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Published: September 13th 2007
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From our last blog we went to Nuwara Eliya, a favourite holiday destination for many Sri Lankans as it epitomises Britain in their minds, with cute cottages, vegetable patches and lodges. The only similarity we could see was the weather that was blooming freezing and had us wearing jumpers and scarves the entire time! We looked at a thermometer in the hotel and it only read 25 degrees - Brrrr! Please tell us Britains warmer!!! We spent a fun day at the horseraces, dahling, picking 3 winners out of 4, and 4 second places out of 4. We didn't make a penny or lose a penny, but it was fun nevertheless to bet with each other who bought dinner. We met up with Dad and Margreth, who made sure we ate well again before making our way via a tea plantation to Kandy, the cultural centre of Sri Lanka and home to the Buddha's Sacred Tooth Relic.
We stayed at the Queen's Hotel, again , dahling, which is the place to see the Kandy Festival as it is within 100m of the Tooth Relic temple and the main festival procession passes right outside. Dad sorted us seats for the last
night of the Esala Perahera procession. The procession is the culmination of a 10day festival and is a combination of 5 separate perahera (processions) from the 4 Kandy devales; Natha, Vishnu, Kataragama, Pattini and the Sacred Tooth Procession as well.
It was a complete assault on the senses, with the procession passing us over 3.5hours continually lit by parafin torches, and the smell of elephants becoming ever more noticable. Thousands of Kandyan dancers made their way down the streets and were led by whip crackers, fire twirlers and other mind boggling sights including one where men were pierced in the back and were dancing on reins being held by another happy dancing chappy behind him - ouch! There are many many elephants, all dressed up, most with sparkling lights which carry important relics for the different devales. The grandest of these is the Tooth Relic Tusker, which carries a replica of the Sacred Tooth Relic cask and walks only on white linen which is laid infront of the elephant as it makes its way down the road so that it doesn't step in any dirt.
We felt really overwhelmed and we were all buzzing too much from the
experience. On the day before the final procession we went to the local market to go bag and spice shopping, which was great fun but we did get caught out making our way back to the hotel by the sheer number of people crowding the streets and the police presence searching everybody going into the procession area.
Since then we went to Arugam Bay on the East Coast but didn't like there at all - nice beach, great surf, shame about the rest so went back to sleepy Mirissa for a while before coming back to Hikkaduwa. Yesterday we were on the beach watching the sun go down when people started running up and down telling us about the earthquake that hit Sumatra and the tsunami warning that had been issued and that we should all get to higher ground. Ok, we went to find Suneesh, our hotel manager to ask him, but he was incredibly relaxed and said well whatever you can find out from the internet we can make up our minds then but you can come to my house - ah bless we thought so went to the internet place to find no different news. By
the time we got back to the hotel, a tuktuk was waiting and he shouted at us to grab all our important stuff and he'd follow us on his motorbike. "Ok, bye, see you soon" As it turned out, the tuktuk driver didn't quite know where to take us following Suneesh's directions, and soon we were dumped at this random families house, with their 8year daughter no doubt having some fun stories to tell at school the next day. We were all getting anxious by that time, people running, many with suitcase, bags of rice as the price inflated so much last time, going past on their bikes with tvs on their laps, and a sheer sense of evacuation as the police and military were busily trying to get people inland. The panic was noticeable, with the memories of 2004 still fresh in many peoples minds. Several hours later, we made our way back to the hotel where we met up Suneesh who was very glad to see us having been searching for 2hours in the surrounding 80km of countryside, but all was well, the relief from everyone that nothing major had happened again was palpable and jumbo prawns and
arrack was shared that night. With only 1 week to now till the end of this year for us, it seems the adventure never ends, but the hangovers continue!
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