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Published: August 17th 2018
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Well, all I can say is I'm glad we didn't rent a car for this holiday - remember Palermo? Sicilian drivers are pussy cats in comparison to the ninja drivers of Sri Lanka! Who needs lines in the road, rights of way, traffic lights, give way signs anyway? They are purely decorative here - no purpose whatsoever! We left the hotel about 10, met Harold and our driver, handed over some cash and off we went. Now I suppose naively I expected Colombo to end - suburbs/ shanties etc and then countryside and then a village or two before reaching Kandy - eh no! It's homes/ half built concrete structures/ shops etc in a linear development all the way. And traffic! - tuktuks - (who were now the enemy as we were in a car!), Motorbikes, people crossing roads, lorries, buses by the million, bikes and oh yes, an elephant making his way to Kandy for the annual celebration thats taking place this week - how did we know? We were stuck in this crazy long jam only to find the way was blocked by the army and a monk walking this massive elephant the 40 odd km to Kandy -
its supposed to arrive for the last night of the festival (5 days time). So that's why there were no train tickets and hotel prices were high !! Anyway there should be some Kandy dancers/ drummers in town tonight so we'll find our way in to the centre for a beer and some food.
We also visited the Botanical gardens before arriving at our hotel - our driver (that sounds very posh!) dropped us off for a couple of hours. - it was lovely to walk around the gardens - loads of fruit bats up in the trees, giant bamboo and so much noise from the birds. Hope to upload some pics but wifi is v slow here.
Hotel is nice -its small and close to the lake - a 15 min walk into town - apparently it has one of the best chefs in Sri Lanka here in the hotel restaurant ? !!!
Update - we took a short walk into town for a beer and to see the festival and then thought we'd come back to the hotel to try out the chef! Because it's the festival - well I say festival - its only
the most important Buddha ceremony in the whole of Sri Lanka and "one of South Asia's most spectacular" and we're here and didn't have a clue!! It's called the Perahera and they honour the sacred tooth of Buddah which is kept in the temple in Kandy. It's a very long procession of drummers, dancers, elephants, fire jugglers, more drummers and dancers, more elephants - and really very spectacular. So we watched that for an hour, having also watched the fruit bats, we'd seen earlier, swarm across the sky in search of their evening food. Downside of the religious festival is that the whole town seems to be dry?????? not a beer in sight. Some hotels have booze but not ours - so we'll try somewhere else tomorrow!
Btw - food was good but not sure he's one of the best chefs in Sri Lanka ?
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