OUR SERENDIB

Elephants galore!

Several days into our Kandy stay, Jim and I headed to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage about 1 and a half hours west of Kandy.  It is government run and provides homes for over 60 elephants. Pinnewala is a tourist oasis.  After driving several miles on dirt roads all of sudden modern tourist shops pop up on either side of the road announcing one's arrival.   Our driver hurried us in to see the Elephants for their morning feeding.  The elephants were then led out to the fields to graze and to pose for photos.  The elephant keepers, or mahouts as they call them here, stand by eagerly awaiting tourists such as ourselves.

After a bit, the elephants were led out to bathe in the nearby river.

My new favorite thing to do: watch elephants play in the water.

The new saddest thing I've seen: an elephant wounded by the civil war.

Bats!

After a couple days in Kandy, we visited the 60 hectare (approx. 150 acre) Peradeniya Botanical Gardens.  The Gardens were quite spectacular and even after several hours we still hadn't seen all of it. 

I can't remember what the name of this flower is but isn't it amazing!?

And this Giant Java Fig tree covers an amazing 17,222 square feet!

Check this out, it's a Cannonball Tree!

There were several intriguing things about the Gardens:

1) There were thousands of bats!  It was so creepy but so cool.

2) Many of the trees in the Garden were planted by royalty from around the world at various times in the last 100 years such as the Prince of Wales in 1922 , the King of Belgium in 1925, and even the infamous Tito!

3) This photo speaks for itself!

Kandy

4-12 August

We arrived in Kandy!  After having traveled for so long Jim and I were eager to get to Kandy.  We were trying to narrow down the towns in which we might live and Kandy was one of the last places to check out.  As we arrived I noticed the wide streets and the slightly European feel of the buildings.  Kandy served as the last capital of the Sinhalese Kingdom before the British conquered in 1815.  At the center of  town is Kandy Lake which was created in 1807 by the last Kandyan King and it is said that he used the small island in the center of the lake as his harem. 

To the north of the lake is the Sri Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Sacred Tooth).  This tooth is said to have been one of the Buddha's own.  According the the lore, the tooth was taken from Buddha's funeral pyre in 543 BC and somehow smuggled into Sri Lanka in 4th c. AD.  The tooth is more travelled than most people I know.  It was moved from ancient capital to ancient capital until the Kandyan Kingdom when it was finally housed in the temple in Kandy.  Today the Sri Dalada Maligawa is one of the most beautiful and elaborate temples in Sri Lanka.

Our guesthouse was basic but quite nice and we had a spectacular view of the lake and the temple from our balcony.  The picture below gives you a good idea of what it looks like but there will be more to come once the Kandy Perahera picks up.

We had seen monkeys in several towns we had visited but Kandy seemed to have a monkey problem!  Don't tell PETA but the owner of our guesthouse had a slingshot specially made for monkeys and occasionally we would hear what sounded like gunshots or loud pops which turned out to be some sort of small firework to scare away the monkeys.  We still think they're cute though!

Galle Face Hotel

31 July - 3 August

After our very interesting night in Pelmadulla, we scurried back to our guesthouse in Colombo and to our shower with hot water!  We were there for one night when the lady of the house informed us that she had booked someone for our room despite having told us that it was reserved for us for several more days.  The following day we were scheduled to retreive our residence visas.  Although we had a receipt in hand, we knew from experience not to be overly confident about getting them.  We decided that if we indeed got them, that we would treat ourselves to a stay at the Galle Face Hotel. 

We arrived at the immigration office and immediately handed over our receipt.  We followed the receipt with our eyes as it passed from one person to the next until it was finally placed on a desk behind a big glass window.  We were thrilled at how quickly the process was going...for about 45 minutes.  Almost 3 hours later we were about to lose it.  Finally, it was discovered that our stamped passports had been sitting in a pile of documents for who knows how long.  Frustrated as we may have been, our visas were in hand!  We looked at them briefly and confirmed that the stamps were there, but to add to the humour of it all, we later discovered that the visa meant for Jim was stamped into my passport and his in mine.  So, now I can pose as a Fulbright Scholar and Jim as my dependent.  Sounds good to me.

And now to celebrate with a stay at the Galle Face.  We packed our overstuffed luggage (I never want to see my suitcase ever again) into a cab and headed over.  The Galle Face Hotel is one of my favorite places in the world to date.  Our room was in the "Classic" side of the hotel and had far more square footage than our NY apartment (I know some of you are thinking, "yeah, big deal").  We didn't really leave the hotel for about 3 days.  This was in part due to the brilliant accomodations of the hotel but also due to the fact that Jim had a severe stomach bug and could barely eat anything for days.

After 3 nights Jim was feeling a bit better and so we headed off to our new adventure - Kandy.

Ella and Pelmedulla

We arrived in Ella after an exhilarating bus journey, exhilarating in the sense that our lives were in the hands of the breaks of the bus.  The beautiful thing about the Hill Country in Sri Lanka (aside from the breathtaking views) is the weather.  Almost no humidity and almost no need for a/c!

We stayed at Tea Garden Holiday Inn, which is really a guesthouse and not an Inn per se.  It had a huge balcony, great food, and an amazing view of a spot between two mountains called Ella Gap.  We did a whole lot of relaxing and did a short hike up to a mountain dubbed ‘Little Adam’s Peak’ (the real Adam’s Peak being a larger mountain elsewhere in the country).  The views were spectacular – all rolling hills and tea plantations, birds and the smell of tealeaves. The path to the summit passed through a small village inhabited by Estate Tamils, workers who the British brought to work on tea plantations in the 19th century (some of whom still work on the plantations today).

Ella Gap:

View from Little Adam's Peak:

After a few days of relaxation and hanging out with a nice British couple we keep running into everywhere, we hightailed it to Pelmedulla, a ‘junction town’ of no specific relevance to tourists.  With the help of a lively and immensely knowledgeable man named Mr. Wakumbera, Jim connected with a drummer and dancer family who run a school out of their home.    They so graciously invited us to stay in their home so that Jim could interview them.  The family’s house was in a beautiful, scenic location (paddy fields with hills in the distance), off a dirt road away from the dirty, busy main road.  The family was very nice, and there were many people milling about – we couldn’t quite figure out who actually lived in the house!  Jim interviewed the main dance teacher (with the help of a translator), and played drums with both the teacher and with an elderly drumming ‘master’.  The interaction between Jim and the old man had everyone watching laughing and smiling.

The true test of will was dinner.  Don’t get me wrong the food was delicious but we were a bit frightened by the well water that they served us and the wet plates upon which we were to serve ourselves.  We politely had to inform them (through the translator-of course) of the fact that our American bellies can’t handle the water.  The tradition is that the men and guests eat first.  Seeing as how there were about 20 people milling about, the next attraction of the evening was ‘see the American people eating’.  I am quite proud of the fact that I can balance my bite sized portions of food on a fork and a fork alone-no need for the European knife or the Sri Lankan spoon thank you!

The remainder of the night was spent watching several live drumming and dance performances, which we videotaped and will hopefully be youtubed soon.  Overall, I think the interviews and the interaction was successful.  It was amazing to see the gleam in their eye when answering Jim's questions and their excitement about his project.

Flaming Coconuts

Jim and I recuperated for a couple days in Colombo and battled the powers that be into giving us our visas.  Without going into the painful details, the end result, the pounding of documents with a stamp and us handing over our passports to the Immigration Office was a welcomed victory.  We had one week before retrieving them and big plans in Kataragama for the Perahera.

After something like 4 hours on an a/c minivan (Colombo-Matara), 3 ½ hours on a CTB (Matara-Tissa), and 45 min CTB bus (Tissa-Kataragama), we arrived at our final destination for the annual celebration of the god Kataragama who is equally revered by Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims alike.  Thousands of pilgrims, mostly Northern Hindu Tamils, make the month long trek some barefoot partly through jungle to attend the festival.  Most of the pilgrims, entire families, sleep within the grounds on the ground and bath in the river that flows through the holy site.

As you can imagine the scene is quite crazed at times as the religious festival involves daily parades of dancing, drumming, fire-throwing, elephants! as well as devotional worship, self-chastisement (we saw someone hammer a nail into his head), offerings of flaming coconuts, etc.  You can easily wander into a mosque, temple, kovil and explore each faith’s tribute to Kataragama.

Outside of the grounds, there was something that I can only liken to a State Fair without the rides.  Rows upon rows of stands set up to sell you a variety of goods.  Once we got used to the calls of “Hello lady” “Hello Sir” from the stall sales persons and learned to assure them with only a gesture of the hand that ‘no we do not need any plastic flowers or fabrics with cartoon characters on them’, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. 

Feeling a bit under the weather from the extremely long bus ride and two nights of Kataragama, we decided to head for the hills (finally!) to a small village called Ella.

Galle means rock

Okay, I left off with us leaving Ambalangoda (which means town of mangos).  We hopped on our CTB bus headed toward Galle.  Now there are several types of buses in Sri Lanka.  There are the much coveted a/c minivans, regular minivans, and the most common which are the inter-city (CTB) buses which are just big ol' no frill buses that the majority of people take to get from town to town.   On our way south, we enjoyed the breeze of the storm (caused by the monsoon season which effects the SW coast at this time) through our open windows  and the blare of Baila music.  As you can see the bus is not too crowded.  This is, as I have now discovered, rare as is the pleasant breeze!

Because of the rains we decided to skip our original plans to stay in the beachside town of Unawatuna and headed straight to Ms. Khalid's guesthouse in Galle Fort.  Galle was the site of centuries of colonialism and the Galle Fort is the largest example of said colonialism built by the Dutch starting around 1663.  It is quite charming if not peculiar compared to what I had seen so far of Sri Lanka.  The streets were not bustling, there was not much trash on the streets, and there weren't many shops aside from those catering to a more eccentric touristy sort.  Despite this there are many locals who live and work within the fort walls and a few who like to "show" you what shops to enter no doubt for a fee.  Luckily, Jim is a pro and generally knows the scammers from the helpful.

Our guesthouse located past the old man and his goat on the right, is owned by a Muslim woman and has a Mediterranean feel to it.  We had a private balcony which looked out over the rooftops.  Ms. Khalid didn't seem too friendly until Jim informed her (he couldn't stand to be thought of as a heathen) that yes indeed we were married, had been for a year.  Dreading the thought of being sniffed out as a heathen and a liar, I switched my right to my left hand so as not too blow the cover. 

On the second day we visited the beach at Unawatuna and although it is a popular beach destination Jim and I weren't overly thrilled with the beach vibe and the numerous people desparately trying to get you to buy a massage (RS 700/$7 for an hour=apprehension), puppets, and coconuts.  Later that night, Galle redeemed itself as one of the most pleasant locales thus far as we walked along the ramparts and watched the sunset.  Unfortunately we didn't have our camera so you all must come see for yourself!

We had planned on staying three nights at Ms. Khalid's but her brothers were coming for a wedding in the Fort so we were booted.  For a change of scenery (aerial view at that), we decided to stay at Lady Hill on the outskirts of Galle just on the other side of the new town.  We also took a tuk-tuk to all the surrounding Buddhist sites one of which, Yatagala Raja Maha Viharaya, is said to have been inhabited by monks for over 1500 years.

With a little bit more Zen in us, we mustered up the mental energy to head back via bus to Colombo.