Blogs from Kandy, Central Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 13

Hello from Sri Lanka! Our trip here has turned out quite well actually. After a fairly slow start at the beach town of Unawatuna we ended up climbing Adam's Peak or Sri Pada. It was the top of the mountain where Adam, when thrown out of heaven, landed and left his footprint atop a 7500 foot mountain. We started hiking up it at 230 in the morning as the sunrise is supposed to be amaazing. The only thing we saw however was the cloud we were in. Also the 15 kilometer climb has nearly 6000 steps so my legs are still killing me. Also Laura had several leeches stuck to her leg and I had one as well. It was great exercise and the photos that have been produced from this peak are amaazing. The next ... read more

another type of conflict more prescient than the lion-tiger conflict...is the human-elephant conflict. and I don't mean ganesh. i've never been this close to real, live wildlife conflict. a most grateful guest, i visited the field station of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society outside of Wasgamuwa Park for several days (and by outside, I mean like an hour from a proper little village. middle of nowhere basically.). http://slwcs.org/visitus.html recuperating from my nasty buddha-belly-bug, i only got to help out (or rather, tag-a-long) a tad, but I learned a whole lot. arrival to the field station: night, after a very, very bumpy ride. makes it more authentic. the next morning, rose at 6 to a rising sun, to a landscape which immediately set off my internal gramophone on Circle of Life. ...as I sat pondering... read more

Have finally had time to settle down in the Queens hotel to provide a hopefully some what comprehensive update! Lots has happened since Fri and my arrival in Kandy - all good which is lucky. On Saturday we woke up at 5.45 to meet Reverend Saman (a local scots kirk reverend) who helps run the city mission farm up in the mountains. The drive was about 2 1/2 hours and we drove up through mountains and through many tea plantaitons which were really amazing to see. I felt a bit car sick on the way up but recovered once we arrived. While we were there we were shown the pigs and hten how they make cheese in this small hut. Later we got to taste the cheese and it was really really good! Kerianne and I ... read more

La route qui relie kandy à Delhouse est un délice pour les yeux. À plus de 1 000 mètres d'altitude, les paysages de rizières, qui façonnent habituellement le paysage asiatique, laissent place à des plantations de thés qui semblent ondulées jusqu'à l'infini. Effectivement, le thé détient une place importante dans l'économie du pays. Il est parmi les exportations les plus lucratives. Dans ce domaine, le Sri Lanka est classé deuxième producteur mondial juste après l'Inde et avant le Kenya en Afrique. En contrepartie, la qualité de ses récoltes surpassent celle de sa rivale. Le thé du Ceylan est plus apprécié par les acheteurs internationaux. On pait jusqu'à deux fois plus cher qu'en Inde, pour 1 kilo de cette feuille aux multiples vertus. Le plateau montagneux du centre du Sri Lanka est l'endroit par excellence pour cultiver ... read more

Woke up this morning, looked in the mirror (always have one in bed with me) and said to myself" Sam, my man, you are looking' good". Said in a Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Richard Prior kind of black sounding way. I don't know why, that's just the voice I use when I talk to myself sometimes. Then I realized that lot of people probably never experience that feeling, of really liking how they look, happy with who they are, feeling good(almost as important as looking good.) I think I have my mother to thank for that. Although I later had cause to doubt her-Jesus is God, playing with myself is a sin, and so on- when she told me how handsome I was, and how intelligent, I believed her, and never doubted it. Of course it ... read more