Advertisement
Published: December 7th 2013
Monkey
This monkey just looked too cool in this pose.We were now headed to two more of Sri Lanka's UNESCO World Heritage Sites back to back - Sigiriya and Anuradhapura. The ride out of Kandy was uneventful other than the roads and traffic were not much different than what we encountered entering Kandy. With no shoulders and rough tarmac, these would be the worst roads of our trip. That wasn't to change until we hit Dumbulla (actually home to yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site…). It is interesting to note that the worst roads of our trip were around Sri Lanka's two largest cities -- Colombo and Kandy. I guess with the new motorways (Sri Lankan now has a few true freeways -- Colombo to Galle and Colombo to Kandy) constructed recently the older roads are no longer as much of concern.
Riding in Sri Lanka has generally been good, but the one thing we haven't conquered are the busses. They are generally the biggest vehicles on the road and they know it. They go as fast as they want and they go where they want. For us, that means they drift in and out of traffic for passengers. They will have no regard to whether we are in
their path or not, so we have to adjust be either waiting until they move again or pass them, which is not an exact science.
The one thing I started to notice outside of Kandy was the number of predominately Muslim communities. The Christian and Muslim minorities are certainly noticeable in certain parts of the country. When they are there in numbers, they seem to dominate a town. We haven't seen too many Christian communities outside of the coast, but it is a different story for the Muslim communities.
One thing there is no shortage of in Sri Lanka are bakeries. They have become obliquitous for us and have been a favourite for us at breakfast. We will usually have a juice, yogurt and some combination of buns, rottis, or pastries. Everything, including the rotties, have some kind of filling. The rotties are generally filled with spicy vegetable, chicken, or beef mixtures. The buns will get a bit more creative. There is a spicy onion mixture that comes with a large triangular shape that has become my favourite. It is sometime a bit of wait taste, as sometimes english is not as common in the rural areas.
Elephant Sign
Back home I have to watch out for bears and here I have to watch out for elephants... There was a 25 km stretch between Kandy and Dambulla (remember that we were descending from 500m to 200m), where we saw lots of "spice farms". Remember that many of the spices we know today are native to Sri Lanka (e.g. pepper and cinnamon). I wasn't too sure what they were all about, but we eventually did have someone wave us in to one. He then proceed to give us a "free" tour of the farm. Always being one of those individuals who enjoys understanding where things come from or how they are made (remember our tea tour in Nuwara Eliyia). It was interesting, but many of the trees were not in bloom. There was obviously a sales pitch to everything and sure enough there was a store at the end, where we could buy many of the products derived from the raw ingredients shown to us. We did get a full body massage with the their products with a possible "donation" to the masseuses. I could not tell you how good that felt after riding about 45 km to that point. Shauna picked up some cream for headaches.
Our next big city was Dambulla, where we thought we
Elephant Crossing
Just when you thought you had seen all the road signs possible would stop for lunch at a nice restaurant (not the case), but we did accidentally come across the Golden Temple, which also contains the Dambulla Cave Temple. It is the largest and best-preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka. It is actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well, but we managed to miss it in our planning. We took a quick stop to visit the giant buddha, but not the caves.
Just when I thought we had no chance for a descent restaurant for the day (looking for 20 kms), we came across one. I knew we were good, when a young man ran up to the entrance to greet me with a cold wet towel. The buffet looked great and we had a nice lunch. Buffets are quite common here and can be found all over the country. They will usually have a string of clay pots with everything from rice to curries. The ubiquitous papadums are also always there.
By the time we arrived in Sigiriya, Shauna was sick and quickly getting worse. She had a fever and a severe headache. So bad so, we ended up going to a doctor that night in the
Hornet Sign
If elephants weren't enough, I also have to worry about hornets... local village -- that was an experience… The office was literally a whole in the wall… A number of other women were there waiting for the doctor, but he was at the hospital dealing with an emergency. After his return, it wasn't too long for Shauna to get in. Our tuk-tuk driver was very helpful with co-ordinating and waiting for us. Shauna was prescribed some pain killers and asked to wait it out for a couple of days before coming to the clinic for some blood tests (possibility of Dengue Fever). For all of this work, our tuk-tuk driver only charged use 250 Rs ($2). We must have taken 1.5 hours out of his evening, and he was so helpful at the clinic and waiting for us. I gave him a 500 Rs note.
On the Saturday, Shauna was too sick to do much other than rest, so I headed up to see the ancient city of Sigiriya (they have a lot of them here). This was interesting because they built a city up on top of a huge rock protruding nearly 400 meters from the otherwise flat countryside (kind of similar to Ayers Rock in Australia). There was
Bus Sign
Sinhalese, Tamil, and English no easy way today to get up there even with the stairs now in place. How they built this city centuries ago I have no idea… The rock paintings were quite impressive, because of their quality and condition (they are 15 centuries old!).
As I was sitting at one of the break points descent, I couldn't stop but chuckle at how some people dressed and what they carried up this steep climb. I saw one middle-aged Italian women who with blue flat shoes with flowers on top of them. I also saw a Sri Lankan lady carrying three two-liter bottles of soda… I have been surviving with nothing more than t-shirts and shorts, but I am amazed at how many Westerners are wearing jeans… They just can't be that comfortable in Sri Lanka's heat and humidity.
The views from on top of the rock were impressive, but not much was left of the city other than the foundations of the buildings. I imagined this is a bit what Machu Picchu (Peru) must looks like.
This was another expensive site costing $30 (many times higher than Sri Lankan's pay). They really hit foreigners hard at these tourist site.
It does leave a bit of bad taste in one's month, but it isn' the first country I have seen this. China is the most obvious one in my experience.
On the Sunday, Shauna was well enough to move, but not well enough to ride. We decided that she would hire a van to take her to Anuradhapura, while I would ride. I was gone by 6:00 and I had the best ride of the trip. It was on a good, quiet road with little traffic on a Sunday morning. The first 18 kms were along a quiet paved one-lane road through a forested elephant reserve. In Canada, we have to worry about bears and here I have to worry about elephants! They were out there, as I saw two large piles of elephant dung on the road. One was even steaming! Outside of two motorcycles, I did not see any other vehicles for that stretch of road. The only problem I had and on this day was light rain, which didn't pose too much of a problem, as it was still warm outside and it wasn't coming down too bad. I faced this for at least the first
Sri Lankan Wall Paintings
These wall paintings look fabulous for being 15 centuries old. I guest Sri Lankan porn was a live and well back then. ;-) 50 km of the ride.
The most disturbing site of the day was a chained elephant on the side of the rode that had a front and back leg tied up. It was obviously a working elephant, but all it was doing was rocking back and forth, back and forth -- very sad…
Our next stop was Anuradhapura, which is another ancient city in Sri Lanka and the most impressive. It covered many square kilometres and reminded me of cities like Angkor Wat (Cambodia) and Ayutthaya (Thailand). At one point, one of the pagodas was the highest man-made structure outside of the Giza Pyramids. We wondered around the site on bicycle, as it was massive site, but this time we got caught in rain that lasted a good two to three hours. We waited most of it out, but realized we had to make the most of it to get through what we wanted to see.
KM 553
Advertisement
Tot: 0.138s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 15; qc: 64; dbt: 0.0692s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
