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.

Day 2 Saturday

Day 2

For breakfast you could have any sort of curry you like but I had an egg hopper which was a crispy rice flour pancake in the shape of a bowl with a fried egg and chilli pickle in the middle. The tea was ok but to be honest a bit like Sainsbury’s own label. We had an early start so we’re on the coach by 8am. Can’t do that every day!  We had quite a long drive to the Golden Temple at Dambulla but it was broken up firstly by a stop at a fish drying community on the beach. Mackerel, sardines, whitebait, tuna and manta ray are gutted and filleted, soak in salt water and left to dry for several days in the sun on the beach.

The women folk have the back breaking job of turning the fish in 30 odd degrees.

Skinny dogs roam freely between the rows of fish but don’t even sniff the fish, mind you you could smell it a mile away. We were warned not to talk to the gypsies (Rodi) people on the beach. Some feigned interest in where you came from and offered to explain all the fish to you but you had to pay. They had pythons in baskets and they really did play a pipe to call it out. You had to pay to take a photo of him and a bit more to hold the snake. I passed.

Driving on through villages I spotted a few entertaining signs and shop names, “Try our tasty variants”. Fancy House, Imitation Jewellers, Lucky Beer Shop and my favourite, Shoppy Shop. Lots of tuc tucs but very plain unlike the Induan variety which are done up like Christmas trees and stalls set up by the roadside selling not just the expected fruit and veg but shoes, rag mats, piles of bricks and one stall just had a small pile of nuts and the council rent for this is £2 a month.   Our local guide Su gave a running commentary on Sri 

Lankan history, geography, culture and nature. On the latter subject he spoke extensively about the cockanut pluckers 😳.

We stopped for a tea break, yes really, at a lakeside restaurant in Kurunegala which means Elephant Rock City. We could see the Elephant Rock across the lake and there was a large seated Buddha on top.

There are 5 large outcrops of granite in this part on Sri Lanka named after 5 animals which 

were turned to stone -  the elephant, the tortoise, the monkey, the beetle and the eel but you have to use your imagination. Each has a Buddha as they believe that everything that falls under the gaze of the Buddha will have good luck. The tea however was served with 

hot sterilised milk so nul points for that 

On again for lunch at another very nice restaurant. There was a big buffet with lots of choice but even though the dishes were labelled In English, I had no idea what they were except some spicy chicken but the Lion beer was nice

Then a short ride to Dambulla and the caves of the Golden Buddha. It was a climb in 32degrees of about 200 steps which was bad enough.

So blinking hot, give us a grooming!

But at the top we had to remove our

shoes to walk into the holy area. Those of us with no socks quickly learned the ancient 

dance of the burning feet.   The caves were really a huge fissure in the granite but in the 8th wcentury were divided into 5 separate caves each with a resting Buddha or a lying Buddha 

at the point of death

The way to tell which is which is that the toes of the right foot are 

slightly further forward than those of the left on the dying Buddha. (Feet on the left)

There were also many statues of seated and standing Buddhas and the ceilings were still exotically painted.

At the bottom of the rick was the huge temple of the Golden Buddha with a queue of dozens of red robed monks waiting to approach him.

 I think Ronnie is heading off to join the holy queue in search of enlightenment

Back to the hotel hot and exhausted for a quick Lion Beer, followed by a shower and dinner.