Paradise Beaches and Misty Hills

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Hi everyone!

Since we last wrote the blog we've spent 2 lovely (well mostly) weeks in Sri Lanka - very different from India (friendly people, very green countryside and nice beaches). We arrived into Colombo Airport at dead of night and managed to grab a taxi to Negombo, our first beach place of the travels! Negombo felt like Paradise after India, but was actually not that nice compared with the other beaches we visited. We spent the entire first day on the beach, reading and generally being lazy! Phil ventured into the sea, only to lose her sunglasses due to the very large waves! Our hotel was right next to the beach, and we had breakfast looking out onto the beach each morning.

The second day we set off for Kandy on the bus (no more private transport for us, we'd decided to have a real budget two weeks after going 2 and a half times over our budget in India)!! The bus was AC but very squashed, particularly as our seat seemed to be broken and pushed us both into the middle. We had to buy an extra seat for our bags, as Sri Lankan buses don't have such things as luggage areas! Arriving in Kandy, we checked into the Olde Empire Hotel - very colonial, with a musty smell and stags heads on the walls, but we had a nice room. That afternoon we looked around some temples in the centre, decided we couldn't afford to go in the Temple of the Tooth, and visited Cargill's Food City (a real supermarket - very exciting!). Sarah managed to get strip searched at the temples, the two ladies basically pulled off her skirt as it was deemed 'inappropriate' in length, and proceeded to re-tie it so it didn't show anything above the knee (it's a very complicated skirt!). That evening we started to realise just how expensive food is here compared with India, when we went to a Chinese Restaurant for dinner! The price of food is increasing really quickly here, probably due to the increased instability, and everyone keeps complaining about it, including us!

We spent the next day at the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage (we even managed to change buses without getting lost, and saved a fortune on tuk-tuks). The Orphanage had doubled in price from what it said in the guide book (another blow to the budget!). Firstly we went to watch the elephants at their bath time in the river. They were really cute, especially the baby ones! However, we were a bit disappointed after everything we'd heard that the mahouts wouldn't let you touch the elephants or even get close to them unless you paid them. It wasn't a very interactive orphanage! We had a drink in the cafe (also very expensive!) while watching bathtime, and then went to a spice garden, where we had a guided tour and learnt how the herbs and spices were made into Ayurvedic medicines. We also got to try some of the treatments. Next we visited an elephant dung factory, where they make paper out of the fibres in the elephants' dung! Very interesting and they make lovely cards, bookmarks, and pictures! Sa bought a large picture of elephants, which is lovely but is now proving problematic, as it can't be squashed into our already overflowing bags! We watched feeding time (again quite disappointing as the mahouts charged if you wanted to feed the baby elephants) and then watched the second bath time while we had our lunch. We managed to shop quite a lot (surprise surprise) in the souvenir shops, and then got the bus back to Kandy. That night, as there weren't many restaurants open (due to everyone being on holiday for the Sri Lankan New Year), we went to Pizza Hut, which was right next door to our hotel!! It was yummy!

Our last day in Kandy was spent visiting the Geragama Tea Factory, where we had a tour of the tea making process followed by free tasting! The smell was amazing, and really made us miss a good cuppa at home! The Sri Lankan tea is lovely though - it was really nice to have a proper cup of tea without all the sugar that the Indians and Nepalis put in it!! On the way back we visited the Peredaniya Botanical Gardens (where we managed to convince the guard we were students so got in half price!) which is full of exotic plants like the sausage tree, cannonball tree, and lots of pretty flowers, especially the orchids. We spent a lovely few hours walking around there and then returned to Kandy for another Pizza Hut dinner (there really was no where else open!!).

Next day we set off for Dalhousie, the base for climbing Adam's Peak (2243m). It took us 2 trains and a tuk tuk ride to get there but we finally made it by 5.30pm. Our first taste of Sri Lankan trains was not the best - basically, none of them ever arrive on time (always a few hours late) and you have to multiply the advertised journey time by at least two!! The seats were not the most comfy (hard wooden benches on the one train where we managed to get a seat) and to top it all off, it was pouring it down! We stayed in the Green House in Dalhousie, a lovely little house with a really nice family and some very sweet tiny kittens! They cooked dinner for us that night, and that was our first taste of proper Sri Lankan cuisine - rice, egg curry, dahl, pea curry, salad, potato curry and pappadums, with onion soup to start. Yum! We went to bed about 8.30pm that night and woke at 2.30am for the big climb. Adam's Peak is a sacred mountain for Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, due to the footprint at the top, which Christians think is the first step Adam took on Earth and Buddhists think was made by the Buddha. So loads of Sri Lankans (and tourist) make the pilgrimage up to the top for sunrise. The way up was very tough - sooooo many steps (one book says 5200!) and it seemed never ending! However, with lots of stops we managed to get to the top for sunrise, which, although it was cloudy, was magnificent! Unfortunately we didn't see the effect of the shadow of the mountain being reflected onto the hills behind, due to all the clouds, but it was definitely worth it! Climbing down was quite difficult, as our legs were hurting from all the steps, but we made it back to the Green House for showers and an enormous breakfast of toast, onion and egg toasties, pancakes with a weird sweet thing in, plain pancakes, bananas and a large pot of tea (which was very welcome!).

That morning we bused to Hatton in order to catch the train to Haputale, our next port of call. However, the train from Hatton was incredibly late (4 hours!) so the journey took us the whole day - we were knackered by the end after so little sleep the night before! We arrived around 9.45pm and fell straight into bed - luckily the hotel we wanted to stay in was still open! We had toast for breakfast (we're getting quite sick of toast now - bring back Nepal so we can have some porridge!) and then got the bus to the Dambatenne Tea Factory, which was set up by James Lipton of Lipton's Tea fame! We planned to climb Lipton's Seat, a hill with an apparently amazing view, but by the time we started the walk, the clouds were halfway down the hill and it became clear we weren't going to see anything from the top! We did manage to meet some friendly tea pickers, though, who all wanted their photos taken! Instead, we visited the tea factory, which had a better tour than the Geregama factory but no free tasting (as you can imagine we were very disappointed!). We returned to the hotel for lunch and tea (which we were now craving!) and then it started to rain!!! It didn't stop raining for the next 3 days! And it was heavy! We got through quite a lot of reading material at this point! We got the train to Ella the next day (the train felt like it was falling apart and the seats kept moving away from the wall! And obviously it was late!), where it was still raining. Ella is famous for its views from the edge of the Hill Country over the plains, but unfortunately we didn't see any of these! We spent the day reading again!

We were quite glad to leave the Hill Country as it didn't seem it would ever stop raining! The next port of call was Unawatuna, a lovely beach on the south coast. We found a nice cheap place to stay and spent the next day on the beach, generally eating, reading and relaxing. And Phil actually managed to swim without losing her sunglasses! We both managed to get burnt, even though we were sitting in the shade all day (must be a side effect of the anti-malarials!). That evening we had cocktails on the beach (our first drink of the travels!) and a lovely, if expensive meal, of fish and pizza. Next morning we bused to Galle and found somewhere to stay before getting the bus to Hikkaduwa, another beach town. Hikkaduwa was lovely and had an amazing cafe with little thatched huts containing mattresses where you could sunbathe. The waves were a bit to big to swim again though, and Phil managed to lose her (new) sunglasses again, although luckily this time they caught on her foot! We both managed to get more burnt even with sitting in the shade and covering up!! Last night we went to a pretty horrible cafe for dinner - not very nice food! And now we're in Galle waiting for this evening when we're going back to the airport to catch our Bangkok flight. We're not looking forward to another night spent in an airport!!

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