Sri Lanka Day 1

Wow! What an incredible experience. I do feel a world away.  I am sitting on the second floor deck of my villa/cottage/bungalow writing this in the middle of the jungle on Monday morning (Sunday afternoon in MPL). I am not sure when it will get published.

SO let’s start at the beginning:

Good googley moogley. I walk out of immigration and past all the shops selling – appliances. Yes, appliances sold duty free in the airport. I did see a nice dishwasher, but didn’t figure it would fit in the overhead so I’ll have to wait. Anyway, I walk out of immigration into the most humidity that I have EVER felt. Think North Carolina humid on steroids. If you have ever left a building and felt like you were walking through a heat curtain, then this is like walking into a heat hammer. Bam! Right in your face. I greet my guide/driver and we are off. I’ll not bore you with the drive to the tired old hotel that I stayed in (it was cheap), but 7 am came early.

We started off and right away the differences between Sri Lanka and India were apparent to me.

Everyone was wearing western wear. Very few people wear traditional clothes.

Driving is less chaotic.

People are very friendly too, but there is less a crush of humanity.

The blend of cultures in Sri Lanka makes it feel more like Goa than the rest of India – which might be due to the Buddhist influence.

As we drove (and we drove a lot), it was great to see everyday life. We weren’t driving interstates, but mostly what we would consider smaller state roads through many villages. It was shocking that you would drive along and see a small house with a selling area that was selling the most exquisite teak doors and windows, or stainless steel railings, or concrete, or pottery. At one point I counted 18 roadside pottery stands in a row – all with similar planters, red clay pots and vessels. Sometimes they looked identical as they were were unpainted and other times there were decorations/paintings on them and that was the only difference to the stand beside it. A lot of cottage industries exist and regions are known for a particular skill so as you travel, you pick up the things you need from each area. My only contributions were a stop at a fruit stand and a spice garden (more to come).

 Oh and rice paddies everywhere. A typical size paddy will feed a family for a year and they will sell the excess (normally about 50% of what they grow). Sri Lanka doesn’t need to import rice as a result. And you saw it all as you drove – people working by hand, people tilling with hand machines, and tractors. And the paddies were in various states too – fallow, being prepped for rainwater capture, being planted, being tended, and being harvested. A family will plant their paddy twice a year on average.

Then we arrived at the elephant orphanage. In time for the bottle feeding of the baby elephants as well as watching the adults eat – up to 400 pounds of leaves a day. Makes me eating ravioli seem trivial. I’ve never been this close to semi-wild elephants before. They knew their schedule and boundaries, but they certainly pushed the limits on occasion with their tenders. At one point a part of the herd started to move with some speed towards a busload of tourists. Those tourists scattered quickly and the elephants slowed down as soon as that happened. I am sure they were thinking – suckers. We then walked to the river by Pinnewala to watch the elephants bathe. On the way, I stopped at the factory that makes paper from all that elephant dung. I saw the process in action and the lovely final products – but none of you are getting gifts from there. At the river, we sat at a restaurant over looking the water and enjoyed some breakfast and limewater. As we watched the elephants bathe. 

Then we got on the road again. Our next stop was a tea factory, where I watched tea being made. After the compulsory sample, I bought some tea and we moved on (if someone wants more details, I am happy to provide). I believe that I could now open a tea factory based on all the detail that was shared with me.

Our next stop was lunch in Kandy. Up to this point everywhere the guide took me was full of tourists. I asked him for someplace that he ate when he dropped his tours off to shop, etc. We went to a little place called “The Honey Pot’ on the banks of a river. I am not sure if it wasn’t a guided stop on some of his tours, but I was the only Westerner so I was satisfied. Honestly, everywhere but the guide stops I was in a serious minority. On the plane, I was the only westerner. In the airport, there was a couple from Germany would be my guess – and that was it. The lines at immigration and customs were really short for me.  So I was pretty skeptical when we would pull up somewhere and see a fair amount of westerners there. It might give people a new perspective on diversity if they were the minority more often, but I digress. This place though had awesome food - Eggplant that was spicy hot and sweet, beets that were spicy, curry chicken that had a ton of cardamom, and tomato salad with onions and garlic and fiery green chili peppers.

We stopped at a Spice Garden after lunch. It was more like a garden with plants growing and tended for show with a showroom for selling spices than a garden. I did find all the discussion on medicinal usage of the herbs intriguing though since I have always had some philosophical leanings in that direction for medicine/diet so I spent a fair amount of time there (and remember that time equals money too). I got my fresh cooking spices and a balm/tonic or three as well.

We stopped at the oldest Hindu temple in Sri Lanka next. It was beautiful. The sculpture that adorns these temples is amazing and the fact that there are so many of them – I don’t think it is actually one per god, but it must be close as you can see, makes it easy to spend a lot of time looking at the temple.

 And then we ended at the hotel. It is gorgeous. As the pictures indicate, it is a one-bedroom house (minus the kitchen). The shower is awesome. The sound of nature is omnipresent and incredible. But it is also a little freaky to be THIS alone. I packed a flashlight for this very purpose – the walk back to the main “lodge” for dinner. It was pitch black. And after leaving the light on for a few moments, I was glad I brought Deet and was taking malaria meds. You can see the tank (man made lake) from here – well when the bugs get out of the way. The bird life is phenomenal (I watched 10 to 15 egrets fishing this morning) and the calls are amazing. And last night Matt and Aidan would have had a field day trying to trim the frog population that was playing a symphonic scale production of some local pond favorite. The cacophony of sound was overwhelming at dinner.

But falling asleep when you can see the stars so clearly over the lake was great. Being awoken by lightning and thunder that close and hearing the frogs stop for every thunder boom (the only thing they stopped for), the solitude to consider anything and everything you want, and friends to share it with via the internet is an awesome feeling. Oh that and mosquito repellant and no snake sightings – I can’t forget those as things for which to be thankful, too.

Off to Sigiriya and Danbulla today (oh and a wood working factory). Three places where I’ll see fellow westerners again.