Sri Lanka: Kandy, Ella & Tangalle

Kandy 10.02-12.02

Kandy was the first place we’ve been so far that had an actual ‘city’ feel. Therefore, it was nice to stroll around Kandy and look at all the shops and restaurants. In the centre of Kandy is a beautiful lake that had a fountain which seemed to turn on when it fancied it. Our hotel was on a small road off the lake so it was perfectly located for us to walk everywhere which was actually quite refreshing having been driven around for the past 10 days. We said goodbye to our driver Chaminda who we hope we’ll see again one day and now we’re on our own! On the first day we found a small restaurant to have some lunch which sold samosa-esque snacks. We ordered a plate of everything so we could taste them all. On the way to our seat a waiter came up to me and asked “Where are you from?”. He was friendly enough and I replied, “England!”, he then just smiley responded, “Oooooooo, white people!”. I wasn’t really quite sure how answer I just nodded my head in agreement that we were, yes, white people and joined Ed at our table.

Whilst in Kandy we visited its most famous site, The Temple of the Tooth. This is a very sacred place for Buddhists as it holds one of Buddha’s left teeth. You can’t actually see the tooth itself as it’s held in a beautiful gold casket. You also only get a very brief glimpse of the casket as you’re hurried through a queue of people infront and behind you so you don’t particularly get a choice in how fast you walk or whether you stop. The temple itself was gorgeous and even though we got a fleeting glimpse of the casket, from the general feeling in the room you could tell this was a highly revered place. Pink and purple lotus flowers filled the tables in front of the casket and many Buddhists wanted to stay in the room to pray. I always feel quite nervous coming to very religious places as I am so anxious not to cause offence so I let Ed take all the pictures whilst I cowered in the corner trying to not get in anyone’s way but still enjoying the atmosphere!

Following on from this we decided to take a walk around the lake. En route we stopped at The British Garrison Cemetery. Truth be told we only really had decided to visit this place because Lonely Planet said it was free and we were trying to save a bit of money. However, it turned out to be a fascinating place. If Ed’s Dad Nick is reading this- you would have found it VERY interesting. It was an only British Cemetery which was used during the Colonial period when the British arrived in Kandy to mainly set up coffee and tea plantations. Kandy was obviously very different and dangerous back then, pretty much all of the land was wild and untouched. What was most striking about the cemetery was the age that these British people had died, on average probably about 25 years old. On some of the gravestones it described how they were killed; elephant attacks, cholera, sun stroke, malaria and fever to name a few. It certainly made us realise what a risk it was choosing to leave everything at home and come out here to try and make a living for yourself (even though I’m in no way condoning colonialism :) ).

During our stay in Kandy, every time we walked past a certain spot next to lake we were approached by a dodgy looking Sri Lankan man who Ed is “70% sure” (a direct quote) was the man who conned him and his family on his first trip to Sri Lanka when he was 13 years old. It got to be quite amusing to watch his tactics of trying to draw us in for a chat, which would according to Ed, then lead us eventually to having to go to this ‘brother’s’ shop where you’re strongly urged to buy something! To confirm Ed’s theory on the last day we did in fact see him leading a group of tourists up the road which Ed claims was the road they went up with him 8 years ago! During our time in Kandy he used a variety of lines on us including:

1)     (seeing us, and then bowing and praying to the temple opposite)  “Here! (pointing to Temple) Buddha Tooth Temple!! Tomorrow Special Day!! President coming!!”

[We did in fact visit the temple the following day and there was no sign of the president.]

2)      (looking pensively into the water, then slowly looking up at us) “Here! Look!! (pointing into the lake) A water snake!”

[We couldn’t see anything in the rather murky lake water.]

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Ella  13.02-14.02

We had tried to reserve 1^st class observation seats for the 6 hour train ride through the hill country to Ella, but these were already sold out so we settled for 2^nd class. Even though our tickets were unreserved seating, we assumed that for a 6 hour trip we would be able to find seats pretty easily. It was not to be! We didn’t get a seat the entire journey but this sort of worked to our advantage as we had the doorway of the train which was open and we could sit there dangling our feet out the side. It also gave us an incredible, unobstructed view of the surroundings as we snaked our way (very slowly) through the tea plantations and hills. We passed various colonial sounding stations such as ‘Great Western’ before reaching Ella around 3 30. The town had a very different feel to the rest of Sri Lanka that we had seen so far. Firstly, the climate was significantly cooler, so much so that we wore jumpers when walking around. The vibe was different too, we seemed to be hassled a lot less and it had a pretty chilled out atmosphere. The next day we set off to climb Little Adam’s Peak. It was a stunning walk which remained mostly flat before a steep 20 minute climb at the end. The walk overlooked tea plantations and the huge Rawana waterfall. It was also parallel to ‘Ella’s Rock’ which kept hiding behind clouds before reappearing again. On the way back to town, we decided to stop at a small teahouse that is famed for its cakes. While walking we also saw a snake on the side of the road and a lizard that jumped over Nina’s feet. For dinner we treated ourselves to a pizza after two straight weeks of rice and curry!

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Tangalle- Marakolliya Beach 15.02-17.02

We spent three great nights at the Mangrove Beach Cabanas enjoying the sun and sea. Our small wooden cabana looked straight out onto the beach. We had a few creepy crawly friends in our cabana each night but it wasn’t too bad. The beach was perfectly untouched and we really enjoyed chilling out there.  Dinner also was a little different from usual, every night we opted for ‘Fish of the Day’ which was freshly caught on their small fishing boat off the beach. We ate tuna steaks, butterfish and mullet. The sunset on the first night was particularly spectacular! Ed also managed to enjoy the beach with his trusty factor 50 and dappled palm tree sunlight. 

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Sri Lanka: Cultural Triangle

So we’ve been on the road for about 10 days now and things are going well. We’ve been living in luxury really as we’ve had a driver up until now. Our driver Chaminda, with his car Cedric were a great way for us to settle into our trip and probably was the best way to see the cultural triangle area in Sri Lanka. We’re both doing good with only mild dodgy tummies so far! We’ve just arrived in Kandy which is actually a city rather than a small village along a road which seems to be most places in Sri Lanka we’ve seen! So hopefully we’ll be able to do a lot of exploring in the next few days before we head to the hill country and then the beaches! We’ve decided this blog to write separate parts individually so whenever we write something we’ll sign it off as either N or E. Well, here are some of the places we have visited so far……..

Anuradhapura 01.02-04.02

The next morning after we arrived in Sri Lanka we headed straight to explore Anuradhapura. This is the first ancient religious capital of Sri Lanka . Our guide for the day was Eddie who was approximately 80 years old, an ex-archaeologist and absolute expert on the area (we know because he showed us several newspaper cuttings of himself which he proudly kept in his satchel). He walked with a cane and had to have an inhaler every now and again but his fitness and wisdom were seriously admirable.  We walked/drove a huge part of the complex although only 20% of the area has been excavated. The city was home to 2 million people during it’s time. The complexity of the architecture is incredible as to think that people created these buildings by sheer man power.  

For dinner that evening we tried a Sri Lankan dish called Develled Chicken which reminded us a little of sweet and sour, as it’s served with rice, pineapple and tomatoes. It tasted good! For desert our waiter called Kumar recommended we try banana fritters so we ordered one portion to share. After taking our order he returned to the kitchen  only to return minutes later sprinting out of the hotel front gate. We were praying he hadn’t had to run into town for ingredients for our desert but about 10 minutes later (he was really out of breath) he came back holding a banana shaped plastic bag! We felt bad but we ensured that he knew we REALLY liked the banana fritters!

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Mihintale 03.02

Chaminda drove us to Mihintale today which is said to be the place where Buddhism was born in Sri Lanka. The story (briefly) goes that the king was hunting on the hill and a monk called Mahinda stopped him from killing a deer and instead converted him to Buddhism. You have to climb 1,843 steps to get to the top of Mihintale. We organised to have a guide show us around as he could provide us with a little more insight. There were two main dagobas (similar to pagodas) , one which contains the forehead of Buddha. We had to take off our shoes at the top as a sign of respect but we also had to climb the Mihintale mountain! Doing this barefoot made me a little nervous as it had rained that morning! There weren’t really steps leading up just a sort of bannister with very small stone indents on an otherwise very smooth rock! It was very busy as the following day was Independence day so every now and again I had to move away from the banister and hope that my feet were grippy enough to hold me on the rock! We were both rather surprised at how grippy our feet were as we probably would have slipped everywhere if we’d worn shoes. The view from the top was beautiful.

At the end of the tour we were debating how much to give our guide, there aren’t really set prices in Sri Lanka you sort of pay what you think something is worth- which is really difficult when you don’t have a grasp of the value of the currency! We were planning of giving him Rs1000 but due to lack of change we ended up giving him Rs2000. This literally must have made his day as we later read in our guide book that people usually pay around Rs500. He did seem rather happy when we gave it to him.

Later that day we went for a wander around  Anuradhapura with us both deciding to bite the bullet and wear our new un-walked in shoes. I got two small blisters from my new sandals but Ed was having an absolute mare with his new flip flops. They were way too big for his feet so he ended up doing a kind of penguin shuffle around town which made him look like he had a gammy leg! He didn’t really see the funny side but I thought it was hilarious! We walked/shuffled to the supermarket and got some drinks and samosas. Heading back to the hotel we were getting slightly concerned about the large amount of dogs taking over the road side! It’s crazy they are literally everywhere! I’m generally a dog person but these ones just sit around furless, licking their wounds! Ewwwww.  The monkeys however are great fun, they’re so sneaky. We saw ones in Mihintale which had stolen an ice lolly and a whole loaf of bread!

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Nilaveli 04.02

Now this part of the tour didn’t exactly go to plan. Nilaveli is on the north east coast next to a city called Trincomalee. Trinco was closed for tourists and considered dangerous for many Sinhalese people during the war. Now three years after the war in Sri Lanka the area is beginning to open up and letting tourists come back in. Nilaveli is a beach resort which in the Lonely Planet guide is considered to be one of the best beaches in Sri Lanka. What didn’t help first was the weather, as we got closer and closer the clouds got greyer and greyer eventually leading to a monsoon-esque downpour which never really subsided! Trincomalee and Nilaveli were both hugely affected during the tsunami in 2004 and the war. It has a large Tamil population. There is a large amount of poverty in Sri Lanka, more than I naively thought but I’d say that Trinco is the poorest part I’ve seen so far. I guess only three years after the war we couldn’t really expect it to be any other way however there was a strange vibe in Nilaveli. We checked into our ‘Sea View’ Hotel (the H was crooked on the sign), the manager was friendly but the rest of the staff were very serious and seemed really hostile towards us. Despite the rain we went for a walk along the beach, the land is really flat so it’s pretty terrifying to imagine how far the tsunami wave must have travelled. As it was Independence Day there were lots of Sri Lankans braving the rough waves and seemingly having a good time. Walking down the beach it wasn’t quite the ‘golden sands’ picture which had been painted as there was lots of rubbish and a lot of the trees looked like they had been burnt! Not quite paradise…..

We spent the rest of the day inside playing games and Ed had a nap using his t-shirt as a cover because for some reason the hotel didn’t provide bed sheets. We decided to cut our trip to Nilaveli short and left in the morning to go on an elephant safari back in the cultural triangle!

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Trincomalee, Giritale and Polonnaruwa 05.02-06.02

We woke up early to find that it was still pouring with rain. We went down to have breakfast before leaving and even that was a failure! The area around Nilaveli is famous for its onions apparently so they decided to put about 3 each into our omelettes. We didn’t want to be rude as the chef was talking to us throughout breakfast so we ate them up and said they were delicious but the aftertaste stayed for the rest of the morning! On our way back to the cultural triangle, we decided to stop off in Trinco to see a famous Hindu temple above the old colonial fort which overlooks the whole coastline. The Tamils that live in the north east of the country are Hindu as opposed to the Sinhalese who are Buddhist so it was really interesting to see.  It made us realise how little we knew about Hinduism. The colonial fort still serves as a military base for the Sri Lankan Army and there were lots of signs throughout the city displaying ‘evacuation route’ or ‘no guns allowed’ which served as a reminder for how recently the war actually ended and how much the city was affected.

We then drove back to a town in the cultural triangle called Habarana to have lunch. Chaminda took us to a restaurant that was definitely a favourite for drivers judging from the foreign clientele. There were a lot of westerners! It was quite strange coming from Nilaveli and Trinco where we had seen absolutely no westerners and felt a bit uneasy. Although there were a lot of foreigners, we’ve found so far in Sri Lanka that we’ve come across hardly any backpackers like us but maybe this will change when we get down to the south and the beaches. After lunch we were picked up by our elephant safari driver and taken to Hurulu Eco Park. It was sooo much fun! We saw loads of elephants and other wildlife and the park itself was beautiful. I struggled somewhat with balancing while standing in the safari Jeep while expert ranger Nina seemed to be perfectly fine and kept telling me to take it in my knees. She was a pro. At one point, an elephant came within about 3 metres of the Jeep which was pretty scary! The driver had to keep the engine on in case it charged, thankfully it didn’t and we managed to get some great pictures. What’s more, when Chaminda picked us up and we were making our way back to the hotel, we drove past a huge elephant just standing on the side of the road snacking on leaves!

After staying the night in a guesthouse in the nearby town of Giritale, we planned to visit the ancient city of Polonnaruwa. For the first and definitely not the last time, we both woke up with dodgy stomachs and felt a bit shaky over breakfast. With the help of both western medicine from home and Chaminda’s Ayurvedic potion that he bought us, we felt well enough to visit Polonnaruwa, the ancient capital city that succeeded Anuradhapura around 800 years ago. Our guide explained how much of the city was influenced by other cultures and societies that were trading with it at the time, especially the Chinese. The sheer scale of the city and the amount of palaces, monasteries and temples in ruins would have made Polonnaruwa a very grand place in its heyday. The crowning glory of the site was the rock face with 4 huge statues of Buddha carved into it. They were all done by hand and were incredibly detailed. As we were just leaving, the sky opened and there was an almighty downpour. Back at the hotel we had our first taste of Sri Lankan beer: Lion Lager. Not bad.  We’ve decided (because we’re incredibly cool) to rate all the foreign beers we try over the next 7 months. This one got a 6.7 after careful consideration!

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Village Experience Day 07.02

Since we had left Nilaveli 2 nights earlier than expected, we had a day with nothing planned. Chaminda suggested a village experience day, and what an experience it was! We knew from the outset that it would be one of those very touristy affairs, but we chose to embrace it and coincidentally it has always been one of our lifelong aims to ride on a bullock cart wearing hats fashioned from lily pads. The first part of the ‘experience’ was a paddle boat ride on a lake. The lake was gorgeous- full of lily pads and beautiful purple flowers and from it you could see the silhouette of Sigiriya, our destination for the next day. Our guide, who was definitely about 13 and should have been at school, tried to point out the local wildlife. His English was pretty limited though so everything was ‘This is a…’ and to be honest his knowledge was also pretty limited as he could only identify about 3 birds, although he pointed them out every time he spotted one. By the tenth time we were pretty sure we had learnt which bird the cormorant was! The lake was really fun though because while our guide was pointing out birds, the other boatman made hats for us out of the lily pads from the water. Nina’s lady one had a purple flower on it, while mine had some sort of manly flower stem. Nina said that I looked like Robin Hood while I told her she looked like a drum major, although she misheard and thought I said John Major which made her really confused. We then drank some tea out of a coconut from a woman in a farmers hut. When we had finished, we said thank you and goodbye but our guide said that we should give the woman a tip. It became clear that, even though we had paid a one-off fee at the beginning, we would have to give a tip to everybody that would enhance our ‘experience’. This was quite a few people! Although in total we would only pay about £3 in tips, we couldn’t help feeling that we had been somewhat duped and it was the principle that annoyed us. It also annoyed us that our boatman thought he deserved a tip even though on the way back he decided to take a shortcut through the weeds where we got so stuck that he had to get out and push the boat for ten minutes! We gave him Rs50 anyway to avoid getting in an argument, being the ultra-unconfrontational people that we are. We did, however, have a really nice homemade lunch of rice and curry while overlooking a river that was home to kingfishers and terrapins. Finally we made our way back on a bullock cart! All in all, the day was pretty funny, we got some great pictures and some valuable experience in the art of tipping.

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Sigiriya, Dambulla and our Ayurvedic Massage! 08.02-10.02

We woke up very early on Friday as we had a lot planned for the day. We made our way to Sigiriya, a gigantic rock fortress surrounded by forest.  Around 400AD the King had two sons, the elder from a concubine and the younger from the Queen. When he decided that the younger son should succeed him, the elder son was so angry that he killed the king, ascended to the throne himself and constructed a palace on top of the Sigiriya rock.  We first walked around the palace grounds at the bottom of the rock. There were two moats, one that still contained crocodiles, and various swimming pools the king had constructed for his 500 concubines! We then began our ascent of the rock which got pretty hot and sweaty. On the way there were ancient rock paintings of the concubines that were still in amazing condition. About ¾ of the way up we reached the Lion’s paws, which had a staircase in between them that originally would have led through the lion’s mouth to the top of the rock. By the size of the paws you can imagine how incredible it must have looked. At the peak itself there were the ruins of the palace and a fantastic view. It was amazing!

In desperate need of a shower, we made our way to our new hotel to find that from our room had a perfect view of the rock. In the afternoon we went to visit the Dambulla Cave Temples. We were really impressed by the Dambulla temples, as there were some immaculate statues of Buddha inside these huge caves where all the walls and ceilings had been painted too. Another highlight was seeing a huge family of westerners, when asked to remove their shoes, replace them with those blue overshoes that you wear at swimming pools or when decorating. We got back to the hotel to find a HUGE wasp in our room, it must have been around 1.5 inches long. I managed to trap it in a bin while Nina sat under the mosquito net barking her orders. Nina also managed to buy a really nice sarong with elephants on it that she loves, and we bought our first souvenir: a batik picture of an elephant!

After deciding that we would only buy one souvenir per country, the next day we bought our second souvenir. We went to a have a look around a wood carving shop. The shopkeeper gave us a little tour of his workshop and a bit of information about all the woods he uses and how he carves them. Surprisingly, mahogany is the cheapest wood in Sri Lanka. When looking around we decided to buy a traditional Sri Lankan mask to go with the Korean one we already have. It’s a blue peacock mask and all the paint was obtained naturally from different trees. We then went for an Ayurvedic massage! Ayurveda is a traditional Sri Lankan system of medicine and the massage uses lots of different oils and remedies. We both got a full body massage, then Nina got a facial while I had some sort of strange thing where oil was continuously dripped onto my forehead. Pretty good! The only downside being by the end my hair was ridiculously oily and Nina said I looked a bit like Alan Sugar.

The next day Chaminda dropped us off in Kandy and we said goodbye and exchanged numbers and emails. We felt very lucky as he was really laid back, funny and we got on really well with him. He said if we come back to Sri Lanka we can stay with him and his family in his village!

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