My new phone in Colombo

View from my hotel. Not a very inspiring view. Phone is doing a decent job though

Our glamping experience wasn’t quite what I had in mind. The toilet was behind a curtain leaving no solace for my poor friend other than a mumbled ‘sorry’. But honestly, after Nepal, a hot shower is luxury and I will not be complaining. Unlike some!

‘Glamping’ Sri Lankan style

A night time walk showed me the sight of small birds asleep in trees and I don’t think I have ever seen anything as cute as that.

Steps leading up to the cave temple

The cave temple

Then it pissed down on us while we visited a normal Buddhist temple in bare feet. Which was fun actually to get to splash through warm puddles. It is Sri Lanka’s Independence Day today and most people have the day off so the temple was very busy. I loved seeing throngs of people of all ages coming together in quiet faith to give respect and offerings. It is restoring my faith in Buddhism which was left in tatters after a couple of dodgy encounters.

What I am disappointed about however is the tea! (ominous music). My main goal in coming to Sri Lanka was to drink amazing tea. Recently Ross and me have got into tea in a big way, considering ourselves as budding connoisseurs. Ceylon tea is world renowned and yet all I have had in restaurants and hotels so far is rubbish English breakfast tea, in a tea bag, with hot water from a jug! This will not do at all!!

Turmeric plant

Curry leaves

Making it look so easy 🙏

Not as easy as it looks

Oh this is a good one. We booked a 2 hour Ayurvedic massage with only a vague notion of what this might entail. When we got there Courtney took off her glasses and said now I can’t see so the tiny women led her around as if she were blind. They put us in the same room starting off in chairs facing each other wrapped in towels and started a head and shoulders massage so we could watch each other. Then on separate beds for a full body massage followed by a gallon of warm oil trickled over our foreheads. Then they wrapped us up, helped poor blind Courtney down off the bed and plopped us both into a small wooden hut aka sauna. Sitting on a bench with a glass door, looking like we were waiting for a bus, in our towels while people walked past looking in. Waving and mouthing ‘hello’. \240And then we are led into a side room with two rows of what look like wooden iron lungs but turn out to be steam chambers with our heads poking out while fires were lit under us and we were steamed until we yelped.

With a free afternoon I elected to walk 3 miles through the rain, on the side of the road, with lorries soaking me and beeping for what purpose I have no idea to visit a monastery. This was strange and beautiful. It was a deserted construction site with a beautiful Buddha statue which I could enjoy all to myself.

‘Don’t be ashamed. You are perfect. Just be a bit more loving than you are’.

I spent a little while gazing at the face of ultimate compassion and relishing the peace. Then walked back through the rain with the lorries beeping, trying very hard indeed to preserve my equanimity. Namaste 🙏

Visiting the luscious market in Nuwara Eliya. The bunches of bananas still on their stem makes carrying easy

The lovely fertile land abundant with vegetables. Apparently you can make leek curry. Who knew?

Courtney and I broke rank and went to the best restaurant in Kandy. We uplevelled and had a fantastic evening.

This little fella waited patiently for 5 minutes while I fiddled about with my camera 🙏

From a little late afternoon stroll around a lake in Dambulla.

An elaborate (to put it mildly) Hindu Temple. Most Sri Lankans are Buddhist while most of the Tamils are Hindu. For the most part they live peacefully together.

We visited a traditional dance set with 10 dances from different regions, which took a while.

Real cinnamon Cinamomum Verum has the taste and medicinal properties. Cassia is often used instead. The bark of real cinnamon tastes very sweet.

Vanilla

Curry leaf tree

Tirón (not to be confused with Tiran - our guide) was a great character, packed with information and a skilled sales person. I had bought a large bagful of spices and while paying I got the number wrong because I couldn’t see without my glasses. Guess what? He’s got an oil for that. Oddly, on the label it says it’s for hair growth.

Coffee flowers

Clove tree. We chewed on a clove and my tongue went numb for 20 minutes. Good for toothache!

Then we visited the gem museum where we learned about how the Sri Lankans extract gems by hand, digging 20m holes and tunnels, lining them with wood and ferns! The main precious stone is sapphire which comes in a wide variety of colours including one very rare sunset pink, called lotus in Sri Lankan. And the one I got is teeny tiny. So I got it out of its box in the hotel to admire it and dropped it on the red carpet 😬

Me with my tea head basket

Historically when the Brits decided that they would have Ceylon they took vast swathes of land to grow tea because Brits love tea. It was a good gig. They imported cheap Tamil labour from India to pick the tea thereby sowing the seeds of future unrest but it worked for a good while. Eventually everyone agreed it was a shitty thing to do and the Brits toddled off back home. Tea is still Sri Lanka’s main agricultural export.

Tonight we are staying in a super swanky place - the Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya. It’s a beautiful, impeccable place to stay and something of a mausoleum to times gone by.

Enjoying it anyway.

I asked Tiran, our excellent tour guide, what is the general view in Sri Lanka of the British take over. And I said I want an honest view. He said ‘they took away our culture, our identity’. The people responsible for the transition were on the side of the British and sold us out.

Another World’s End

Random selection of places to point to

Big steep drop just behind us

Witchy crow powers 😉

Rose-ringed Parakeet

Serpent Eagle

Coppersmith Barbet

Orange breasted green pigeon

Blue tailed bee-eater

Black winged stilt

Wood sandpiper

Asian green bee-eater

Rosy starling

Yellow eyed babbler

Indian Scops Owl

Black eagle

Pied bush chat

Yellow billed babbler

Small minivet

Brahminy kite

Indian pond heron

Tern

Red wattled lapwing

White bellied sea eagle

Black Rumped Flameback

Black Hooded Oriole

Peacock

Malabar Pied Hornbill

Asian Open Bill

Common kingfisher

Green bee eater

Elephants. Sri Lanka has its own sub species of Asian elephant. There are @7,000 elephants on the island and 60% roam freely. Which is beautiful. And also gives the farmers a bit of gip so they hide out in tree houses at night armed with firecrackers to scare them off.

We were lucky to have close encounters with quite a few elephants in the national parks. Courtney is a big fan and explained how, when an elephant dies, close family members will return to the grave periodically to mourn. This makes me wonder at their emotional intelligence and whether we need to learn from them. If only we were humble enough to believe that they could teach us.

It is early morning on my last day in Sri Lanka and I am on the beach under a palm tree looking at the Indian Ocean. I am watching the boats leaving for their daily fishing, and watching a crab scuttling up and down the tide line. At last my heart has opened to this beautiful island.

Sri Lanka is described as the pearl of the Indian Ocean. The real jewel for me is the bountiful and fearless heart of my friend. Thanks to her I am returning home with my heart and soul at peace and my path ahead lit up.

With so much love and gratitude 🙏