Beyond the Tsunami – To the Beach at Mirissa

A morning’s drive through the spectacular mountain views of Ella Gap brought us to a midday stop at the “Elephant Transit Home.” Contrary to what it might sound like, this does not mean it is a place where people transit on elephants, but rather a halfway house for baby elephants who have lost their mothers and need to learn to live in on their own in the jungle again. Young elephants from 6 months to 5 years can roam freely within the grounds which include a large lake where they spend a lot of time cooling themselves down but they always appear at lunchtime for a feeding of milk from a long tube at a feeding station and for some nice green onions as a snack. We could not get close to them, of course, but they were cute and entertaining and it is a good place with a good cause.

Several hours more of traveling in our “private” bus (which was more uncomfortable than a public bus, without air-conditioning, windows that were hard to open and some that were shattered) we finally arrived on the southern coast of Sri Lanka at Mirissa, a perfect curve of soft white sand against the quintessential turquoise water with enough surf for board-riders. Surprising that the Indian Ocean here could be such a pure and gorgeous color while on the west side it is somewhat dark and murky.

We were led into what appeared to be a somewhat upscale beach resort until we got to our little bungalow rooms. Sweet and homey with porches and comfy chairs that looked out on the sea, inside they were stifling hot, small and dank with no air-conditioning, just a fan and a skinny window with no screen. But other than the heat at night and the lack of space to unpack, it was actually okay, decent beds, lights etc. and the most perfect location ever, just steps from the beach and with an amazing view at all times.

During this trip I have had to share rooms with Stella or Aiofe (that’s Eva in Gaelic) – two nights with each and the two nights alone and then we rotate again. They are both young (26 and 33), slim and pretty and can drink most people I know under the table quite quickly, always in a multi-mix of cocktails, beer, wine and and straight hard liquor. The first night in Mirissa, Stella stayed out with a glass of local red rum to walk the full moonlit beach (there is a very low-key late night scene) and literally came into the room after midnight, dropped her pants, fell on the bed and passed out. Then got up at 5:45am and went on a whale watch. And then slept off both the rest of the day. Oh, the stamina of youth. Both Stella and Aiofe were excellent roommates, polite and respectful and it was really never a problem sharing, and despite our age differences, we have become quite close in an offbeat way, Stella reminding me quite a bit of Genevieve.

We actually had a day off to relax at the beach, no speeches from Indika, no forced marches to see sights, and I did mountains of laundry and took the big pieces to the laundry service to be done.

Like all the south coast of Sri Lanka, Mirissa was devastated by the tsunami 9 years – everything in the entire village had to be rebuilt and many people died. Apparently right before it hit, the tide suddenly went out about a mile and people started running out excitedly looking at the fish and crabs and sea life that were all suddenly exposed and then the wall of water suddenly appeared and they could not run away fast enough to save themselves. It is shocking and sobering to think about as you sit enjoying the peace and beauty of the beach.

Beyond our “resort” the beach was lined by other small restaurants and hotels, several of which were reggae bars. This was the first place in Sri Lanka where the smell of ganja smoke was a regular occurrence. In every country I have visited, Indonesia, Thailand (especially) and now Sri Lanka, Bob Marley is the celebrated and adopted as a hero. I don’t think we totally understand the far-reaching effect his revolution had. And the other welcome card I have gotten everywhere is – “USA? Obama! Yes!” with a big thumbs up. Everyone thinks it is so wonderful that America has Obama now – it is always a shared joyful moment.

Trekking Through Tea Country

Blogging on the train from Kandy to Bandarawela:

The sensory sensations of the train are so amazing I need to get them down while we are going so I don’t lose them. The roar, the rattle, the slow steady sway, windows open but no breeze at all, just the loud thwack thwack thwack of the wheels – we are like blood pumping through the veins of the country. A group of boys playing music with guitar and drum, beating like a steady heart thrum, singing an accompaniment to thebackground cacophony of our journey. Ancient woven tapestry seats, threadbare but comfortable – could be the most comfortable of any journey yet in Sri Lanka in this old wooden “observation car.”

I had been anticipating something with big windows all around but apparently the observation car is just the last car on the train with big windows on the end and all the seats face backwards. There was nothing luxurious about it – fan-cooled by old rotating electric fans on the ceiling, windows that were either opened or closed and nothing in between, and a very smelly bathroom at the back of the car (certainly not the worst I have ever experienced, but the kind where women emerge with pained and horrified expressions on their faces – at least it was not a squatter). Mid-day an elderly man came through selling hot peanuts roasted in oil with spices and curry leaves and served in little paper sacks handmade from recycled graph paper with someone’s careful mathematical calculations still clearly visible. An incredibly delicious snack.

As the day went on we went higher and higher into landscape that became more stunning and dramatic every minute. Soon it began to rain and grow cooler and we were soon wearing every piece of clothing we had in our daypacks since our big luggage had been passed through a window and stowed high on the overhead luggage racks. People in the stations we passed were bundled in fleece jackets and many wore hats. Most train stations had beautiful gardens and many had topiary with the name of their town spelled out in shrubbery.  

The train moved quite slowly, maybe 25 to 35 miles per hour, and we did not reach our destination of Bandarawela until nearly 4 o’clock. Rough Guide describes Bandarawela as a “scruffy” place and that is probably the best description. Not a place that caters to  tourists in any way, surprisingly most of the shops were open and doing a brisk business on Sunday night (as opposed to Kandy on a Saturday night, a thriving city that was strangely closed up tight and quiet by 9 pm.) Another half hour on a windy mountain road brought us to our barebones hotel, which was apparently better than the last few places Intrepid tours had stayed and which was not very nice at all. Our room hung out over the highway and had nothing in it except for a couple of beds (comfortable mattresses is the best I can say) with very thin blankets. I have never seen a more threadbare towel. It got so cold by bedtime that I slept in jeans, socks and my fleece jacket – who knew I would bring a fleece jacket to Sri Lanka for sleepwear!

We spent the evening at a local home learning how to make rice and curry, the traditional food of Sri Lanka, cutting and cooking vegetables, mixing spices, learning everything from how to grate coconut on a spike stuck out of a bench to how to prepare “kankun” the local spinach greens. Then we all sat down to eat the delicious meal we had prepared, sans alcohol. Drinking is very important to this group, and out of desperation I have drunk things I would never have chosen to drink from straight whiskey and vodka to arrack, the local spirits distilled from coconut. Mostly there is Lion beer in 16 oz bottles, which I tried to avoid unless nothing else is available.

In the morning we returned to the station and took the train back to Idalgashinna to start our trek through the tea plantations to Udevaria.

We had to repack just what we needed for the two day trip into our daypacks and then our big bags were sent on to Haputale for storage. Needless to say, I was more than a little nervous about doing the trek, not sure if my back would hold up or whether my bad shoulder could handle carrying a pack of any weight at all, not sure how my knees would manage any steep downhill paths. When I booked the Sri Lanka tour, I had originally planned not go on this part of the journey since I didn’t think my body would hold up, but I have discovered on this trip that I am a perfectly good long distance walker and since I knew this was really touted as the highlight of the Sri Lanka tour I decided I would go and push my personal limits.

The first hour was uphill through jungle and pine forests, not unlike hiking at home. We emerged into the highlands to awesome magical views of mountains and terraced fields of tea with unbelievable long-range vistas of distance lakes and mountains. The weather was cool and not too sunny – perfect trekking weather. We continued up through a few villages where the tea pickers live huddled together in small squalid little row houses, sometimes painted colorfully, an occasional TV antenna, and lots of laundry hanging everywhere drying (probably because nothing every really dries in the high mountains). The road leading up and leading away from each village was always littered with garbage and trash as though the people just throw their stuff out of the village limits to get rid of it and then probably it washes down a distance in the rain. But everyone was always delighted to see us and promptly posed for pictures and all the children asked for “steel pen” – I guess that what they want most is pens to write with for school, not sure why nobody told us to bring

pens, it would have been an easy thing to give away.  Materially they are so poor but no one in the world is richer when it comes to the natural beauty of their surroundings.

After a tea and fruit break at the side of the road (Dusha, one of our local trek guides actually boiled water on a fire and served us tea in plastic mugs), we began heading downwards which proved to be much harder on my legs, knees and feet than going up. The path was sometimes paved with big rock paving stones that you had to step carefully on from one to the next or it was rough and rocky and the going got tough at times. But we stopped to photograph and chat with some of the tea pickers, who work 8 hours a day, 24 days a month and earn about $7 a day, depending on how much tea they can pick in a day to fill the gunny sacks they carry on their heads and back. They pick rain or shine and apparently they don’t mind the intense afternoon downpours because it makes the tea weigh more and they can earn more money that way.

Clouds and mist began to roll in and the distant views began to be obscured. We did not take a lot of breaks and despite the fact that half our group is nearly 60 or over, we made it to our rest house in record time by 12:15, faster than any previous group. Lucky for us, because 15 minutes later torrential rain began and did not stop for the next 8 hours except for one brief afternoon interlude where I quickly ran out and took pictures in the “village” if you could call it that. A few houses with absolutely amazing vegetable and flower gardens (the hill people are very good gardeners), a “hospital” that upon closer inspection was just empty rooms but they told me a doctor showed up every day for a few hours. All of the land is owned by the tea plantations, the people with private houses just lease their land in some complicated way I didn’t understand. I was astounded to see nearly every kind of flower you might ever grow indoors and outdoors in New Hampshire, including alium, impatiens, marigolds, cosmos, zinnias, daisies, roses, delphinium, salvia, verbena, lilies, daylilies, alstromeria, trumpet flowers, datura, morning glories – just to name a few I kept track of. It is a flower growers dreamland.

The lodge where we stayed was a solid stone building with 3 bedrooms for the 10 of us (two didn’t come) and 1 for Indika and our guides, Shiva and Dusha, both of whom were Intrepid tour leaders in training and who had only been speaking English for a few years, having learned from speaking with tourists and who communicated beautifully. I am always very impressed with those who can learn a language without formal classes.

We were suddenly faced with hours together with nothing to do except recover from the morning’s exertions and rest up for the next day. By 6:15 we had eaten dinner and had a long evening in front of us, but Shiva brought a conga drum and he and Indika and Dusha sang beautiful songs for us in Sinhalese and Tamil, the two Sri Lankan languages and then we each sang songs from our countries. It was interesting to think about what music was American, there are really so many choices from blues to Lady Gaga…

Singing together was strange and a bit embarrassing, like sleepover camp, but we laughed a lot at the absurdity of it all and it was a good bonding experience – we even danced.

Another cold damp night, we all seemed to contract some reaction to the dampness from sore throats to allergies (that disappeared as soon as we left the mountains), again sleeping in full clothing with fleece jacket and this time even with a sweater tied on my head ( you lose most of your heat through your head don’tcha know…)

The next morning we were off again – hiking uphill for the first few hours to the Devil’s table and then down for a long long time and the down was hard and painful. By the end I was last and alone and limping my way to the lunch stop with a spectacular view of the highest waterfall in Sri Lanka.

By the time we arrived at our next mediocre guesthouse in Haputale, we were filthy and tired and all we could think about was hot showers (and they had great hot water in Haputale). A short afternoon interlude learning to drive a tuk-tuk in a cricket field. I opted out of the Hindu temple visit – didn’t feel like I could walk any extra steps.

Two days later my knee still hurts a lot but I don’t regret a minute of it.

Kandyland

This is what pepper looks
 like when it is growing.

On the way to Kandy, we visited an Ayurvedic spice garden where we had lunch and then learned about all the herbs and spices that grow here (there are so many) and what they are good for and the Ayurvedic way of thinking and healing. Interesting fact that there are no fat Sri Lankans, they are all thin, their diet and way of life must be somewhat healthy – or maybe they are all just starving. We had Ayurvedic foot and neck massages with red oil that is supposed to be good for your joints and it did seem to help.

Kandy turned out to not at all what I expected.  Although high in the mountains, this city known for its colonial aspects was the most congested place yet in Sri Lanka; we were stuck in an unbelievable traffic jam on the road in – this must be what India can be like. Kandy is situated around a picturesque lake, almost looks like Switzerland, and has a much cooler climate than the previous places we had been. It made sense that more people would want to live there – why wouldn’t they prefer a more perfect temperature.

After checking into our hotel which was perched on the side of a hill overlooking the city and the lake, we went almost immediately to the evening ceremony at the Temple of the Tooth, the most famous and most visited Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka, where an actual piece of Buddha’s tooth resides deep inside seven caskets. Drums were played and we marched with a throng of people up into the temple and past the tooth shrine where many were worshipping and making offerings. Being among hundreds of barefoot attendees made us feel very much in the moment of the excitement. Afterwards Indika lectured to us for 45 minutes on Buddhism and we were all dying of hunger and starting to feel incredibly ambivalent and downright disinterested – we are of the belief now that he is a born-again Buddhist – who knew there was such a thing.

Finally we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant where we ordered a few bottles of local Sri Lankan Moscatello wine – “social wine” it says on the label – and yes, I am guessing it is similar to the lowlife wine we know as Muscatel, but I will say it was my best night sleep since joining the tour. I have been sleeping like shit most of the time.

The next morning we visited a tea factory and learned about how tea is processed – much more complex than I ever imagined. I thought it was dried in the sun and put in a bag. Hardly.

Afterwards we were dropped off in downtown Kandy to make our own way back. I walked around the lake and then did some clothes shopping in local shops where men went scurrying like rats to find a woman to wait on me – obviously not many tourists dared to venture into these stores where blouses and skirts were less than $5 each. I ended up with a dress that I paid about $6 for and a little short sleeve wrap that makes any outfit appropriate for Sri Lanka (shoulders must always be covered.)

In the early evening we went to a dance performance of traditional Kandy dancing – there are so many different kinds, and many of them seem to be what we consider to be traditional circus acts, spinning multiple plates at one time, acrobatic back flips and the last one was fire dance where they ate fire and walked on hot coals. At the same time, after a week of nonstop sun and heat, the sky opened up and rained buckets.

Because some bigwig in Kandy had died that day, a lot of restaurants and shops were closed that night and lucky for us, we had to alter our dinner plans and ended up at the Royal Hotel, which Anders and Anna had found during their wanderings during the day. It was finally what I had imagined Kandy to be, a vestige of the British colonial period with tons of 19^th century character, an open courtyard and an old-fashioned pub where we drank and ordered food from a waiter who barely understood us and brought me the cauliflower dish insisting it was eggplant and it turned out to be the best meal any of us had ever tasted. The “chips” were actually a potato that was cut into a thick endless coil and fried with spices – exquisite and delicious. It was a memorable and perfect accidental evening.

Sri Lanka – Negombo, Anaurapuradha, Pollonoruwa, Dambulla….

Sri Lanka – Negombo, Anaurapuradha, Pollonoruwa, Dambulla….

And yes, they are all as exotic as they sound.

Sri Lanka is definitely India “Lite”, in a really good way – no hordes of people, less beggars and hassle, very calm and friendly. But soooo hot and steamy – it is like being in a sauna much of the time, except it is just normal life.

Arrived in Negombo at midnight, it is a tourist beach resort town on Indian Ocean – even the sea water was hot – I have never been splashed by oceans waves that were as warm or warmer than my own body temperature. It was not the lovely clear turquoise water of Thailand, a bit murky and suspicious, like the breakers of the Jersey shore but with an equatorial sultriness.

Watched the Sunday morning romance on the beach – lots of sweethearts walking with umbrellas by the sea – in Sri Lanka everyone walks with an umbrella to shade from the blistering sun and heat. Lots of fisherman. Youth party with blasting music next to tourist hotel. Everything is just a little dirtier than Thailand in an Indian kind of way.

Power outages are  common –which I immediately experienced in the middle of the night as I arrived in strange hotel room which had not been air-conditioned all day – all worked out okay.

After reading the Intrepid trip notes, I realized that once again I did not have the right kind of clothes, this time for the culture not the climate. Although my airy rayon Bali wardrobe was perfect for the weather, women are supposed to keep their knees and shoulders covered at all times, and usually their cleavage too. So I bought myself some Sri Lankan clothes – light shirts with long sleeves, white loose pants and a lightweight silky shawl in traditional Southeast Asian orange.

Intrepid group met up at 5:30 with our Sri Lankan leader, Indika, a lovely man with a beautiful beatific smile and a very Buddhist attitude about travel, which he spent the next hour and a half detailing for us, as well as his own story. (studied at University to become an accountant and then decided it was too boring and became a tour leader instead – you go, Indika, no wonder the beatific smile!) The group is very easy-going, insatiable world travelers as usual  but much more balanced than the last group – 12 of us – half my age or older, the other half young 20-30’s. 8 women, 4 men; 3 Swedes, 4 Germans, 3 Australians, 1 Irish and 1 American. I have only spoken to one American in nearly 3 weeks yesterday at Minhatale sacred temple site and I thought he was going to cry from the excitement of speaking to someone else from the USA. Two of the younger women have done 6 and 9 month world tours, and one even trekked through Africa for 3 months – they make me look like an amateur!

We left early from Negombo on a private bus headed north to Anuradhapura, where there is a huge sacred Buddhist site, most ancient in the world. On the way we stopped at a coconut plantation and learned how they make coconut toddy by collecting the liquid inside the flowers: it is a fermented coconut drink that is not half bad.

Traveled more – arrived at our hotel on the edge of a beautiful manmade lake. In fact most of our hotels have been close to manmade lakes because Sri Lanka is full of them, used for all water needs.

After checking in, traveled by tuk-tuk for 30 minutes on really bad roads to Minhatale, an ancient site of stupas and temples where we had to climb a few hundred steps to the temple site and have an amazing view.

Went to a restaurant for dinner to learn how to make roti and hoppers – it was so hot we all thought we’d expire. Hoppers are thin crepe-like pancakes flashed cooked in a wok-like pan that make them into a bowl shape – you can put an egg in it and cook it again for an egg hopper. Rotis are made from flat chapatti-like pancakes wrapped around an interior filling like spiced vegetables, chicken, fish or egg. They are the fast food of Sri Lanka.Eva  a cheese sandwich yesterday and got white bread with sliced cheese and ketchup as the filling. A little food interlude: Had a great curry lunch – am loving Sri Lankan rice and curry. You get a main dish of rice and the 3 dishes of local vegetables prepared in spicy sauces and a dal (lentil curry) and every time you have it the vegetables are different. So far I have never had the same curry twice. However, other than the amazing curries and a flan-like dessert called Wattapalan, the other food is not exceptional and the Western-style food is downright bad – buyer beware. Eva from Ireland ordered a cheese sandwich yesterday and got two pieces of white bread filled with a slice of cheese with ketchup on it!

Up early and 8 got bikes, 4 got tuk tuks and we went off to the Family Bakery for Sri Lankan style breakfast – I had an egg roti – lots of eggs here, lots of vegetables – easy to be a vegetarian in SL.

Then we started a tour of the Anuradhapura World Heritage site for Buddhism – a park with lots of 2500 year old ruins, temples and stupas, places where there were cafeterias that fed 5000 monks 1600 years ago (all documented in inscriptions on stones), ponds where the monks bathed, etc. as well as a shrine around the remaining branch of the original Boddhi tree (a sickly looking piece of a tree held up by several golden pillars). Must take off shoes and hats when entering a temple area and wear something well below the knees – women must enter a separate entrance and a guard checks you – I was told my shirt was too “open” around the neck and I had to cover up with a scarf. Others had to wear “temple cloths” (sarongs) that Indika brought.  Westerners were allowed to wear socks on their feet because the stones can get so hot around the monuments that they can burn your feet (some of us had to not climb the view point yesterday because by 5 pm the stones were like hot coals and we hadn’t understood why we needed socks). We had lunch at a most amazingly peaceful place called Elephant Pond, another man-made “water-tank” as all the lakes are called. Apparently SL was always so dry that XXXX lakes had been dug to collect water in but now there were only 40 left (but they are huge beautiful lakes) because during the Dutch and English reigns they weren’t looked after.

Indika LOVES his Buddhism and gets so passionate about telling us about it. He is very thorough and exacting in how he runs the trip, such a huge responsibility looking after 12 people and making sure everybody is happy – but there are no babies or whiners in this group – and he will not tell us in advance what exactly we are doing the next day or even sometimes in the next few hours and we don’t find out until late in the evening after dinner what the “program” is going to be specifically for the next day.

Maybe our best time today was when we got back to our hotel and had a swim and hung out being entertained by the monkeys which are just EVERYWHERE here and all over the hotel grounds and jumping on the building (you cannot leave anything on the porches or outside) but they are not aggressive like the Ubud park monkeys, they are wild monkeys that seem to coexist side by side with humans here, keeping their distance but coming very close, even drinking out of the pool, leaping around the trees over our heads and playing in the grass next to us and I watched one climb up the building onto the porch of my room and sit on my towel hanging over the rail (won’t be using that towel again!). There are so many of them, they must have no predators, sometimes you see them fight with dogs for territory, they are definitely pests and people without air-conditioning must swelter inside if they have to keep them out.

We are always sweating bullets, consuming enormous quantities of water, not being able to wait to peel off our day-time clothes. The night air feels wonderfully cool by comparison, and it is probably 82.  The heat is all-consuming at times, Indika says we have to embrace it but by mid-day it is just too much. I look forward to getting to the higher elevations of the mountains.

We are off on the public bus in the morning to our next stop which I can’t even remember at this time of night. Finding time to keep up with the blog is very challenging – posting pictures is even more so with very low bandwidth here.

The local bus was a great experience and not particularly intimidating because of Indika’s preparations for us, like making sure our big bags got on and that we boarded early so we all had seats. Yes it got crowded but it was very civilized, if an old or disable person, pregnant woman or one with a small child gets on, you must give up your seat. A guy got on with a drum and sang and played music, it was quite entertaining. After two hours it stopped for a “tea break” which meant we all ran to the back of a store and queued up for the toilets, which were of course, squatter style (the only unpleasant part of the journey). You must always travel with the day’s toilet paper in your purse or pockets or you may not see any. Then on again for another hour to Polonoruwa to another quite decent hotel near a lake and another afternoon of bike-riding (unfortunately not for me with my bad tailbone, I had to go by tuk-tuk) in mindbending heat through more ruins to see more Buddhas. We were not back until sunset and the pace was beginning to get a bit much for us. Indika tries not to tell us the next day’s program until after supper, he is quite formal about it and makes everything into a speech and has a famous “checklist” of what we need to make sure we have not forgotten, the last item which is always “your sense of humor.”

Off again at the crack of dawn by local bus to Dambulla, getting a good breakfast early is always an issue and this one for me was McVittie’s biscuits and a small plain yogurt (which is actually made here and is quite popular.) Got to Dambulla by 9 am and went to see yet another Buddhist shrine and temple, this one was quite spectacular and colorful and different enough that it was entertaining and with a good view at the top. The old temples were always built in the best places.

Then in the afternoon some of us went to an Ayurvedic treatment center and had massages and dripping oil relaxation treatments. It was very different and quite a nice experience (Susan Brown & Judy Day – can’t wait to share with you!).

All feeling quite relaxed we stayed at our nice hotel that night for good drinks and mediocre dinner (good drinks are hard to come by in Sri Lanka – sometimes we just have to send out for local beer) and had a pleasant time. We are so lucky that are group of travelers is so easy-going and relaxed. Makes all the difference. 

I opted out of the Sirigiya Rock climb at 6:30 am this morning and now feel positively human and caught up, ready to join in the rest of the aggressive pace of the day – on to Kandy with a stop at a spice garden on the way and then to the Temple of the Tooth tonight for a local ceremony. We are moving on up into the mountains today, the climate should get cooler and more pleasant  and easier to wear Sri Lankan clothes. Right now the coolest has been when our air-conditioning gets too cold at night and can’t be controlled and we have to wear fleece jackets to bed!