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Blog by Bronia Well here we are, in our 2nd country on this world trip: Sri Lanka and what a country it is!
Sri Lanka's main languages and religions were inherited from India with the constant migration, invasion and cultural settling of different groups from India over the course of history, but it has developed into a very distinct society with the dominant religion being Buddhism and the two main societies being the Tamils and Sinhalese. Over time, the Sinhalese came to dominate in culture, population and language (Sinhalese being the official one) and this caused unrest with the Tamils who felt they should have equality. It is this age old struggle which has caused all the guerilla warfare and violence over the years, and despite a 'peace deal' in 2001 the violence continues and sadly we experienced that during our stay here.... more on that later in this and our next blog.
We arrived via Sri Lankan airlines on an embarrassingly short flight from
Trivandrum (India) to
Colombo (Sri Lanka). It literally took 40 minutes from take-off to landing during which time we were served a meal and drinks which we had just enough time to
chew and swallow before we were landing. At one time you could take a ferry from India to Sri Lanka but with the Tamil Tiger stronghold being the North and East of the country and the political unrest that has gone on for years, the North is considered 'unsafe' for travellers so the route we planned was for the South and West of the country only.
We decided initially to bypass the capital,
Colombo, heading immediately headed east, inland to
Kandy which has a higher elevation than
Colombo and the coast as it is heading towards the hill stations of tea plantations, spice gardens, magnificient vistas, cascading waterfalls and very desirable cooler temperatures. Kandy is set around a lake and a walk around the lake is a lovely way to spend an afternoon.
Our first hotel choice from the Lonely Planet guide was
"Castle Hill Guesthouse" but when we arrived it was fully booked so the lady of the house, and she was indeed a 'lady' as her perfectly cultured english accent, tailored clothing presented, stories of her diplomatic life and her regular excursions to Paris, New York and London to, as she put it,
"do a little 
School girls on an school trip outing
All Sri Lankan school girls have white uniforms and have to plait/braid their hair wearing the same colour ribbons. It's quite beautiful to see them walk down the road in an aligator procession. Bronia got caught taking this picture on the sly!shopping" proved, recommended us to stay in a 'homestay' at a friends' house she knew.
We accepted and spent the most wonderful first night in Sri Lanka in the home of a Dr. and his wife, the children of whom were currently studying engineering in the USA and we had a fascinating conversation with the wife about the education of her children in Sri Lanka and the achievement of scholarships for her children to study abroad. The homestay meal was simply fabulous - a traditional Sri Lankan curry which comprised of rice and several small varied curried dishes.
For our second night we moved to the
Castle Hill Guesthouse which as you can see from the pic was a beautiful British Art Deco house built in the 1800's with our own little balcony that opened on to perfectly manicured lawns.
We spent a lovely few days in
Kandy visiting the
Sri Dalada Maligawa - "Temple of the Tooth", where the Buddha's left molar is kept after it was saved, according to legend, by a king who pulled it from the Buddha's cremation fire in 543 BC and smuggled it into Sri Lanka in the hair of a
princess, and it draws thousands of pilgrims to its temple each year. We also took in a 'made for tourist' evening performance of the
Kandyan dance which despite being touristy, was worth it as an insight into Kandyan culture.
We hired a tuk-tuk for day while we were in Kandy and got him to take us to the
Peradeniya Botanic Gardens once the private gardens of the Royals and hemmed in on three sides by a loop of the
Mahaweli Ganga river. We wandered the gardens for a couple of hours and saw the most amazing clusters of flying foxes(huge bats) that we've ever seen. As we stood beneath the enormous trees we could look up and watch them fly back and forth between the trees with their translucent wings stretched in flight.
From the
Botanic Gardens our tuk-tuk driver took us to
"Pinnewala Elephant Orphenage" set up to save orphaned wild elephants in the 1970's. We spent a fantastic few hours watching the baby elephants being fed by milk bottle, wandering their enormous enclosure, the size of several fields, where they stood with their 'mahouts' (elephant trainers). Each elephant has a mahout as they are trained to
become working elephants when they become adults as they are unable to be re-released into the wild due to the conditions in which they were found and saved. We also were able to wander down to the river where the 70+ herd of orphans are taken every morning & afternoon to bathe. Bronia was able to get into the water and bathe one of the elephants as they lay down which was an unforgettable experience.
We ate lunch at one of the riverside cafes watching the elephants bathe in the river and laughing as a stubborn group of young elephants kept trying to make a break and wander upstream to private farmland with cows grazing. Mahouts had to keep crossing the stream and telling them off at which point all 15 or so naughty elephants would come stomping back downstream ears flapping and trunks waving in indignation. Just like little kids testing boundaries!
Two of the elephants that we have profiled in the pictures here particularly caught our hearts; one was
Pandhu, the one eared elephant who was attacked by a leopard and lost his ear at which point his mother abandonned him. The other was a 3-legged
elephant who we nicknamed
'Buntzen' after our 3-legged cat at home in the UK. We believe the elephants' leg was caught in a trap and so now he hops around on 3 legs, always kept to the back of the group by his mahout so he doesn't get trampled on by the faster elephants. Incredibly endearing.
While we were in Kandy we also visited some spice gardens, seeing nutmeg, aloe, cinnamon, cocoa, lemongrass, peppercorns and other everyday spices we use in their original format (see pic). We get so used to buying our spices in bottles, boxes and plastic packets that we sometimes forget that it all starts from a plant, grown somewhere in a foreign country, and picked by the labouring hands of workers the world over.
We also had a fascinating visit to a Tea Plantation, built by the British in the 1800's and with much of it's old British equipment still in use today. We had a private tour by one of the tea workers who showed us the whole process of tea making from the initial collection of the leaf right through to the sifting of the various grades and the bagging for shipment
View from our hotel room & balcony at Kandy
We stayed at 'Castle Hill Guest house' an old British Art Deco house built in the late 1800's and with a spectacular view down to the lake. and export. A simple drive along any of the roads in the Hill Country takes you past tea plantations galore so it was a real insight to be able to see the process that takes these glossy tea leaves to a bag of Tetley's or PG Tips !
On April 8 we made the journey up to
Sigiria, about 95km north of
Kandy.
Sigiria is one of the 'ancient cities' (Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura being the other key ones) and is essentially a stretch of flat land with an enormous rock jutting out of it. It's almost as if some ancient god or giant accidentally just dropped this rock in the middle of a forest and there it stands, visible from miles away.
Due to it's size and near impenatrable sides, the rock became a number of things over Sri Lanka's history including a fortress for ancient civilisations in 300-500AD, a monastary in the 16th & 17th century as well as a Royal Palace.
Other than the rock there is little else to
Sigiria - literally "Lion Rock" . A few food and water stalls and guesthouses and that's about it. For tourists who come to
Sigiria, the
thing to do - if you are insane enough - is to climb the rock. To do this you need to beat the incredible heat and humidity by getting up at 6am to climb it.
We had met a great couple from Australia, Carmel & Andrew (see pic), at our hotel and after a lovely dinner with them which was great company and laughter we decided that since we both planned to climb the rock we'd do it together. The rock certainly isn't the most arduous or physically challenging experience we've had on this trip so far, but it is certainly the one that has felt the most dangerous as we clambered on steel walkways and steps that were hammered precariously into the side of the rock and which the gaps between revealed, there was nothing below but a few hundred feet of air before more rocks to break our fall!
The view from the top was worth the 1.5hr gruelling and sweaty climb as you could see for miles around as well as explore the ruins of the palace/fortress on the top.
Using Sigiria as a base, we also spent a day journeying up to
Polonnaruwa,
another of the ancient cities.
Polonnaruwa was for 3 centuries a royal capital and is now a grouping of ruins spread over a wide area dating back 1000 years. Due to the geographical size of the ancient city we used a tuk-tuk driver to drive us around the sight stopping so we could get out and explore the ruins in closer detail. We spent a spectacular day wandering around in the heat with ruins of old temples, palaces and halls with monkeys, monitor lizards and other wildlife amongst it all (see pics).
From
Sigiria we journeyed back southwards towards
Kandy stopping en route to visit
Dambulla Caves which are a grouping of five beautiful cave temples the ceilings and walls of which are ornately painted with Buddhist decor. In each cave dozens, if not hundreds, of Buddhist icons and statues are lined up (see pic) and walking in the cool caves you feel a sense of great peace and awe at the ornateness and beauty of it all - particularly in light of their age. The history of the caves is that when the King Valagambahu in the 1st century BC was driving from his land he took refuge
here and when he regained the throne he had the interior of the caves carved into magnificient rock temples as thanks.
We spent one last night in
Kandy staying at the
Sharon Inn which was a spotless guesthouse run by a Sri Lankan and his German wife. We had dinner at the guesthouse with a couple from the UK who had been there for the past 2 weeks due to the guy having contracted Dengue Fever (passed on by the daytime biting mosquito) and which according to the Sri Lankan doctors is more serious, prevalent and concerning to the health of travellers than Malaria.
P.S. A quick thank you to Sid & Kerry (who we met in Dharamsala - see previous blogs) for their recommentation of Lion Rock Hotel in Sigiria. A great choice guys - thanks!
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Merle in North Vancouver
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Elephants and more!
Fabulous pictures from Sri Lanka! I can see you were very taken with the elephants. Not only are your personal stories and experiences interesting, but the history notes add a fascinating background to what you're seeing and showing us! Stay healthy!!