Month: January 2017

Our sleep last night was disturbed by our son Tommy pocket-dialing us at 11.30, and then again at 5am. When I answered the phone, he couldn’t hear me. My sleep disturbed, but it was his phone bill that suffered!  We ate string hoppers, dhal, coconut chutney and an omelette for breakfast this morning, it was a very moving experience. 

The Richmond Inn was one of the better places we have stayed in, and the staff were friendly and helpful. But we had exhausted what there was to do in Nuwara Eliya, so it was time to hitch up th wagon again.There were no train tickets available to Ella today, so we took a bus . Our red Lanka Ashock Leyland bus was packed, but we got a seat together next to the open door. It was chilly because the town is at over 1800 metres, but we got a great view of the beautiful mountain countryside. The mountains are very high and steep, and the bus hangs onto the side, constantly going round bends and gradually losing altitude. Vegetables are the main crop here, and the hillsides are terraced to increase growing space. There are terraces of onions, red beet and stuff I don’t recognise. At every village passengers get on and off, and the conductor moves up and down the bus collecting fares.

The views were spectacular, and I think we got a better feel for real Sri Lanka than being on the train. I’m warming to the pop music played loudly and constantly though the journey. It was about 50p each for the first stage to Bandarawela, we we changed buses and went for a wee, phew. The next leg to Ella only took twenty minutes. I passed some of the journey listening to podcasts of BBC Radio 4 programmes. I’m a big Radio 4 fan, and very pleased that I can take it on holiday with me.

Arriving in Ella, Juli spotted a cafe advertising Lavazza coffee, so we headed straight in and ordered a flat white. The coffee cost more than a three hour bus trip from Nuwara Eliya, because we are daft Westerners with a taste for posh coffee. Ella looks like the type of tourist destination we are more used to in Thailand, Vietnamese and Indonesia, with more facilities for Western tastes. 

After checking in at the Ella Guest Inn we went for lunch in the village. We bumped into a couple we met yesterday. He was from Martock in Somerset and looked like Marlborough cowboy, tall with a big grey moustache, partner was an elegant lady from Bilbao in Spain. They are travelling round Sri Lanka in a hired tuk tuk, clearly fearless. I had kototu again with mango lassi, fabulous food. 
At information desk we met Bernard the taxi driver who offered to take us to Mirrrisa in 2 days time for 6,000 rupees. It’s a long way and five hours on a bus with no toilet, so a taxi is a better option.

Walking down the main drag we saw a sign for Little Adams Peak. The walk up the mountain was one of the highlights of our holiday, amazing views of the Ella Gap which is a pass between two mountains. At the top of the you can see for a very long long way over the plains to the south, a wonderful memorable view.

In the evening we had dinner at Cafe 360 on the Main Street. There is a great selection of places to eat here, and great contrast to Nuwara Eliya which has a very poor choice. I had Devilled Chicken, which is a sort of of  chicken stir fry with chillies and onions, really good. The power failed, plunging the town into darkness, but our place had a generator and the lights soon came back. We walked home carefully down dark streets, I will take my torch out with me tonight!

Every day on this holiday so far I have eaten two eggs for breakfast so that’s thirty two so far, I’ll start to cluck soon. We are promised a Sri Lankan breakfast tomorrow, so maybe string hoppers or roti. After breakfast we booked our next hotel in Ella. It’s always a pain in the arse to booking hotels. You find somewhere that looks good, then find out it’s miles out of town or that the place is noisy, or the showers don’t work. The reviews on hotels are always mixed, so if you are going for cheap hotels, it’s a stab in the dark. 

We took a walk up Single Tree Hill, which is right behind our hotel. It is a winding road up through tea plantations and has stunning views over the town, the race course and Gregory Lake. Nuwara Elisa is being transformed from a colonial hill station backwater, to a bigger scale resort. There are several tall multi story new hotels going up, so the character of the place is sure to change. All the old colonial buildings are single story with green corrugated iron roofs and chimneys, it can get cold here. The prettiest hotel  is the Ceyrest Hotel, a former Government Rest House. In colonial times these were accommation for civil servants, and were sixteen miles apart.

Half way up the hill we met two men pruning tea bushes with very sharp sickles, so we had a chat. Everyone here says hello, they are very friendly and want to know where you are from. Most haven’t heard of London, but do know England. At the top of the hill are a collection of Lanka Bell telecoms masts covered with microwave transmitters. 

Back in town we ate lunch in Restaurant Two, a  restaurant made from a converted container on the back of a big truck. We ate kotutu, a dish made of chopped up spicy roti with vegetables. To add a bit of protein we had Devilled Chicken, a sort of stir fry with chicken, onions, tomatoes and chillis. It was bloody lovely, especially since we washed it down with Lion Lager. 

After that I was ready for a kip in Victoria Park. I got very comfy reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari when the sun went in and it actually turned chilly! So we went to a cafe for over priced coffee and cake and I wrapped a sarong round me to keep warm. Jesse (from the Fast Show) says “this year I will mostly be wearing sarongs”.

This evening we didn’t go out because we were still full from our late lunch. So i sat in bed and watched old YouTube videos of Comic Relief while Julie found us somewhere to stay in Mirissa. I did get peckish so I ordered chips on room service and ate them in bed, pure luxury.

Breakfast at the Sunny Hills was a little different this morning, we got freshly made roti instead of the usual white toast. The food was great, but the elderly proprietor stood and watched us eat our breakfast. That meant we couldn’t fart and burp as usual and say what we really thought of his crappy guest house.
After much research we found that the train to Nuwara Elya left at 8.45, it takes four hours and (very importantly) it has toilets. So we went to the station and bought two unreserved, the reserved tickets having long sold out. There was a scramble among the many tourists when the train arrived, and all the seats were rapidly taken. Standing up for four hours is worse than even Southern Trains, so we wrote off the 350 rupees we spent on the train tickets and got a taxi. A sissy solution I know, but it was £40 very well spent.

Our driver was very good on the windy mountain roads as we wound up to the highest town in Sri Lanka. We stopped off at the Blue Fields tea factory, a ninety five year old corrugated iron building painted blue. Much of the equipment in original including a generator made by Ruston in Lincoln! A young lady gave us a tour and described the process of wilting, crushing and rolling, fermenting, drying and sieving the tea. Its is then sold at auctions in Colombo and gets blended to suit different tastes.

At the factory they make black tea (the sort we like) green tea (which is unfermented and less oxidised) and white tea. White tea is made from the best shoots and is used for medicinal purposes. At the end of the tour we were given a lovely cup of Orange Pekoe tea.

  

Nuwara Elya is an old British hill station where people colonials would come to escape the summer heat. It has a golf course, a race track and even a choice of pubs! My kinda town. We are staying at the Richmond hotel, which is much nicer looking than those we have stayed in so far. With a telly that gets BBC World News.

After settling in we walked in the lovely Victoria Park in the centre of the town, another colonial legacy still being enjoyed today.  The town has a more suburban feel than other Sri Lankan towns, and has is surrounded by mountains. The guide books says it feels like England, but that isn’t true.

We spent a very lazy morning by the pool today, our final day at the Amarantha Classic Resort. It isn’t very classic at all. The walls are like paper and I was woken this morning at 6.30 by the guy next door clearing his throat, lovely! So I read my current novel on the Kindle app on my phone. I’m reading The Long Cosmos by the late Terry Pritchett and Stephen Baxter. It’s the fifth book in the Long Earth series, a very entertaining science fiction novel. Having a phone is really handy, even if I don’t use it as a phone. I also listen to podcasts when I’m travelling. Lee Mack was being interviewed by Steve Wright (on th afternoon) and was very funny.

At about midday we packed up and got a tuk tuk to Dambulla town centre and jumped on the Kandy bus. That sounds like it ought to be pink and covered in licorice allsorts and wine gums, but it was just a regular Leyland Ashok Lanka bus. They bomb around everywhere at great speed and are very cheap, the bus journey to Kandy cost less than the tuk tuk ride into town! English bums are bigger than Sri Lankan bums, so the seats are a bit small.

Back in Kandy we went up to the Sunny Hills Residence, which is at the top of a big hill with wonderful views of the city. After unpacking we walked into town and ate in the food court of Kandy City Centre, which is a proper Western style shopping centre. 

We walked around a bit and found an actual pub, selling beer and cocktails, bloody marvellous.  It was full of tourists, the only locals were serving. Pub culture doesn’t exist at all here, and they are probably a lot healthier for it. Also no signs of rowing, skulling or skiffing.  I suppose the crocodiles put people off.

Last night we had dinner with two Danish ladies from Aarhus in the Amarantha restaurant. It has a small choice of mediocre food which is relatively expensive, but it is close!This morning our alarm went off at 6.15. Our noisy neighbours had gone, so we had got a good night sleep. Nihal picked us up at 7 to drive us to Polonnaruwa which was an hour and forty five minutes away. That’s a really long way in a tuk tuk. On the way he got pulled over by the police for overtaking on a double white line, he wasn’t happy.Polonnaruwa is a ruined city which was at its height in the twelfth century . It is a huge site that is too big to easily walk round, so tourists travel on bikes, buses or tuk tuks. There are remains of temples, a palace and library built mostly out of brick. Some of the other remains have been rebuilt, some remain ruinous. One temple had numbers painted on each stone, so it was completely re-erected And some of the stones clearly didn’t start off together.

When we emerged from one site to meet Nihal, he said that an elephant had tried to jump over a fence, and in doing so bashed it down and destroyed a table.

We spent about four hours looking around, there was lots to see. Some of the ruins are still sacred to Buddhists, so we had to take shoes and hats off to enter those. There were lots of monkeys around, sometimes it looked like a scene from The Jungle Book!

 On the way back the tuk tuk got a punctured rear wheel. Nihal got out his spare wheel and loosened the nuts. Then he asked a couple of blokes  walking down the road for help, and the pushed the vehicle over so he could take the punctured wheel off and put the spare on. The whole repair took five minutes.

Nihal dropped us off in Dambulla and we went to a local restaurant for curry and rice. It was very tasty, but very hot. I was almost a greasy puddle on the floor, but i amused the other diners. Two enormous meals and two mango juices cost 650 rupees, about £4. At our hotel a plate of seafood noodles costs 1000 rupees,  not such good value.

Back at the hotel we chilled by the pool and read books on the Kindle app on our phones.

Ah what a splendid day! We mostly did bugger-all, which is sometimes what a holiday is about. Our sleep last night was marred by paper thin walls and noisy people next door. Julie knocked on their door at 5am to ask the to please talk quietly, then it was just the traffic and bird noises to keep us awake. At some time they left, but didn’t switch off their electronic alarm clock, and that bugger woke us up again. So we wuz a bit grumpy at breakfast time.We spent the morning by the pool reading and figuring out how to get to our next destinations. At 12 our new friend Nihal came round in his tuk tuk and drove us to his home for lunch. We met his wife, two daughters, son in law and grand daughter. He had cooked us rice and curry, which was very tasty, and we washed it down with some beer that we had bought. Nihal had worked for a government owned hotel chain, but the government sold it off and he became a tuk tuk driver. He was clearly a very happily married man and content with his life.

After lunch we walked into Dambulla town. It is a bustling place with a huge fruit and veg market and a great variety of stalls and shops. There are very few shops as we would recognise them, but lots of commercial activity. We were looking for a nice air conditioned cafe where we could while away some time on the internet. No chance of that at all, so we settled for a cool courtyard and sipped a lovely ginger beer.

Back at the Amarantha we met a lovely Danish lady called Maria who works for Vestas, a big company that makes windmills.

When we returned to the Amarantha after the Rock Temple, we got a tuk tuk driven by Nihal. He is a nice guy with good English, who wanted to tell us about the area, and offered to take us out on a day trip.

So today he took us out for the best day of our holiday so far. We got up at 7am and he picked us up in his superior three wheeler. It has seat belts, comfy seats and goes reasonably fast for a three wheeled scooter. Our first stop was Sigirya, a ruined fortress that sits on top of a 200 metre rock. The admission cost is as steep as the rock, 4,500 rupees, which is about £25 each. There are two prices at most of the sites, the locals pay a fraction of what foreigners pay, which is fair given the difference in incomes. The approach is along an avenue flanked by ponds and lawns, and foundations of brick buildings, long since gone. It was about 9am when we arrived, and was already heaving with European and Chinese tourists. To reach the top you take metal staircases which are attached to the sheer sides of the rock. The ascent is steep, and in some places a metre wide staircase is shared by people going both up and down the rock. There are 1200 steps, but you can’t go up quickly so it isn’t very taxing. The main hold up was people taking photos of the making views.

The hike is worth is for amazing view at the top, you can see for miles around in all directions. The summit has more foundations of brick buildings, and cisterns for water storage. On the way up are some frescoes painted onto the inside of a rock overhang. They are of either concubines, goddesses or nymphs depending on what you read, and they are very curvaceous, like images of Shiva’s consort Parvati that we saw in the museum in Colombo.

Nihal picked us up at the exit car park and took us to a local cafe for lunch. The rice and curry was delicious, better food than we get in our hotel. Next he took us to meet our safari driver, and we parted with about £65 before climbing into a big Mahindra jeep. We drove to Kadulla National Park, a large area of dense forest surrounding a huge open meadow with a big reservoir and smaller lakes and water holes. In the forest we saw monkeys, peacocks and a monitor lizard. Once we got into the meadow there were elephants, hundreds of them! They were in many family groups of ten or twenty, with some big males away from thegroup on their own. They were grazing, pulling up grass with their trunks in a twisting motion, then sweeping it back an forth to remove the dirt before eating it. A few hundred yards away we saw a herd of wild buffalo, but we didn’t go close.

When we first arrived with the elephants there was one other jeep, by the time we left there were dozens of them, some loaded up with eight or ten people. The elephants behaved like the deer in Richmond Park, they just ignored us and carried on eating.

It was a real privilege to get so close to so many magnificent animals, there was also fox, fish eagles, storks, egrets and many colourful bird I didn’t recognise. On the main road back we had to stop while a big male elephant stamped on some kind of nut on the road.

I must apologise for not looking very cool in the photo below. I needed a “prat hat” to save my head from burning, and sunglasses to keep the dust from my eyes. I don’t think this photo will be published in Vogue.

What great day that was!

A black Prius taxi, which would very at home in London, took us to Dambulla in the heart of Sri Lanka’s Cultural Triangle. This region is where most of the ancient ruin sites are, relics from over two thousand years of history. On the way we stopped of at Matale to see the Sri Muthumariamman Thevasthanam Hindu temple. Imagine being on the switchboard there, I’m sure you would soon get fed up of the full name and just call it the Temple. It is covered in flamboyant statues and paintings inside and out of many different Hindu deities and demons. The faithful were making offerings of flowers and ghee lamps were lit.

After asking a few tuk tuk drivers for directions, our taxi man located the Amarantha Classic Resort on the main road into Dambulla. After a welcoming glass of papaya juice a receptionist asked what meals we had in our package, since Expedia hadn’t informed them. I had definitely booked a package with breakfast, but the paperwork didn’t show it. So I had to fanny about for an hour on the internet to find the page where it said we hate a free breakfast. Gord gimme strength! Anyway I did find it, and the hotel guy seemed happy.In a slightly narky mood we we out on the road to get a tuk tuk to the Rock Temples of Dambulla, a couple of miles down the road. The temples is a major Buddhist site, and even has its own Buddhist TV station! At the entrance to the complex is a massive golden Buddha and a Buddhist museum. We followed the sign that said Rock Temple and it wasn’t the Hammersmith Odeon

Note for younger readers

Hammersmith Odeon was a cinema that was also a top venue for rock bands. These days it’s called the Hammersmith Apollo and is better known for rude comedians.

It’s quite a steep climb up a massive granite rock to the five temples that are set in a natural overhang. Some of the temples have been there since 100 BC, and the most recent was made in 1915. I relinquished my shoes and put on a sarong to cover my offensive legs. There was no admission charge, but we got latched onto by a guide who was very persistent. But to be honest once you’ve seen one ancient Buddhist temple… Once again there were many Buddha images, some of him resting, some sleeping and some when he was dead. Some were built of brick and plaster, some of wood and other carved out of solid granite.

The five temples are quiet and subtly illuminated, I enjoyed it far more than I expected to. The views at the top of the rock are wonderful. Once again the monkeys stole the show. They ran all over the place and provided lots of entertainment diving into the bins for fruit and flowers to eat.

There are not many restaurants in Sri Lanka. Negombo is different because it’s a seaside resort, but even in Colombo we had trouble finding places to eat out. So when we have been in Kandy and Dambulla we have eaten in the hotel. Also it’s damned hard to get a drink in this country! Supermarkets don’t sell alcohol, and (outside of Negombo) i haven’t seen any off licences.  I’m sure it’s much better for my health, but a G&T at dusk would be really nice.

I slept like a log last night due to a beneficial combination good food and no beer. After consulting the great guru Google we walked to a “restaurant” called Pillawoo on Galle Road. It is a utilitarian place for local people and serves very good food. I had Egg Roti with Mutton Masala, which was proper mystery food. It was a curry of Mutton, tomatoes, onions and spices mixed with pieces of roti, a type of flat bread with an egg between its layers. The resulting mixture was very tasty, especially when I washed it down with mango lassi. 

We packed our bags and stashed them at the Ocean Front and walked to Colombo’s only park to visit the museum.

The National Museum is an imposing Victorian building that would look right in any English city centre. Inside it’s like an old fashioned provincial museum with objects displayed in wooden cabinets. There are many, many Buddhas, Shiva and Ganeshas made in every material you can think of. The splendid throne of the last king of Kandy is on display, before the British deposed him. The throne was a gift from the Dutch when they ruled the coast, but not the kingdom of Kandy in the mountainous centre of Sri Lanka. The bit I enjoyed the most was an exhibition on agriculture, explaining how rice is grown. 

We picked up our bags from the hotel and took a taxi to Colombo Fort station to get the train to Kandy. The Sri Lankan train system was built by the British in mid Victorian times, and is still vital for getting around. We took the 15.35 from Colombo Fort station to Kandy in second class. The ticket was 580 rupees for 2 tickets, which is about three quid! 

At times it felt like train hadn’t been maintained since the British left in 1947, the ride was very rattley and bumpy, I didn’t want to read in case I became travel sick. I opened the window about twenty inches to let in fresh air and get a splendid view of the lush green countryside. Paddy fields are edged by coconut palms, banana trees, papaya and bamboo. Tethered cows graze while egrets pick at the long grass looking for bugs to eat. The train climbed into the hills, winding along embankments and cuttings and through several short tunnels. 

Kandy is five hundred metres above sea level and surrounded by hills, and was a separate kingdom until 1815. The Portuguese and Dutch never conquered the Kingdom of Kandy, but the British did in 1815 when locals conspired to depose the unpopular king. It is the second city of Colombo, but has no high rise buildings, and is a much more typical Asian city.

We arrive just as it was getting dark at about 6pm, and took a taxi to the Amanda Hills Hotel, which is at the top of a steep hill overlooking Kandy. The hotel next door is called Sharon, ladies names see, to be a popular choice. Since it was late we dined in on the terrace. I had Chicken Biryani, and the chicken tasted like it had died of old age. We didn’t eat in the hotel again!

Screeching monkeys awoke me this morning. They were running around on tree outside our room, and all over the outside of nearby hotels. The run up drain pipes, swing along cables and balance on hand rails. Occasionally there would be a fight between  different bands,  so there was aggressive charging at each other and louder screeches.

We ate a typical Sri Lankan hotel breakfast this morning:

• A plate of prepared fruit; banana, papaya, pineapple and melon
• An omelette with diced onions and chillis, Sri Lankan style
• Pancakes with honey
• Toast with butter and jam
• A pot of excellent tea

The breakfasts are so substantial they keep us going all day. They also keep you “going”, no worries in that department.

After breakfast we had to decide where to go tomorrow. We are making this trip up as we go along, which can be time consuming making decisions about the next hotel, there are plenty to choose from. Our strategy is to look for hotels and guest houses in a price range, about £25 to £35, in the right part of town. Since we haven’t been to any of them before, that location is a bit of a stab in the dark! 

I just love my iPad Mini!  To find hotels I connect to t’internet and use Trivago/Booking.com/Expedia/Agoda/Tripadvisor, and so far Expedia has proved most useful. If I look up a place on Google Maps, I keep the app open as I travel around. the map can show me where I am with a blue dot, without being connected to the internet. it’s magic! If I get bored I can read the books I have downloaded on Kindle, or listen to BBC podcasts I have saved on Radio iPlayer. I am writing my blog on it now, and incorporate photos I have taken on the camera. Because it’s small and light, I can carry it around everywhere. Right now I’m sat on a bench in the serene botanical gardens in Kandy. Once I get back to the hotel I can edit this and post it.

A tuk tuk brought us to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, a few miles out of the city centre. Our driver dropped us at a side entrance and we crossed a narrow suspension bridge to get in. It became a Royal garden in 1780, at about the same time Kew Gardens was being established in London. After the last King of Kandy, Sri Rajhadi Rajasinhe, was deposed by the British, they set up a garden on the Kew model in 1821. There are pictures of these gardens in the Marianne North gallery at Kew, painted when she visited here in 1876.

The tropical trees are very impressive, some are well over a hundred feet high with mighty buttressed roots. I expected to see David Attenborough dangling from a rope at the top. There are groves of giant bamboo eighty feet high, but only twenty centimetres in diameter. There are huge collections of palms from all over the tropical world. I didn’t spot a specimen of my own Chusan palm, I had it chopped down in the summer because it was too big for my little London garden. My favourite was the mighty Queensland Kauri tree, a massive podocarp pine.

In the tree beside the river, thousands of fruit bats were roosting, hung upside down from branches. They truly live up to their other name “flying foxes”, with wingspans up to a metre across. They make an unpleasant squeal that sounds like a pig, not the squeak from British bats.

One of the major benefits of travelling in Ceylon is that you can get a good cup of tea. It comes in a proper pot, and they serve it with hot milk, it’s delicious and just what you want on a scorching hot afternoon. If they had a tea room inside the palm house at Kew, it would feel just like this.

We got a local bus back to Kandy which cost us fifteen rupees each, which is about eight pence. The three wheeler that took us to the gardens cost five hundred rupees. Our laundry needed collecting, so using Google maps magic we located the laundry and walked up a lane to find it. I heard a bang on a corrugated iron fence which I thought was a dog, then I saw a yard long yellow snake slither rapidly into the undergrowth. The walk back to the hotel was along the main road into Kandy, and it was jammed with traffic. There aren’t many proper wide pavements, so you walk down the road and keep looking carefully!
Our next accommodation in Dambulla is now booked, and we are planning a trip to the hill country at after that.