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K- A couple of days ago we spent 2 hours standing on a packed and rickety bus in Sri Lanka. I havent worked my upper arms and core so much since commuting from Wimbledon to Waterloo every morning back in the 1990s! Surprisingly the 2 hours went quite fast. Much like running, the first 20 minutes was a killer but after we got into the flow it was OK. In fact by the end I was doing the odd boogie to the Sri Lankan hip hop blaring from the bus' speakers - not muscle spasming as Mark alleges.



We have not been favored with good weather here and we both have colds so it says something for the country that we are still enjoying ourselves alot. Sri Lanka is a predomnantly Buddhist nation and our first stop of note was Anuradhapura, an ancient capital where we visited several ruined monastries, some working Stupas and the Sri Maha Bodi (Sacred Bo tree - growm from a cutting of the tree under which the Buddah found enlightenment). We then spent a couple of days in Trincomalee, a beach area on the North East coast. This was a bit of a gamble weatherwise as the East coast has a small Monsoon at this time of year. We were lucky for two days but then the heavens opened so we jumped on a bus Westwards towards Kandy, the 2nd largest town in the country.

On route to Kandy we visited Sigiriya, a towering rock outcrop that used to be topped by a palace. It contains the oldest non-religious paintings in Sri Lanka - 1500 years old. We started early despite the rain so had the place virtually to ourselves. We then made a quick stop at Dambullah to see some cave temples - see pictures.

Kandy itself was very pleasant. It is set round a man made lake and had a very European feel. Unfortunately like many European lake areas it was also cloudy and rained on and off but we managed to spend a couple of hours in the sun. We also visited the Tooth Temple which contains the most important Sri Lanken Buddhist artifact - yes, Buddah's tooth! The temple was busy with pilgrims and as usual we found watching them more interesting than the temple itself. We also enjoyed watching the monkeys steal the lotus flowers and rice offerings from the shrines- clearly they were not worried about reincarnation at a higher level!





As is usual in Asia people here approach us regularly asking us ”what is your country?”; “Sri Lanka good?”. What is weird is that this is usually the end of the conversation. Unfortunately India makes you very cynical. I can remember only one conversation during our 7 weeks there where the person asking us “where do you come from?” did not end up wanting to sell us something / take us to their shop / charge us for a tour. After a while we started to avoid striking up conversations as no matter how innocuous the exchange we knew sooner or later the punch line would involve asking us for money in some shape or form.



Sri Lanka has its share of touts and con men (and we have met a couple) but in general the people we are meeting are genuinely being friendly and just want a quick conversation. In fact, some have taken it further and have been giving us food. A young girl on the train giving us 2 bananas was unexpected and very nice. (unexpected by her little brother anyway who looked pretty upset at the loss of the bananas until we reciprocated with our biscuits and toffees!). We were however surprised further when visiting the sights of Anuradhapura we were beckoned over by 2 army guys on sentry duty. Oops - had we parked our bikes in the wrong place? No – they wanted to offer us some cake! As did the guy at the Museum entrance. And for no “bakeesh”.



Any country where people hand out free food is going to get Mark and my vote!



Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a great 2012!!

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