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 🙏

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.