to tour there. The roads all seem to be incredibly busy with little discipline (or at least what we'd think of as discipline in the West). It doesn't appear that it would be a wholly pleasant experience, with the constant noise on the road. Are you touring yourself or based in one area but using a bike for transport?
In the 12 days I was there, and travelling between Colombo, Galle, Tangalle, Kandy, I saw very few "leisure" cyclists - just two or three small cycling groups of perhaps six riders, and I saw zero Westerners on bikes. Do you think it's a viable place to cyclo tour? Is there a network of smaller more bike-friendly roads that we may have missed (we had a driver on this visit).

Hi James,
Yes, I have cycle toured there 3 times, 4 months in all. Full on touring, bags on bike and staying somewhere new each night. I have plenty of time, you could see much of it in a month if you wanted.

It is generally regarded as one of the easiest long haul destinations to tour. Pretty good roads, plenty of accommodation, widely available food (as long as you like local food), plenty to see, good climate, friendly locals, etc.

I have cycled most of SL and the roads you were on are probably the worst. Once away from the west coast and the roads to Kandy, traffic is very light. It always builds up in the towns with all the local traffic, but it moves very slowly. Once away from the towns, the roads quieten down again. You have to get used to the rules of the road, but generally its just give way to everything and forget your road rage.

There are plenty of lightly trafficked roads that you can find, just have a look at Google maps. I cycled right down the east coast and for much of that you hardly see any traffic.

You get to stay in small towns where you never see any other tourists, but you may have to accept lower standards of accom and only local food, which can get tedious. As a cycle tourist you get to eat a very different cuisine to the average tourist. Hence why I don't particularly rate SL food. However, as the island is pretty small you are never more than a day or two away from a tourist town.

You need to take your own bike as you can't get anything half decent there. This is no problem as you can carry it for free on some airlines eg Emirates.

There are some cycle blogs on crazyguyonabike.com - Bill Weir's write ups are pretty good.

PM me if you need any more info, but please read up first as I'm sure Bill's stuff will answer many of your questions.

Enjoy

Thanks for that. Very useful. I'll check Bill's blog too.
Might mean two separate trips then. I've agreed with my partner we'll go back and perhaps backpack for a month or so, to see some of the areas we didn't have time for on our recent visit.
Sadly this will be wholly inconsistent with me riding my bike around!
This years bike tour will be the more sedate Madrid to Southern Spain. Hopefully further afield next year :-)

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