Blogs from Kandy, Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia

Thursday 27 February, 2020 cont'd During the afternoon we started our packing and sorting things out for our departure tomorrow. We had a quiet evening and lights out was 9.20 pm. Friday 28 February, 2020 Today is our transfer from Kandy to Nilaveli near Trincomalee via Polonnaruwa. Woke at 6.20 am after a good nights sleep. Down for breakfast at 8.00 am. Nice hotel guy said the taxi driver would like an earlier start than 10.00 am as he felt there was a lot to do in the day. We comprimised on 9.15 am. Back to the room, showered and speeded up our final packing. I went down and paid our hotel bill. He had given us a slightly cheaper rate for the further two nights. The staff collected our luggage from the room and the ... read more

Saturday, 22 February, 2020 Move from Ella to Kandy today by train. Heavy rain during the night. Woke at 7.00 am, stirred at 7.45 am and down to breakfast. Eggs, toast, roti, plenty of fruit and cups of tea. Our train is 2.15 pm and check out is 12.00 pm. So when we paid our bill USD 39.12 (GBP 30.09) we asked about keeping the room for a little while. She said she had no booking for tonight, so no problem. We also asked them to book us a Tuktuk to the station. We packed and showered and left the room at 9.30 am, for a last potter round Ella. Pat had seen a “Starbeans” she wanted to try. We found it and had a coffee and a coke. Then a meander looking in various shops. ... read more

We had a very stressful journey to Kandy from Sigiriya - the road was very busy and we came close to having a couple of accidents. In Dambulla there is a very large wholesale produce market and the road to Kandy was clogged with trucks overloaded with sacks of vegetables, plus the usual tuk tuks heedlessly weaving around the traffic and the buses which had absolutely no regard for fellow road users. We were very thankful when Saman stopped at a big Hindu temple in Matale, halfway to Kandy. We needed a coffee desperately.... The Sri Muthumariamman Thevasthanam (try pronouncing that.. ) was a very colourful Hindu temple. The large interior had a central altar and the area surrounding the altar was full of ceremonial objects and small chariots used in an annual festival. As with ... read more

No snake scares this morning. We were offered breakfast by our gracious host and our farewell meal was coconut rotis with a pickled chutney. We were also served something sweeter, which looked like frog spawn but tasted syrupy. We also had a couple of bananas and were ready for the long drive ahead. The morning was filled with a long trek back to Kandy. We arrived just before lunch and were at the realisation that we were going to have to dip into our emergency fund for the first time. This involved a walk in the baking sun down to the town once more, by which point it was about half past 2. We acquired some money from a cashpoint and got the cheapest lunch we could find from a bakery, before we decided to do ... read more

R: And so we continued onwards up into the mountains of Sri Lanka. We started the day dropping in at Dambulla Golden Temple. This is more a museum of Buddhism, built by the Japanese with giant golden Buddha and even neon signs. It was very, very gaudy, but somehow quite cheerful. I really want to go back to Japan. Being on a tour with a driver this time, we had no real control of our stops so we ended up first at a wood carving place. Initially we were very sceptical of this stop, but it charmed my inner scientist - they make a wood powder from what they described as a Sri Lankan rainbow tree. When added to hot water, this turned red. When they added iron, it turned black, when you added lime juice ... read more