Bats and Ficus

There were bats in the bamboo and giant ficus trees.  Pictures weren't going to do it so here are the video links:  

http://youtu.be/XKoDxe24z20

http://youtu.be/r2LqS8Vw2vg

I hope you enjoy them.  

Botanicals

About seven kilometers South of Kandy lie the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Now open to us common folk, the gardens were a former Royal hangout.  

Our wee urban train blocks our walk to town. 

We walked our now familiar route on the narrow road from St Bridget's guesthouse to Kandy Town.  Although the walk is interesting and at times pretty, there is also the Tuk-Tuk dodging and the seemingly ubiquitous Kandyan clouds of exhaust fumes. There is something about the shape of this valley or some weird pressure inversion that holds the diesel and two-stroke smoke close to the ground. It can be pretty powerful.  

We skirted the busy market, dodged a few Tuk-Tuk touts and found our local bus.  In heavy, smelly traffic and packed elbow to jowl, we made the run to the gardens.  Freed of traffic and the human scrum, the gardens were an idyll of calm, with lovely strolls past young local couple and families. 

Ah, the green and fecund air. 

There were sculpted English gardens, tangles of jungle plants, and an orchid house. The air was delicious, heavy and fragrant. 

Myriad orchids of all colours and varieties. 

And trees.  Really really big tropical trees. This one rose to the sky in an almost perfect column.   

The ficus section was one of my favorite parts of the gardens.  This is a ficus benjemina, that most notorious of house plants which will drop all its leaves in a plant pout if you move it to the other side of the room.  Oh, how I have struggled with these.  And yet here was the grandfather ficus, crossed branches growing together in an impossible tangle of a tree, branches dipping to the ground, rooting, and shooting off another forty feet horizontally. It was amazing. 

My One, she does not like heights so much.  Yet there she is on the tiny and very wiggly suspension bridge. 

A local guy advised me against jumping from the bridge.  "Crocodiles" sez he, pointing.  Otherwise I guess a thirty foot plunge into a murky Sri Lankan River would be an A-number-one-good-idea.  

Aside from the wonders of the plant kingdom, there were our primate friends. Everywhere.  Lots o' Monkeys.  Many barrels worth.  

And fantastic jewel-like beetles.  

We walked the garden for several hours.  I shot some cool videos which I will try to post when I have wifi again.  Tired and hungry, we swung onto a Kandy-bound bus with hopes of a well deserved dinner, but that is the stuff of the next post. 

Kandy Town

Kandy is supposedly the cultural center of Sri Lanka.  I'm not sure.  I know that it is a busy town with the worst vehicle exhaust we have experienced. Kandy is also a happening spot for food, shopping and even sports a hidden yet very modern shopping mall. 

Kandy is famous for a few things.   It is the repository of the Sacred Tooth Relic, a tooth salvaged from the Buddha's funereal pyre. This relic makes Kandy the most important Buddhist site in Sri Lanka. The tooth has been in the cistody of many folks over the years. Even the British, knowing the tooth's importance, kept it safe from harm. 

The Kandayans held off the British longer than the lowland folks and they are pretty proud of that, but the finally succumbed about 1815. So it goes. 

The other thing about Kandy is the big artificial lake in the center of town. The last local ruler had the lake dug in the early 1800's.  Apparently there were a few protests over the required digging so the head honcho had the reluctant diggers impaled on stakes placed in the bottom of lake bed.  It seems production increased as a result. 

My Baby in the scrum of merit makers. 

We walked to the Temple of the Tooth, checked out shoes, and entered the fray. It was literally a scrum to get up the stairs and near the doorway to the chamber where the tooth is kept. The chamber is rarely open and when it is the tooth is still inside six nesting gold caskets. So, no seeing the tooth. 

This site is so important that when the Tamil Tigers wanted to strike hard against the government, they planted a truck bomb here at the temple.  The 1998 blast did extensive damage to the temple buildings.   The bombing is depicted in a fairly heavy-handed way in one of the museum exhibits on the temple grounds. 

Making merit with clouds of incense and oil lamps. 

The juxtaposition of faith.  Oil lamps inside the temple and a colonial era steeple outside the grounds.  

Templed out, we circumnavigated the lake and traipsed through the busy market. The butcher section was sort of a study from one of Bosch's medieval horror paintings.  A man toasting the hair off a cow leg over an open burner, another man holding a section of flayed skin, bloody bits here and large meaty chunks there.  No nice tidy shrink-wrapped meat here thank-you-very-much. 

After bloody bits it's time for some finger food. A damn fine plate of fish and chicken biriyani to tide us over until....

Oops.  Forgot about the big feast back at the guesthouse. We put out a gallant effort on everything but the kilo of rice. Chicken, papadam, curried pineapple, roast taters, eggplant and okra. 

It was coma time after second dinner so we gave the night over the the symphony and let the day go. 

"Why do you want to take the train Sir?"

Indeed, why would anyone spend almost five hours going from Point A to Point B when one could make the same distance in three?   The bus from Nuwara Eliya to Kandy is the fastest way and also eliminates the need to travel the 9 klicks from Nuwara Eliya to the station at Nanu Oiya.  

The local local bus from up the hill to down the hill. 22 rupees each.  That's about 16 cents US. 

The answer is simple.  We love the train.  Besides being quaint and romantic, the train lumbers through the countryside away from the roads.  The views from the train are far more scenic and at 25 kilometers an hour, the scenery goes by at a stately pace. 

There are vendors on the trains, with their unintelligible yodeling calls and big baskets of goodies.  One can buy all manner of fruits, peanuts and popcorn. There is a weird sort of cotton candy dyed in vibrant colors and served in a banana leaf cone.  There are all sorts of savory fried treats like Daal Vadai and Samosas which are served in homemade paper bags.  Seriously, you get four savory donuts served in a paper bag made from some kids recycled homework.   

I loved this adjustable wooden timetable. Being in a Sri Lankan train station seems like a journey back into the 1930's.  

Here are two links to videos of traveling by train here in Sri Lanka. 

http://youtu.be/5oxOWfjCuFc

http://youtu.be/LO5KY4ULXjc

So we did the slow route, walked to the bus station, found a cool market along the way, got our local and careened down the hill to the station.  We loaded up on mantioc chips and bananas for snacks and then found our platform for the Kandy train. 

While whiling away the time waiting on the train, we joked with some school kids and listened to some guys drumming. I even sort of rescued a puppy.  The little guy was down on the tracks and trying to jump up onto the platform.  After five or ten minutes of this I couldn't take his plaintive little squeaks anymore, so I walked down the platform to where he was and hopped down.  He was doing the cute puppy wiggle, knowing he now had a pal. I picked him up off the tracks, deposited him on the platform and climbed my own self back up.  The whole scene was observed by about twenty locals.  I got a thumbs up from the drummer and general smiles, but I think they would have left the puppy there.  

The train arrived in due time and we boarded our third class carriage and settled in.  Five hours of scenery, reading and a few nods later found us pulling into Kandy. 

Detrained, we hit the streets to find our guesthouse just as rush hour kicked in and the road fumes were at their worst. The Lonely Planet map was way off on the distance and the walk turned into a sweaty slog.  We finally found St Bridget's Country Guesthouse (yeah, really) and were rewarded with rest and a feast of a dinner. 

This is the way to finish a transit day. Chicken, papadam, wind bean, mango chutney, potato curry, carrot curry, some fresh vege and sautéed eggplant.  And about a kilo of rice.  A post-Thanksgiving feast it were. 

Night had settled deeply over Kandy and ourselves. Tomorrow was to be a walkabout and a visit to the most sacred site in Sri Lanka, but now it was time for sleep. 

Dinner and Sundry.

I cannot invent what didn't happen. Well, I can, but then I'd be writing fiction and trying to get paid for it so I certainly wouldn't be posting it willy-nilly now would I?

Ahem.  So, we did nothing for the rest of the day except go have dinner. We lolled about, napped, lolled some more.  Nothing.  Not much grist for the mill really. 

So.  Here are two random observations about Sri Lanka:

  First, Sri Lankan Tuk-Tuk drivers are the nicest and most helpful three wheeler pilots I have encountered.   They are cheerful when we refuse their call of "Tuk-Tuk Sir?"  They give up the first time with a smile.  Strangest of all, a Sri Lankan Tuk-Tuk driver will actually give you directions or ask you if you need help even if don't hire them. This is unheard of in most of SE Asia. 

Secondly.  As you may have noticed from some of my previous blogs, I am not overly fond of Dags.  The sneaky curs that have skulked after me on country lanes in SE Asia or lonely stairways in Ecuador win no favor from me.  But Sri Lankan dogs are, for the most part, the laziest and most mellow canines I have met in my travels.  

For no reason, here is a picture of a horse walking in traffic.  

Oh, yeah, dinner. 

It was great.  

And cheap.  

And full of atmosphere.  

Horton Plain

Horton Plain National Park is a high plateau on the edge of the escarpment that drops to the south and has another set of sheer cliffs called Worlds End. The the sun warms the highlands and lowlands at different temperature rates, which brings misty clouds surging up the cliff faces by noon, obscuring the views. Thus, hiking in Horton Plains is best started early. 

What the inside of a minivan looks like at 5:20 AM. 

We rolled through the dark chilly morning on the hour plus drive to the park entrance. Packed and ready the night before, 4:30 AM came early. 

That ain't no sunset.  

Some things are inevitable.  One of these inevitabilites is the scrum of minivans at a  national park gate in SE Asia. 

Sambar Deer are awake this time of morning. 

We paid the roughly $18 per person entry fee and started down the trail.  My Sri Lankan Brothers are proud of their National Parks and do not hesitate to take a chunk of tourist money to maintain them. You pay for each person, your driver and the vehicle. 

 The 11 kilometer trail past Worlds End forms a loop as it climbs around Adams falls and back to the entrance gate.  There were a fair few early birds with almost all of them following their drivers advice and looping clockwise. Seeing an opportunity for a dodge, we took the loop in reverse and earned a good bit more solitude. 

The sun had not hit the land before we hit the trail. 

Horton Plains gets a good coat of mist and fog each night leaving glistening pearls of dew on everything. 

Even though we are traveling during the rainy season, we drew the perfect morning.  The sun broke the horizon and quickly warmed us up. 

The landscape seemed more and more familiar to me.  I finally realized that the upland country hereabouts was like hiking through the fictional terrain of Rowan in The Lord of the Rings movies, when the Warg riders attack the Riders of Rowan. 

There is not much to really say about a hiking adventure. We dodged two incredibly noisy Russian 20-somethings, soaked up the sights and sounds of the place, and reveled in being out on our own on foot.  The Sri Lankans are not fond of folks running loose on foot in the parks. Horton Plains is the exception to that ban.  

Adams Falls in the shadows and its own self-generated must while the morning sun warms the hills behind. 

The last silver dew of the morning still clinging to a bit of briar. 

We began to run into the hikers coming the other way, which marked us at roughly the halfway point.  We came at Worlds End from the opposite direction. 

The cliffs at Worlds End drop over 800 meters, mostly straight down. There is no fence or safety railing.  Several folks have managed to plummet to their deaths from this spot. The other thing about it is that yes, there are great views, but not of the cliffs themselves.  True, you can edge right up to a 2,400 foot drop, but you can't see much of it.  I actually preferred our amble across the open plain, imagining riders in helms chasing nasty Orcs. 

Worlds End, which does not translate in photos.  There was a sheer cliff of prodigious drop but I would have had to jump off to get a photo of it.  Yeah, yeah, don't bother saying it. 

The clouds rolling in right on schedule. 

The sedimentary and metamorphic rock of the high scarp.  This was actually the trail itself for several hundred meters.  I was fascinated by the color and texture of all of the layers. 

We completed our loop and met up with our driver for the return drive to Nuwara Eliya. Our Thanksgiving morning was well spent and our thanksgiving afternoon had a nap scheduled in it before we even had a bite. 

What I am Thankful For

As I spend this Thanksgiving amidst the beauty of the island nation of Sri Lanka, I am moved to note the things that I am thankful for on a global level.  

I am thankful to the immense generosity that has been shown to me by human beings across this planet.  Over the last seven years of travel, people of widely diverse cultures and beliefs have welcomed me into their towns, their homes, and sometimes into their lives.  I have been awed and humbled by their warmth and hopitality and this feeling continues on my present journey.  

I am grateful to my Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist Brothers and Sisters for giving me insights into their culture and their day-to-day lives and for showing me many other ways to view the world.  Because of them I can see that different paths to the same mountain make my world a richer place.  I am thankful for the days that I have walked to a village that houses a Mosque, a Hindu Shrine and Buddhist Stuppa.

I am eternally thankful for the colors, tastes, sights and smells of the world, for the sublime pleasure of discovering a new food, a new flavor, a new fruit at a market stall.  For me, these pleasures of the senses are the warp and weave of the tapestry of life.  My eternal gratitude goes out to all of those who have introduced me to these new wonders.

I am hopeful and happy that there are still places in the world where a traveler can find a slow train, a slow boat, or a ride in the back of a pickup on a rice sack and then a simple guesthouse at the end of the day's journey.  

I am thankful for each new horizon, each new Human Being greeted, each greeting recieved, each meal shared, each smile exchanged.  Most of all I am thankful for the Journey itself, complete with all of the joys and hardships.  I am blessed and I recognize this every step of the way.  

Optimism

Egg hoppers in the making.  I was invited into the kitchen stall for a photo op. 

Even when a Brother or Sister is having doubts about how food is going to settle in the system, eventually some grub has to go in. Or, as My Heart said "I don't care about the outcome, this is good!"  

We found a likely Hotel on the bustling Main Street of Nuwala Eriya.   Confusingly, "Hotels" are small restaurants, not places with room for the night. We ordered up some chicken biriyani to start and dug in, caution to the wind. 

I eyeballed the egg hoppers and ordered one up. Here you can see the special pans used for making these bowl shaped crepe-like goodies. Made with Rice flour batter and an egg in the bottom, hoppers are perfect for scooping up curry or "gravy" as the table top bowls of sauce are called. 

What's left of the biriyani and that fast disappearing. 

Dinner consumed and enjoyed, we headed home for a well deserved rest. 

Ed. Note:  Our intrepid traveler's did survive the meal, their shared tummy troubles, and are on the mend enough for a very early morning Trek on the morrow.   

  

The Highest Highlands

Despite suffering a bit of the Travelers, we were ready to move on from our base in Ella, Sri Lanka.  

Our destination was Nuwara Eliya, the highest of the Hill Country towns and former refuge of the English colonialists. Boarding our faithful little red train in Ella, we chugged along in our third class compartment. We spent our time watching the scenery and chatting with some of the locals who were traveling to see family on this holiday Wednesday. 

Little Red climbed steadily upwards at a stately pace.  The landscape began to change from tea plantations to pine forests as the elevation increased.  We began to pass through many tunnels which quickly fill with diesel smoke from the old locomotive.   The fumes make it into the carriages but then clear quickly once back in the moist forest air. 

We cleared the summit of the rail line at an elevation of approximately 6,600 feet. The air is cool and moist here, clouds dance through the tops of the pines and the valleys seem miles below the ridgetip railway.  

On the far side of the summit is the high plateau of Little England with terraced vegetable and dairy farms replacing the tea plantations. Many of the vegetable crops here are garden species introduced by the English in the 1800's and the terraces sculpted out of every hillside burst with a crazy green geometrically layered tableau.  

We chugged into the station at Nanu Oiya, about 9 Km from Nuwara Eliya. Politely fending off the mini-van and Tuk-tuk drivers, we found the local bus.  The difference is 400-800 rupees for private and 80 rupees for two on the bus. That's a good dinner at a local joint. 

Based on what we had read, we expected Nuwara Eliya to be some sort of preserved colonial village and had almost given the town a pass.  The draw of nearby Horton Plains National Park had tipped the scales for us.  What we actually found was a bustling town full of local activity, cool food stalls and joints, a a distinct lack of tourists. 

Nuwara Eliya does have a few throwbacks to the former English presence. There is a botanical garden in the city center as well as a polo grounds and a golf links.  Overall, however, this is a great Sri Lankan town nestled high in the hills and surround by green forests. 

The view of our guesthouse compound from our crow's nest. 

We found our new guesthouse compound, a lively oasis with a stream running through it, and snagged the last room. 

Home at last and both a bit worse for the wear.  

We collected ourselves in our crazy little crow's nest of a room and headed back out to try for a bit of local food and a bit of walk about.  Optimistic to the end!

Despite suffering a little trepidation at having a travel day and a gastrointestinal day coincide, that worst of combinations, our troubles were mild and the rewards were great.  

Tentative Transit

It's a bank holiday and market day here in Ella.  Neither of us are feeling all that festive however, what with being blessed with a touch of the travelers.   It is nothing serious but it does make being away from a nice guesthouse room a bit of a dare.   It is almost inevitable that a some point on a third world journey ones stomach is going to rebel at something.  It could be a dirty cup or plate, that wrong choice for a juice shack or simply bad luck.  So today we are paying our dues and thanks that the price is not high. 

Pancakes with curd and honey.  A nice bland brekkie with black tea.  No sense adding another shock to the system. 

The huge Main Street of Ella.  We will walk this one more time on our way to the train station. 

The Passara road that leads up to our little guesthouse.   

So we are off for another train ride, walking a bit slower today. By tomorrow weshould be right as rain and heading for Worlds End.