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!