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Published: March 4th 2013
We spent a night and an afternoon in Kandy after our tour of the Cultural Triangle. The bus ride there traveled through pretty hill country, with a patchwork of tea plantations glistening in the sun.
The town is built around Kandy Lake – an artificial lake created by some ruler of the kingdom of Kandy. Once we’d deposited our backpacks at our hotel, we took a leisurely stroll around the lake to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which contains, according to many, Sri Lanka’s most significant Buddhist relic – a tooth belonging to the Buddha. No one actually sees the tooth except some caretaking Buddhist monks, but you do see the shrine in which it is supposedly housed. There are banners hung in one of the museum rooms depicting the fantastical events of how the tooth made it to Sri Lanka, such as the tooth becoming a star in the sky and shining for years over Sri Lanka. In any case, it is a beautiful temple and the museum it houses contains some interesting relics you can see as well.
We ended the night with a show of some traditional dancing and singing.
The finale of the show included a performance of fire eating and fire walking that was impressive.
We headed to Adam’s Peak in the morning – for me, it was going to be the highlight of our trip. The peak (7300 ft or so) is a place where the legends of religion meet within a temple at the top of mountain reached by 5200 steps: it is where Adam first stepped foot on earth after being cast out of heaven; where Buddha left a sacred footprint before departing for heaven; and where Shiva left a footprint for some reason of which I'm not entirely certain. The views of the countryside are amazing and some claim you can even see the coast on a clear day. It is customary to start the hike at 2:30 am to reach the peak by 6:30 am to watch the sunrise, which casts a magnificent shadow of the peak on the hilltops behind it. I was really, really looking forward to this hike…
We started at half past two, as advised, and were doing well till about the halfway point when Klaudia began to feel ill from the altitude.
Well, perhaps it can cause some consternation in some when I continue on during one of these fits, but Klaudia’s obviously a good sport and doesn’t make a fuss when I do so. And that’s fine in SoCal or Colorado, but, even with her urging me on, I obviously could not in good conscience leave her to wait for me in the middle of a trail at almost the end of the world. I mean, what kind of husband would I be, right? Plus, I’m sure her mom would have been furious at finding out something like this. So we hiked back down and back to bed.
We had met up with some Brits on the way up and I saw them at breakfast at about 10 am. I stopped by their table to inquire about the hike. The discussion led to one of them stating that supposedly the sunset is a lot more beautiful, so, hey, here was my second chance. They had also remarked that it took them about 2 hours 15 minutes; I thought, “Great, I’ll start at 4, miss some of the heat, and be up there for sunset at 6:30 pm”.
After a dinner of fried rice, I started up the trail once more at 4 pm. Early on, the trail runs by a Buddhist temple, at which you can receive a blessing from a teenage monk for a small donation. As I was eagerly sauntering by, the monk asked me if I was heading up to the peak. I responded in the affirmative, and received a distressed look.
“By yourself?”
“Yes,” I responded to another look of distress. I asked him if that was ok.
“Ok, ok…”
So I moved on and was making some good time despite a cold I’d been battling for a good week (actually, I unfortunately still have the cold now, but it’s getting better). I reached about the halfway point again when a local stopped me and asked me why I was hiking alone.
“Umm… should I go back?”
He misunderstood me and thought that I had said that my friends were behind me. “Whatever,” I thought and huffed up the stairs some more. I stupidly did not buy water at the bottom before heading
up and was starting to feel thirsty; I decided to stop at one of the next tea shops that line the entire trail up to the top. One can buy food there too, so maybe I’d have a bite of something. As I began to near one, a Buddhist monk stopped me and, again, asked if I was hiking alone… now, I was getting nervous.
“Not safe?” I asked.
“No. Better go down, go in morning tomorrow.”
“Why?” All I received as a response was a shoulder shrug. I gazed up and saw the steep stairs before me and more than half of them already behind me. “If it’s hubris, screw it: I’ve gone too far already,” I thought and proceeded up the stairs to the next tea house for some water.
“200 rupees for a bottle of water?! It’s 60 at the bottom!” I exclaimed when the teahouse attendant told me the price.
“60 downstairs, but now you are high up.”
Freakin’ economics… I took a swig from my bottle and asked him how long to the top.
“One hour and half.”
“Really?!” It was already 5:45 pm, with sunset in 45 minutes; I wouldn’t get there till after sunset and then would have to trek down in the dark (well, not totally, as the path is lined with street lamps – and those ubiquitous tea house - over most of it).
“Damn, I’m moving slower than I should”. I saw the same Buddhist monk again and looked at the attendant, asking, “Do you think it’s safe for me to go up there.”
“Not safe.”
“Should I go down?”
He gave me one of those sarcastic you-should-know-better laughs and answered, “Yes.”
“Shit. Alright…”
I was fairly disappointed, but I thought it better not to push my luck: if the locals and two Buddhist monks are telling me to head down, I’m heading down. I’m still not sure with what about my safety they were concerned, whether it was something like me falling, or getting robbed, but I had heard a couple stories of tourists being robbed while on the trail, including two Poles the night before. Nonetheless,
I decided that two failed attempts would not deter me and I’d just try at 2:30 am again the next morning when there is a theme-park amount of people walking the path.
As I was making my way down, my cold got the best of me and I began to cough profusely; then, as if on cue, some clouds rolled in and poured it down. I picked up the pace before I could catch pneumonia, but was already soaking wet, having fecklessly left my rain jacket, in my backpack, at our hostel. Shivering and distraught, I began to think how all of this was just a successive string of bad decisions on my part: I should have left earlier than 4; I should have brought my rain jacket; I should have listened to Klaudia when she said take some cold medicine; and maybe I shouldn’t have started in the first place and just waited for the next morning.
It was almost dark when I still had approximately 40 minutes to the bottom. I passed by yet another stupa, then into yet another temple area of the path where a Buddhist monk was preaching to
a congregation. Just beyond that, but adjoining the temple, I saw a sign on a building that said “Herbal Medicine”. I walked up to a counter along the path to a young man dressed in an orange doctor’s coat with a swastika on it (yes, swastikas mean something else in Asia, but it’s still a little weird to see) and asked if they had anything for a cough.
“Heh?”
“Cough, cough,” I mimicked.
“Ohhhh… Yes.”
I paid for the syrup he handed me and drank some greedily as the congregation now chanted along with the monk. I glanced at them for a moment, wondering if they really found peace in all this chanting and murmuring, then continued down the path.
Although it had ceased to rain, it was dark and I was cold. I made it back to the hostel, quickly changed clothes, drank some more syrup, slipped into bed, told Klaudia all that had happened, and began to feel very hot. Klaudia felt my head and said it was surely a fever. I drank some more of the syrup and passed out, still with every intention of waking up at 2:30 am.
Perhaps you can all recall a time, especially during childhood, when you’ve experienced bizarre fever-induced dreams or even hallucinations. Well, I was in a Sri Lankan town somewhere with Buddha as my guide. He had decided that it was time for me to eat and he had two friends, Vishnu and Ganesh, who served the best Lamprais in town, but I could choose at which one to eat. As we neared the restaurants, a man with several arms and an elephant began to fervidly vie for my patronage, while inveighing scurrilous defamations against the other’s rice and curry.
“Rice and curry?” I inquired to Buddha. “I wanted Lamprais. You said I would get Lamprais.”
“No, no Lamprais. Only rice and curry,” replied Buddha. Vishnu and Ganesh were now frenzied, begging me to come in, but I told them both that I only wanted Lamprais, and not rice and curry.
“No Lamprais; only rice and curry,” they all said in unison, “best rice and curry.”
“But I wanted Lamprais…”
I awakened shivering and wondered what in the hell kind of “herbs” those Buddhist monks had given me. I also wished I had asked “how much?” in the dream. It was 2:30… I closed my eyes and fell back asleep. Although I regret not making it to Adam’s Peak, I felt great later in the morning.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Supply and demand will get you every time
Sounds like you had a few hallucinogens in the syrup. Wish you could have gone back the next morning. Never turn down the best curry and rice....even in a dream.