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Published: February 6th 2009
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This weekend I went to Sinharaja Rain Forest and Udawalawa National Park, based in Sri Lanka’s hill country.
The drive from Hikkaduwa to Sinharaja takes around 3.5 hours, so we were picked up at 6am. We arrived in good time, paid our entrance fee, and a picked up a guide, who was female, which is highly unusual in Sri Lanka! She was very nice and knowledgeable. As we walked around Sinharaja I kept getting the urge to burst into a chorus of “YMCA” as she kept on saying “and the village peoples use these berries for…” “Village peoples make jaggery from this tree…” I didn’t know that the Village People were rain forest natives!!
We did a 6km hike through the rain forest and saw loads of different plants, flowers and trees (obviously!) the guide explained what they all were; for example in Sinharaja wild coffee and wild pepper are two of the plants that grow.
At one point we stopped at a rock pool and there were hundreds and hundreds of fish which we fed with some Chocolate Marie biscuits! We saw loads of wild birds, like Jungle Fowl (the chickens again!) and some beautiful colourful Magpies. And we saw
a Purple Faced Leaf Monkey!!
The end of our 6km hike led us into the primary forest where there was a huge Nawada tree, it was massive! Afterwards we trekked back the 6KM to the start. So we hiked 12km in total, that’s 7.5 miles (apparently! I’m rubbish at conversions!) I really enjoyed Sinharaja, but it wasn’t what I expected it to be. I expected a very dense canopy, with no light penetrating at all (Banner’s geography lessons coming in there!) but it wasn’t really like that. I don’t think we were too far into the primary forest, so maybe when you get further in it is denser. On the way back, we saw 2 Chameleons. One had a green body and red head, and the other was all green blending in with a leaf. We also saw a huge land Monitor, who wasn’t so pleased to see us as he kept puffing his neck out!
After Sinharaja we drove through the hills, tea estates and (very) bumpy roads. Sarath’s van had no suspension, so I was bouncing all over!
After another 4 hour drive we arrived at Udawalawa and went straight to the National Park to sort out the
jeep for the morning. We were recommended to a “very nice hotel” not far from the park. It is possibly the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in. there was no sign for the hotel. They asked if we wanted food, so we asked to look at the menu. There wasn’t one. My room had no ceiling, just a tin roof, with wooden beams. There were rats running along the beams at short intervals. There were two huge cockroaches in the bathroom. When I lost one of the cockroaches and decided to look for it, I pulled back the bathroom curtain, to find there was no glass in the window, just a huge gaping hole in the breezeblock! There was no shower curtain, no soap, no toilet roll, and no blanket. Did someone say Fawlty Towers?!
It was pretty late so we just stayed, too much hassle looking for another place. We had to be at the park for 6am, so imagine my disgruntlement when I was awoken at 3am by a huge singing and drumming Arrack party going off outside my room! They sang, drank and drummed all night, and stopped at around 5am - just when I had to
get up for the park! Nice one. Needless to say the hotel did not receive full payment, and did receive a full complaint!!
I reckon the staff were involved in the Arrack party anyway! They said they weren’t and told the guests to be quiet, but its funny the party stopped at 5am, just when they were starting work!!
We arrived at Udawalawa at 6am and were the first jeep in the park. In fact I only saw one other jeep the whole time we were in there, it makes Yala look like Disneyworld in comparison! 100’s of jeeps hurtling around everywhere, no wonder Claire and I never saw anything interesting!
Udawalawa was great, we saw an Elephant straight away, eating just by the path. We saw loads of Elephants, lone ones and herds. At one point we saw a herd right by the path, there must have been 20 of them; male, female and babies too!
We saw a Crocodile in the reservoir, at which point the tracker said it was ok to get out of the jeep! Erm, are you sure?! We saw loads of Peacocks (of course) Herons, Beaters, some funky pink white and black Storks, Water
Buffalo, Monkeys.
Udawalawa was great and I would defiantly go again, and defiantly recommend it over Yala any day!
On Tuesday I went to watch Sri Lanka Vs India cricket, in a one day-er at Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. It was ace! It cost about £3! We could have got tickets for as little as 30p, but we thought we’d splash out!!
We arrived a couple of hours before the cricket started, so we sat in the stands and drank and watched the teams warm up; Sri Lanka were warming up right in front of us. India won the toss and opted to bat first. The atmosphere was fantastic, everyone was singing and dancing and waving their flags around. Eveytime there was a 6 or a 4, the bloke behind me made me wave his giant flag! We had a great day watching the cricket, drinking and eating hotdogs (shitdogs!) and everyone around us was really friendly and happy so we had a really good laugh. And we were on TV! A couple of my mates and people around Hikka saw me in the audience. Minor celeb!
It was a legendary match as Murali equalled the world record for most
wickets taken in a career; my mate, who is a huge cricket fan, said I was a “flooky chuff”! Sri Lanka, which they had the previous two, so it was all over. Nobody seemed too disheartened though, it was a great match, and a great day out! Wonder if anybody will be up for watching the 2020 next week?!
This will probably be my last blog as I leave in a fortnight, but it’s been great. Ups and downs, but overall a fantastic experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Sri Lanka, we will meet again, I promise! I’m part Sinhalese now anyway, I reckon!
PEACE.
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