BLOG SIX - TOUR OF SRI LANKA

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Tour - Day One

We started our tour of Sri Lanka on Saturday. We left the house at 4.30am so we could get to Pinawela Elephant Orphanage in time for the morning feed. We arrived at about 9.30am and the park was really busy; with tourists but also locals as it was a Saturday. There was also lots of military present as the Indian High Commissioner was visiting that day, so security was extremely high. I didn’t really like the elephant orphanage. Well I didn’t like it at all! The staff seemed to treat the elephants really cruelly, hitting them and shouting at them all the time and they were also chained up really tightly. I know they have to keep them under control, but it seemed a little excessive from where I was standing. One of the elephants was rocking from side to side - the staff said it had a hip problem but I think it really had mental issues because it is being tortured! We got to bottle feed one of the elephants though, that was really cool. Your not supposed to as there are signs up saying only staff can feed them, but some of the staff came over to us and asked if we wanted to, so we said yes. They were really quick and sneaky about it, and then afterwards kept saying to us “rupees, rupees” I feigned ignorance and asked what he meant, and then he backed off, clearing his throat nervously! After we fed the baby elephant we had a walk up to a huge herd of elephants but they were soon ushered off to the river. All the other visitors followed too but we’d seen enough, and weren’t really happy about what we had seen, so we made our way to the Millennium elephant bath shower and ride down the road. That was ace! We rode a great big elephant for half an hour through paddy fields and a village. I really enjoyed it. A man walked round with our cameras and took loads of pictures for us. At one point he made us pose - me with a spear and Claire with her arms in the air. It was a bit surreal! After the ride we went to the river and washed and scrubbed the elephant with coconut husks. The elephant showered us with water from its trunk, it was ace! Claire didn’t really like it though, so when she went to get her camera I got the elephant to do it to me a few times on my own. It was ace - getting showered by and elephant!
Afterwards we made our way to Dambulla. It’s the only cave temple in Sri Lanka. It’s run by a crazy monk - he is famous across Sri Lanka, everyone knows about the crazy monk at Dambulla! He is a law unto himself, event he government can’t control him! He once locked a government official in the temple as he had annoyed him in some way! He also puts his prices up very frequently, apparently in the last year alone they have quadrupled in price! He is also very strict abut clothing - in all temples you have to cover shoulders and to the knees, but here it has to be all your legs and long sleeves! There’s a huge golden Buddha at Dambulla that you can see for miles. Then you have to walk up a million steps to the cave temple. There’s loads of people selling stuff all the way up the steps to the top, souvenirs, fruit, ice cream - and lots of beggars too. So not only have you got the discomfort of being out of breath, but your also batting away touts, trying to politely say “no thank you” whilst struggling to breath!
Once we reached the top, there were loads of monkeys - it was ace! They were everywhere, scavenging for food and stuff.
We went into the temple - there are lots and lots and LOTS of Buddha statues. Standing, sitting and reclining. All the cave walls have paintings on them. Its pretty special - every inch of rock is covered in paintings, wall and ceiling!
After we walked back down we watched the monkeys again. There were some babies playing about and there was a family too. The baby was feeding from the mum, and the mum was grooming the dad! It was wicked.
At Dambulla we saw a monk texting on his mobile! What’s that about?! Monks are only supposed to have a bowl, a bag and a set of robes, not a bleeding mobile! Visitors can’t show off their arms, but monks are allowed a mobile phone?! Something doesn’t seem quite right to me there!


Day Two

We went to Sigiriya. It was awesome! It’s so vast and huge! It looked really daunting when we were looking it thinking “we’ve got to climb that” but it was ok really, not too bad! There are over 2000 steps. Sigiriya is a huge rock. In the 6th century there was a huge palace right at the top of the rock, and then afterwards it was a monastery. There are ruins all around the bottom of the rock that were once different buildings, pools and gardens. You climb halfway up and there are two huge lions paws with steps in the middle - that’s the entrance to the palace. Then you climb more stairs and finally reach the summit. The view is awesome you can see for miles and miles - acres and acres of jungle, then in the middle a huge white standing Buddha statue. While we were at Sigiriya we really angered some of the touts! Oops! There was a really old English couple, they must have been in their 70’s and they were being talked into buying a magic box. Magic boxes are really cool! They look like blocks of carved wood, but if you slide them a certain way it opens up to reveal secret compartments. We overheard the tout saying 5000R, so when they walked away we just said at Dambulla we were offered one for 1000R and that’s top price, before you even started bartering! Their guide got really annoyed with us and kept saying “you can go, you can go”. If we bumped into him later on he kept giving us the dead eye! Then later on, after being up Sigiriya for about two hours, we came down and two touts were waiting for us and told us we were trying to ruin their business, and we weren’t allowed to do that again! We told them we hadn’t told the couple not to buy, and we were free to speak to whoever we pleased and it was their choice whether or not to buy! The fact that they had sat there waiting for us to come down meant they had probably lost out on business anyway, they could have been selling their magic boxes to other old couples for extortionate prices in the time they were waiting to have an altercation with us! They shouldn’t be trying to rip off elderly people anyway!
There were guides everywhere at Sigiriya. They were waiting half a mile down, at the entrance and inside at various points. They kept coming up to us and launching into a speech, but we didn’t want a guide. We have eyes and can see for ourselves, and there’s little signs everywhere telling you what you need to know - we can read! One guide even hijacked us and took us round to the cobra entrance - a huge overhang of rock that looks like a cobra head. I’m glad he did otherwise we wouldn’t have seen it as it was a bit off the path. After we’d seen it though we swiftly told him to bugger off and when he realised he wasn’t going to get any money from us, he ran like the clappers to get back to his spot to pick up more tourists! I really enjoyed Sigiriya though, it was my favourite place we visited on the tour.
After Sigiriya we went to Polonnaruwa. On the way we stopped for dinner at a hotel. The Queen had stayed there on her visit to Sri Lanka in 1954, and because we were British they felt they had to show us her bedroom! We ate our lunch overlooking a huge lake, where some of the locals were swimming and one woman was washing her clothes. Lots of people in Sri Lanka still wash their clothes in rivers and lakes, some even still wash themselves in the river as they don’t have the facility to do so at home.
Polonnaruwa is an ancient city of ruins. It was the capital of Sri Lanka after Anuradhapura in about the 12th century. It started raining heavily just as we got to the first ruin, the rain was that heavy it was bouncing off the floor! It only lasted abut ten minutes then it was sunny again! Its monsoon season up that end of Sri Lanka October- March; it moves up from the south west where I am based.
Our guide took us round and showed us all the various different ruins - a palace, assembly hall, royal baths, temples, monasteries, and the market square. There were two old temples where the Buddha’s tooth was kept in the past. It’s in Kandy now at (fittingly) the Temple of the Tooth! We had to drive from ruin to ruin as they were too far apart to walk, but in the car it only took a couple of minutes. Once we reached each ruin our guide showed us around and explained the history of it. At the end of the ruins were three huge Buddha statues. One sitting, one standing and one reclining. They are massive and all carved into the rock face. They are really beautiful. All the ruins were interesting, but the last ones were definitely the best!


Day Three

In the morning we drove to Kandy. The drive was really nice, through mountain villages. People working in fields and windy roads through the hillside. The vegetation is different too, all palm trees in Hikka, but up this way there is lots of dark green and different trees - a bit more like England. When we arrived we took a walk round the lake near the Temple of the Tooth. We didn’t go in the temple though as we wanted to see the ceremony where they bring out the casket where the Buddha’s tooth is kept. We had missed the morning ceremony, but could see the evening one. We had a couple of hours to kill so just looked around Kandy, did some shopping and had a late launch (the ordering itself took about half an hour as the waiter could not speak English, a real Manuel type character!). In the early evening we went to the Kandy Dance. It’s a traditional dance show with lots of different dancers in costume, doing different forms of traditional Sri Lankan dance. At the very end is a fire show, where some of the men walk across hot coals! It was wicked!
Afterwards we went to the Temple of the Tooth. A mixed experience! First the cashier tried to rip us off by trying to charge us double, but we knew how much it should cost so he didn’t get away with it. Inside the temple was really beautiful. There were shrines, beautiful architecture and paintings. There were drummers and a boy playing a trumpet (that got on your nerves after a bit) as part of the ceremony. We looked around for signs telling you were they brought the casket out, but there weren’t any. We asked a couple of people but they just seemed to send us on a wild goose chase! We went into the octagon room where a monk showed us different artefacts. Then he tied some white cotton round our wrists and blessed us (like the monks did at the Alms Giving last week) he was a nice monk, I liked him (and no mobile phone in sight!) we asked somebody else’s guide where they brought the relic out and he said upstairs, they’ll be bringing it out now! Sweet! But by the time we eventually found the right place, they’d put the casket away!! I was proper gutted. Can’t believe I was in the Temple of the Tooth for the ceremony and missed the actual frigging ceremony!! I suppose it might be a funny story one day, but I wasn’t laughing then! It may not even be real. The tooth is allegedly 5cm long! Who has teeth that big?!


Day Four

we drove from Kandy right down to Yala, on the south east coast. If the scenery going to Kandy yesterday was beautiful, then this was breathtaking! We drove through windy roads all through the mountains that were covered in mist they were so high. There were waterfalls dotted here and there. We stopped at one and got out of the car to take a photo, and suddenly out of nowhere a woman with a baby loomed in front of me! The baby gave me a yellow flower and I took their picture too, then she just stood there blocking the view of the waterfall. We got back into the car and she followed us, obviously expecting money. We drove off. A little further along we stopped to take some pictures of the mountains and this time a little boy ran over to us and started to talk to Claire. He wanted money too. We said no and then he asked for a bottle, so I gave him an empty water bottle from the car. He seemed happy enough with that!
We drove on and on, up through the mountains and then stopped at Mackwoods tea plantation. A lady took us round the factory and showed us the different processes of manufacturing tea. It sounds really boring but it was ok, and it only lasted 5 minutes! On the mountainside were tea pickers- the guide said they employed over 800 women to pick tealeaves! After the tour we drank some of their (free) tea. After the tea plantation we continued driving, still climbing higher and higher into the mountains. We saw some of tea pickers and stopped to take their picture, but they spotted us and started following us so we had to leg it sharpish! They probably wanted money too! As a Sri Lankan once told me, “only water is free in Sri Lanka” (and tea from the Mackwoods plantation!).
We continued on, there were some interesting and beautiful sights. We stopped at a Hindu temple. It was really ornate and bright, decorated with hundreds of figures of Hindu gods.
We stopped at a hotel for lunch in the middle of the mountains - the view was amazing as we sat and ate our sandwich! Then we continued driving. We came from Nuwara Eliya (where the tea plantation is) down through Ella. Ella is where King Ravana is meant to have held Sita hostage, after he’d kidnapped her from Rama, according to Hindu legend. We stopped at a beautiful waterfall in Ella. It was beautiful; but slightly spoilt as you couldn’t get any peace, straight away a man was over trying to sell crystal rocks, and various beggars. Wherever you go there is somebody selling something and they don’t give up - their persistence knows no bounds!
We drive on, this time descending the mountains. We drove through lots of little mountain villages and stopped at Budurawagala, where there were huge Buddha’s and other deities carved into the rock face. Afterwards we continued onto Tissamaharama where we were staying the night as it is close to Yala National Park - the big finale to our tour where we could see leopards, elephants and crocodiles in the wild (from the safety of a jeep!).


Day Five

Yala was a great big fat disappointment! We got up at 4.45am for the morning safari. It was raining really heavily, so we were a bit apprehensive about going. Would there be any point? would we actually see any animals or would they all be sheltering from the rain? Everyone assured us that the rain wouldn’t last (they would say that, they were getting paid whether we saw animals or not!).
Sure enough the rain did stop when we reached Yala. We did not see any interesting animals though! We saw: wild boar, eagles, heron, a couple of crocodiles (that were so far in the distance they could have been logs!), jungle fowl (chickens!) a couple of monitor lizards(that I can see from my back garden!) hundreds of deer and hundreds of peacocks. Then right at the end, one lone elephant! All the animals we saw we could see in England! Peacocks, Deer and Eagles! All the exciting animals must have been sheltering from the bad weather! I bet they haven’t even got any! What a bloody swiz! I was reluctant to even take any photos, but as we were on safari I felt I had to. If a peacock crossed me on street I wouldn’t even look twice, never mind take a photo of it!
Then on the way out of Yala the frigging jeep broke down! Then it started raining! We had to sit for about twenty minutes in the back of the jeep with no doors in the rain. Right laugh!
Afterwards we went back to the hotel and ate some lunch. While we were eating the waiter said he had a few days off and was going back home to Matara, and would we mind dropping him off on the way? Bloody cheek! Although I don’t actually think Sri Lankans know what cheek is, they’ve got balls of steel! We told him to ask Sarath, hoping he would say no, but he said if it was ok with us it was ok with him so we ended up dropping the bloody waiter off in Matara! The drive from Tissa to Hikka took about five hours, the scenery was pretty nice, mainly coastal going through little village’s countryside and tourist resorts.
We’ve seen every scenery imaginable on our trip. Beach and palm trees, paddy fields, cities, towns and villages (although sometimes in Sri Lanka it’s hard to tell the difference between the three!) mountains, waterfalls, tea fields, flat plains, lakes, rivers - the lot! Sri Lanka is a lot more diverse than I originally thought. After living in Hikka for two months I thought it would all be pretty similar to this, except the central highlands of course, but its s much more. It’s got everything!
I’ve spent an insane amount of money on the trip, more than I thought I would, but it was worth it. I had a great time and won’t do it again. I’ve seen it now and don’t feel the urge to do it again. There are lots of other places in Sri Lanka I would really like to see, like Adam’s Peak, but maybe next time I’ll take the train! That will save a few rupees I reckon!

PEACE.

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