Day 6 Wednesday

We were off to see the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy. It is a very holy site where the tooth of Buddha is kept in 7 increasingly small caskets, a bit like a Russian doll. No one except VIPs is allowed to view it. In fact for those of you who like a bit of dentristy, it is the upper left cranium tooth. It was removed by psychic powers at Buddha’s cremation. Apparently he had 40 teeth. Buddha is not his name, it means “all wisdom attained”. In fact he was born a prince in Nepal. He grew up, married and had a son but felt that his life was not good enough so he left to become a philosopher and after 6 years he became Buddha. This was over 2000 years ago
The Temple is approached up an avenue of formal gardens which are kept free of leaves by the latest technology in leaf blowers

The Outer building has been extensively repaired after a bomb was set off at the entrance by the Tamil Tigers in the civil unrest,

 

But the actual Temple containing the tooth is a very old wooden structures  

It is very ornately decorated with carved wood and the ceiling are gorgeously painted

Devotion is obvious. Here the altars are decorated with the tusks of Royal elephants removed after their death

Every year the Royal elephant which is a tusker, is brought to the Temple with a golden statue on its back for the special tooth ceremony.  Vendors outside the Temple sell flowers to lay on the altars, purple water lilies, fragrant frangipani, white jasmine. They are arranged on paper plates and I admired one a lady was carrying. She took a water lilly and gave it to me to lay on the altar

A monk guards the entrance to the golden statue of Buddha

There is also a museum attached where the walls are devoted with paintings of the story of how the tooth came to be in Kandy

This painting shows the death of Buddha. See how the right foot is slightly in front of the lefl

On the way out we saw the statue of a young boy killed by a wicked king because the boy’s father had been disloyal. And another on of a monk who tore down the Union Jack flag because it had been raised by the Brisish one minute early after the Sri Lanka became a British colony. However I have to say there is little resentment of colonial rule here. In fact the Sri Lankans seem quite fond of us. 

The flag is in his left hand and he is pointing one finger with his right

Well we had to do a bit of posing

Back on the coach for a fairly long climb up to the Central Highlands where the tea plantations are. Many of the plantations were founded by Scottish owners and the tea estate we went to visit was called Glenloch. Tea bushes can live for 100 years and because of the favourable climate, lots of rain and sun, the leaves can be picked every 3 to 4 weeks. The very top tips go to make white tea, the most expensive, the next couple of leaves make green tea and the next leaves make black tea, the cheapest. Only pale new leaves are picked. The leaves are dried for 9 hours, rolled to break into particles, fermented for 90 minutes to make black tea only and finally dried.

Pria at the drying table

Su showing us the tea tips 

In the case of Lidl’s economy teabags, they sweep up bits from the floor 😆

We had a tea tasting of 4 teas. Black ( Broken Orange Pekoe. This means the leaves are broken up roughly for a stronger flavour, orange stands for the national colour of Holland and Pekoe is the name of the bush variety). it is also called BOP and is what makes English breakfast tea. Then we had white tea so delicate you couldn’t taste it, then green tea and finally Golden tea which is eye watering lay expensive. No sorry, I did not find my perfect cup of tea here either. Interestingly, the Sri Lankan trade unions are lobbying for better pay for tea pickers. Young people don’t want to do this sort of work any more as it is back breaking and very badly paid. So they foresee a labour shortage in the coming years so stock up on your teabags now

The wa ages are so low, you just can’t get the staff these days 

   

 Lunch at Rambulla Falls. Well guarde by trafficpolice 

Seem like nice boys. 

 Beautiful view over green hills which are bare because the Tsunami washed away all the tea bushes.    We continued on to our hotel. The St Andrews Hoetel. Ronnie was very emotional as he was born there, St Andrews not the hotel!  Originally it had been the Scottish plantation owners’ club

  It was like stepping back in time to the colonial era, dark wood panelling, verandas where you could have your tiffin, a snooker room. All very pukka. We were served with a cup of hot soup, vchicken vegetable with the inevitable chilli flavour.

 We had a game of snooker after dinner but I got fed up with keep missing so I left Ronnie to play with a young hotel worker, Kamal. All the hotel staff had thick jumpers on while we sweltered although it was a bit cooler in the Highlands than down in Kandy. However when we left that day and passed through the town of Neuwalia I saw a man in an anorak, bobble hat and gloves, no lie.

Day 5 Tuesday

A more civilised start this morning so I could enjoy my egg hopper and chilli pickle at leisure. We were off fairly early before it got too hot to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens in the centre of Kandy. Kandy’s ambience is definitely colonial although between 1592 and 1850 it was the seat of the kings of Sri Lanka. It is in a bowl surrounded by mountains and the word Lanka actually means mountainous region. It is a world heritage site with its Temple of the Tooth Relic. Earl Mountbatten was Governor here during the Second World War and had his bungalow and offices in the Botanical Gardens. Several films have been shot here - Bridge over the River Kwai, the Temple of Doom and another one I forget. The route through the town was very congested because everyone in a vehicle had to stop at a particular temple and put a small amount of money in a dragon’s mouth on the wall for a safe journey.

Small dragon’s mouth for prayer money

While waiting for our driver to do that I noticed another interesting shop name “The Clapped Store”.

No idea what they sold. 

The gardens were extensive, well laid out in named areas  and beautiful. Some groups of primary school children were having a picnic and were sitting so nicely eating their breakfast on the lawns in their pristine white dresses. Girls must always wear a tie but boys don’t have to

 Lots of macaque monkeys trouping about, not to mention the enormous giant bats with a wing span oef up to 1.5 metres which were roosting in the trees near the river and still flying about in the light. And they stank!

 Bat in flight

Roosting and very smelly giant bats

 Anyway the interesting trees we saw were the cannon ball tree, fruits like cannon balls,the jack fruit tree which is very trendy at the moment with vegans, as the flesh of the unripe fruit is very fibrous and can be made into something which tastes like pulled pork. A very tall tree which in the past was used to poison the tips of arrows but you had to climb to the top to get the poison. I would think you would have got a bit fed up and called the fight off.

A tree which has a male and a female variety. The male has got dangly bits  and the female has rounded bosom like bits. It’s called the Coco de Mer. Tree. So that’s where the sex shop got its name from!  Cook’s Pine grows tall but wonky because termites or something attack its root.

Cook’s   Pine

Su told us that the national tree is the Iron Wood tree, the national flower is the blue water lily, the national bird is the jungle fowl and the national animal is a giant squirrel. Ronnie said it would have been better to be a sleeping dog as they were everywhere.  

Around the perimeter of a lawned area was a ring of trees planted by foreign dignitaries.  But do you know that apart from the British ones, the Queen, Harold McMillan and Princess Anne, the rest were all assassinated thereafter. So the moral is, don’t plant a tree in Sri Lankan gardens it’s the kiss of death . On we went across a narrow suspension bride where a policeman only allowed 6 people at a time with strict instructions not to rock it. If you stopped to pose for a selfie, he blew his whistle and waved his arms

. Time to leave but first we passed some huge bamboos which got us all reminiscing about the time we planted a bamboo in our gardens.  Don’t they grow big and fast?  Mine came up in the neighbour’s garden. Bill had to dig ours up in the end and he did his back in etc etc etc. 

Giant bamboo

After lunch and a short rest, we decided to take an optional excursion of a short boat ride along the longest river in Sri Lanka called the Mahaweli.

Our hotel on the banks of the Magnificent Mahaweli River

We saw so many birds most of which I had not heard of before but we also saw some basking monitor lizards

Sunbathing monitor lizard

and a and a farmer bringing his water buffalo down to the river to drink and cool off.

We also a serpent eagle in aa tree, eating a little snake. Several crows hopped around him hoping for some left overs. Sadly the photo didn’t come out too well. ,

The eagle is central and the snake is a yellow loop dangling down

 Rush rush rush. After a quick cup of tea, only about meh, we were off to see a show of drumming and dancing at the local cultural centre. I think possibly the drumming was an acquired taste. The dancing consisted of girls doing graceful dancing like peacocks and the boys jumping about with big hats on with long tails attached.

A bit of conch blowing was followed by fire eating and, gobsmackingly, walking on hot coals.

There was no trickery or sleight of hand, they definitely walked on burning coals.
Back at the hotel for dinner. For those of you worried that I will not be eating much due to my resistance to curry, don’t.  There are so many choices. It is always a buffet and always at least 6 different curries.  But there are other choices, fish, beef, eggy things, sometimes pasta. But what they all have in common is that they are bloody hot. I don’t mind that but it does mean that my intake of Lion beer has shot up.
Early night as we have another outrageously early departure time tomorrow. But at least Ronnie made a new friend

Day 4 Monday ( or is it?)

Today we had a massively outrageous start at 7.30 am!!!  We were driving up to central Sri Lanka to stay in the old capital of Kandy. On the way we stopped off at an Ayurvedic (it means the science of life) centre.  It purports to be holistic and treat the causes rather than the symptoms of ailments.  Apparently Sri Lanka has very low rates of Altzheimer’s, dementia and Parkinson’s and the doctor who had an impossibly long name and who gave us a tour of the spice and herb garden attributed this to Ayurvedic medicine. Well he told us about all the trees and what they were able to treat   I was particularly interested in nutmeg. The doctor held up the brown oval nutmeg and said, “ Now how do you think we use the nutmeg to stop diarrhoea?” 😳.  Anyway he discoursed at length about the healing properties of Red Oil. It cures just about everything. I was sold. See  number 17

Those who wanted it could have a mini massage but I did think that some of the masseurs looked like the sales assistants in the shop and the gardeners.  

While the lady next to me was having her ankle massaged, she said she started feeling a tingle in her palm. Oooh, was it working?  But her husband pointed out that she had put her hand on the sticky underside of the bench. The man who massaged my knee gave me a real work out. When he had finished, it felt so much better but only because he had stopped hurting me. The doctor also said that if you got a curry stain on white clothes, a lime will remove the stain. More of this later!  We saw a
couple of large spiders in a tree. Su said one was a male wood spider and the other a female. He said we would have time to photograph them on the way back if the female hadn’t eaten him for lunch. Actually they were nothing like as big as the spider in the ladies’ loo. ( Hole in the floor!)


Back on the coach and the guide told us about marriage in Sri Lanka. Many marriages are still arranged but spouses are often advertised for in the newspapers. Women of middle age are advertised by their parents and interestingly the details of the family i.e. their caste as well as their horoscope is
requested. But a photo is not deemed necessary

On to the hotel through towns and villages with flags and bunting everywhere. It was Independance Day and all shops were closed, children on holiday from school, processions in the streets with all 

girl drum bands. But worst of all, when we got to the hotel we learned that it was dry!  What?  They 

actually celebrate Independance day by NOT having a drink?  Ronnie was in despair

Anyway that evening we went to a cultural show, which was very entertaining.  Traditional dances about peacocks, cobra training, hat twirling  and so much drummingyourearseang. But the highlight was the fire eating and walking over hit colals. There was no trickery, I was standing 2 feet away. Absolutely amazing

Day 3 Sunday

Today we went to Sigiriya, the home of the Lion Rock. It is an enormous granite outcrop with 1000 steps up winding open iron stairs, not for the faint hearted.

At the bottom are extensive formal gardens with swimming pools which the legendary King whose name I forget, had built for his 500 concubines.

At the base of the rock are two giant sized lion’s paws but the rest of the carved lion has long since worn away, not surprising as it was carved in the 6th century.

I suppose it would have been similar to the Sphinx. The bottom few hundred steps are carved of marble,

which does not occur naturally in Sri Lanka, then you begin the ascent of the rock

face on the zigzagging stairway

 

There are definitely no concessions to health and safety. I saw women in high heels, flip flops, no shoes at all, very old people, big people, a woman with a walking stick all determined to get to the top - as we were. Because it was a Sunday, there were more people than usual and there were queues and traffic jams. Half way up there is a gallery where paintings remain from 6th century of goddesses rising out of the clouds. The colours are still vibrant and there is a man made wall protecting them from the elements. At one time that wall was polished to shine like a mirror so that it reflected the paintings hence its name The Mirtor Wall

But at the top, you could see the original walls, mostly in ruins, of the palace on a number of levels with again a huge swimming  pool.

Those concubines must have enjoyed swimming!  The view from the top over the rainforest, gardens and an enormous distant Buddha would have been fantastic but sadly a mist descended and we could see almost nothing.

But the walk down, after the iron staircaseswas lovely through a wooded area with caves and grottos where the monks would meditate.

Oh by the way, the legendary king whose name I forgot, was bumped off after being tortured by one of his hundreds offsons,  serves him right for having so many concubines
Back for lunch and our by now favourite Lion beer before a trip by ox cart, catamarin and tuc tuc to a village to see local customs.

The heavens opened and the rain was monsoonial if that is a word. The ox on the cart (Ronnie said”Bullock” which I thought was a bit uncalled for), looked very downtrodden to me

. But our guide said that if they were not used for tourism to earn money for the village people, they would go to the slaughter house. There was no suspension and the dirt tracks were bumpy and by now muddy so after a 20 minute bone shaking ride we arrived at the river.
When I said catamaran, you might have been thinking Amricas Cup but the truth was more like 2wooden canoes connected by a large box. It was still tipping down and there was no shelter but at least we didn’t seeany crocodiles which had been seen the day before

. Across the river was the willage with a largeish open sided hut. 2 smiling Sinhalese ladies with absolutely perfect white teeth showed us how to thresh rice and miller, grind it to a powder and bake flat breads on an open fire.

They also made a kind of salsa with cockanut, onion, garlic, tomato and salt called sambol. They gave each of us a slice of the dark finger millet roti bread and sambol on a palm leaf to try and a herb tea in a half cockanut shell.

After that we had a demonstration of how to husk a cockanut and make food out of the coir. Did you know you can only crack a cockanut widthwise, impossible lengthwise.

You can cut up the flesh to eat or grate it and use it to make cockanut cream for curries. The shell are partially burned and put down well as copra to purify the water. Or you can put them roundthe base of other trees to provide compost and fertiser. The leaves of the cockanut tree ante used to weave into panels for the roof.

They last a year and are watertight. We know this as it was still pouring down!  A very interesting display but I did wonder if the ladies lived in the very nice bungalow we passed on the way back and popped out to the local shop to get a sliced loaf for breakfast?
A fleet of tuc tucs arrived to take us back to civilisation. The dirt tracks were mud baths by now and some got stuck and had to be rocked out of the mud. But there was lots of laughing and it was a great experience.