Sri Lanka: Tea, Elephants, and Curry

Click here for Sri Lanka Photo Highlights

sunset at little Adam's peak

Sri Lanka was my choice for “must visit” country.  Honestly, I didn’t know much about it, but several trusted friends with vastly varying perspectives all had gone and loved it.  As my grandfather used to say great minds do think alike- and so do ours- so thanks to Mary, Katie, David and Franziska for the inspiration.  Sri Lanka has many of the highlights of our previous adventures—beaches, wildlife, hiking, culture, temples—all packed into one fantastic country.

At the turtle rescue

Sri Lanka is the island to the SE of India although there were several similarities to the other places we had just been in Asia, it definitely had a different feel in the look and dress of the people (more influence from India than China) and the taste of the food (full of different spices; the main dish is rice served with a half dozen different curries).  We arrived in Colombo at 1am.  Some lessons we have learned about arriving into a new country so late/early are that it’s worth it to hire a hotel transfer ahead of time and that you need to triple check (because double checking apparently doesn’t cut it) your plane and hotel reservations to make sure the dates line up. We almost arrived on the wrong day and thus we have endless accolades for the super-fast responding customer service team at Star Alliance who were able to change our around the world plane ticket yet again based on a mistake in our planning.

Galle fort

We started our 15-day journey with a drive down the west coast, where we stopped at a sea turtle rescue site where they pay fishermen to turn in eggs and keep the babies for a few days to (hypothetically) give them a better chance of surviving. Although there is some debate on if these projects are helpful, it seems like any chance is better than the eggs ending up in soup.  And wow are baby sea turtles surprisingly cute and endearing (see video).  On the coast we could also still witness the devastating aftermath of the 2004 Boxer Day Tsunami, which killed over 30,000 people (almost twice the population of Golden) and displaced over 1.2 million.   They say the animals at low lying Yala national park went to higher ground before the Tsunami hit because they somehow knew it was coming.  Now Sri Lankan has lots of new construction and better Tsunami warning alarms.      

We enjoyed our time “relaxing” on the beach getting creamed by the gorgeous turquoise waves at Unawatuna (most of the Sri Lankan city names are really fun to say.)  We also walked around stunning Galle fort, a relic from the Portuguese and later Dutch colonization in the 16^th - 18^th centuries.  And we stayed at a guest house where the food was awesome.  Sri Lanka had some of the best food and service of everywhere we’ve been. Next it was inland past rice fields with farmers who looked like they were training for the X-games (see video) to Udawalawe (told you on the names) national park where we saw lots of amazing animals—including water buffalo, peacocks (they’re as abundant as squirrels in our neighborhood in CO, but a lot cooler see video), beautiful parrots, bee catcher birds and tons of Asian elephants.  Asian elephants are quite a bit smaller than African elephants (fun fact, Asian elephant’s ears are shaped like India, and African elephant ears are shaped like Africa) but that didn’t stop them from completely freaking us out when one trumpeted and charged the jeep.  After a few more charges, we figured out that the male elephants were likely intimidated by Xander, in all his hormone-laden teen glory.

New friends on the train

Next we traveled up to Ella, a green and relatively cool (heat waves shattered all-time records in SE Asia while we were there) oasis where we enjoyed some gorgeous hikes up to Little Adams Peak and Ella Rock--  although I busted up my knee falling after tripping over a stray dog (yes, I’m a very talented hiker), the views were (almost) worth it.  We took a slow scenic train ride from Ella to Nuwara Eliya through the terraced tea fields-- at first we were a little frustrated because we didn’t end up with seats (we lost the mad tourist scramble) but we ended up sitting several carriages back with a friendly and rowdy group of Sri Lankans who insisted on sharing their unrecognized fruits and snacks with us, and played drums, sang and danced for the entire 2.5 hour trip (see video).   It was awesome, and the kids weren’t even (that) uncomfortable.  Hooray for random travel experiences!

Word's End

From Nuwara Eliya we took a white knuckle drive up through Horton Plains National Park and hiked to World’s End-  a sheer ~2800ft precipice that drops off into the lush Sri Lankan countryside.  We saw cool rocks, some monkeys and lots of selfie-stick wielding Chinese people.  Selfie sticks and selfie stick sellers are the most common thing we have seen across the world.

The following day a highlight was touring a tea plantation (Sri Lanka was named “Ceylon” until the 1970s and the founder of Lipton tea bought tea plantations and sourced all of his tea from Sri Lanka) and learning about the different processing steps and tea qualities.  Ladies pick all the tea leaves by hand and turn in their daily work of 15-20kg bags of leaves to the factory to be processed by drying and crushing machinery from the 1940s.  Another fun fact- green tea is made from the same leaves as black tea, but doesn’t go through the fermentation step.   We also wound our way down to Kandy where we arrived at a great airbandb villa where the hosts surprised Liam with a beautiful birthday cake for his 11^th birthday.  That night we also had a lovely birthday party at our driver’s sister’s family’s house-- complete with hats, cake and homemade rice and curry.  In Sri Lanka the tradition is that the mother gets the first piece of birthday cake because she brought the child into the world.  I was digging that a lot more than Liam.  Sadly, the patriarch of the family had had a stroke the week before, so couldn’t walk or talk when we visited. It was very heartwarming and heartbreaking to see how much his daughter respected and loved him.  She literally bowed down to him before she left. Made me miss my dad a whole lot.  We felt very honored to be there.

Temple of the Tooth

In Kandy we visited the Temple of the Tooth relic- a Buddist temple that, as the name indicates, houses the tooth of the Buddah, which was smuggled into Sri Lanka in a Princess’ hair around 300AD.  We were there for the ceremony with the monks playing instruments and chanting (see video) and stood in line with the worshipers holding fragrant flowers as offerings to catch a quick glimpse of the gold container holding the tooth that is only on visible for a short time each day.  The tooth is Sri Lanka’s most valuable treasure and one of the worlds most sacred Buddhist artifacts.  Babies are brought into the temple to be blessed when they are three months old.  It was neat to see a bunch of families with tiny babies on their special day.   Later that day, at the recommendation of our airbandb hosts, we went to a local monastery for some reason we didn’t quite comprehend at the time, but we’re always up for doing what locals say.  We arrived to find our hosts feeding about 100 10-15 year old monks (all in bright orange with shaved heads)-- Turns out families volunteer to feed the monks once or twice a year and our timing was serendipitous.  We got to join for lunch and get blessed by a monk to boot (hence the white string all of us are wearing around our wrists).  During our time we learned a lot about Buddhism and the strengths of the local communities; our driver, for example, started every day by thinking “who can I help today?”.

On our drive to our next stop in Dambulla, we stopped at a Hindu temple covered with colorful statues of hundreds of different gods.  Our driver told us that during the 30 year (!) civil war, Tamil Tigers used to hide among the gods on the temple and shoot people and aircraft.  We also visited several amazing rock cave Buddhist temples. In Dambulla we stayed at a funky chalet out in the rainforest complete with frogs in the bathrooms, a super friendly steward who made/served us breakfast and dinner (!) and an incredible thunder and lightning storm that knocked out the power for the night.  

Highlights from our last few days in the country included climbing the 1000+ steps (ok, maybe the arriving more than the climbing) up Sigiriya rock past frescos and huge stone lion paws to arrive at the flat top summit with ruins from a palace from 500AD, touring Polonnaruwa (an enormous temple/royal complex from when the area was the capital around 1000AD), going on a safari where we got to stand up in the back of a safari jeep and hold on tight while we four-wheeled throughout the forest and spied elephants and their babies in the high grass, and eating a rice and curry meal with our driver and his family in their home.

Almost at the top of Sigiriya rock

After a 35+ hour marathon trip to Rome (completing our around the world plane trip from Rome to Rome), we’ve been back in Europe finishing up the trip abroad with London and Paris.  We’ve only been back in the “first world” less than two weeks, and we miss the exotic sights, sounds, and tastes of Asia—although it’s quite a luxury to be able to drink the water from the tap.

Hanging out the elephants

Senses:

Carolyn: Gasping as the sri lankan teen dives off the high rock into the shallow reefs in the colorful coral dotted aquamarine waters beyond the Galle fort; the surprising sound of the elephant trumpeting as it rushed out of the jungle toward our jeep, stopping about 10 feet away but leaving all of our hearts racing; stepping back from the heat of the fire as the flamboyant Kandy dancer spins by in front of me with his flaming torches; the black granite striping the stone carving of the gigantic reclining Buddha as the rain patters down on us at the mystical 1500 year old Gal Vihara site

Jim: The hundreds of baby turtles swimming frantically in the turtle sanctuary as they grow a little before being released to the wild; increasing their survival rate from 2% to 20%; the happy people traveling to Colombo singing, dancing and playing drums, adding to the dramatic scenery and a wonderful Sri Lankan memory; the clouds slowly creeping up the mountain valley at the worlds end adding to our perfect view of the jungle and river below; enjoying a relaxing morning with a cup of milk tea watching the flocks of birds fly from Kandy lake to the countryside for their daily feedings; the explosive taste of wild Sri Lankan ginger root filling my mouth only to be subdued by the sweet taste of cinnamon tree bark.

Xander: The slanted Galle fort walls sloping down into the colorful reef on the southern coast of Sri Lanka; the blue  and peacock green peacock feathers hanging down from the droopy leafed tree as the sun sets into the Sri Lankan horizon; the distant thunder clouds suddenly having a bright golden glow as lightning flickers in the dark sky above Ella; the  golden case of Buddha’s tooth glowing with a powerful aura as the local crowds shove us out of the line for closer look at the scared tooth case

Liam: The newborn turtle's hard shelled belly squirming about in my hand at the turtle hatchery on the drive down the coast to Unawatuna; the splay of undulating green and blue peacock feathers framing the peacock's slender body as all of the peahens come over to admire him; the surprising sight of dad's pale white butt cheek shaking as the dramatic masseuse vigorously massages it; the miniscule water drops pounding at my legs as we twist turn and accelerate through the Nuwara Eliya lake on my first jet ski ride; my fart's smell overwhelming  me as I squat in the old palace column  hiding from xander as we play hide and seek in the Polonnaruwa citadel ruins