continued from the previous post – sri lanka 2013: part one
i then headed inland, up into sri lanka’s hill country! on the way, near wellawaya, a little detour was made to see sri lanka’s largest standing buddha. it was carved into a mountain and could best be described as underwhelming. the journey to find it, however, was excellent – lots of coconut consumption and getting lost and a really serene lake where i splashed around with some local kids. and got a gnarly sunburn. sri lanka is the world’s premier producer of tea, and it all happens up in the hills in the center of the country, which are actually more like mountains. it is actually quite cold up there. the roads become very tortuous and are perfect for scooting. there are many waterfalls. i went to the third largest waterfall in the country called dunhinda – which ended up being at least an hour’s hike and a dozen close-up monkey sightings off the road. i left my backpack with some random guy and thankfully he still had it when i got back!
i spent a night at the “beuty view mountain inn” in the tourist hill town of ella. there was a little girl who served the food there who was super cute. best rice and curry of the trip. people come to ella to get away from the heat and to avail of the local delicacy – buffalo curds, and indulge in ayurvedic spa treatments. i passed on the spa treatments as i heard that sometimes they just pour heated recycled canola oil over you and rub it into your skin and people get crazy acne afterwards. in ella i also ran up a mountain called little adam’s peak where there were excellent views down a valley all the way to the ocean. ella is surrounded by expansive tea plantations. i went on a tour of a tea factory and learned a lot about the process of fermenting and drying the tea. even got to taste all the varieties afterward – all the same leaves, just picked at different times and processed in different ways. it seemed like i might have been the first tourist to visit the factory in weeks. on the topic of tea, the guy giving me the tour told me all about sir thomas lipton of lipton tea fame. he had a chain of grocery stores in england, and was tired of dealing with money-grubbing middle men for his tea. so he decided to source it straight from ceylon – he even moved to sri lanka. he started plantations with the imported cheap labor of tamils from south india, a practice which continues to this day as picking tea is not financially lucrative enough for the locals.
the scooting continued through some picturesque muslim majority mountain villages to the highest town in sri lanka, nuwara eliya. it was extremely cold scooting, as it was beginning to get dark and i had not brought any coat or even pants on the trip! the temperature remains in the low-teens celcius throughout the year, and the town is perpetually smothered in cold fog. nuwara eliya is sri lanka’s tea capital – the best tea is generally grown at the highest altitudes. the only other thing that grows there are root vegetables like potatoes and carrots. it is also known as sri lanka’s “little england,” as there are numerous victorian mansions and the climate is rainy and overcast – just like england. the next 150 km were all downhill switchbacks – in the dark – and cold – which was exhilarating. at one point a bug flew into my eye and aggravated it to such an extent that i drove the rest of the way using just the other eye. and maybe it was the cold or the lack of traffic but i found myself accidentally driving on the right side of the road a few times – that’s the wrong side of the road in sri lanka. i was glad to finally make it to kandy.
kandy is the holiest buddhist city in sri lanka, and a former capital of the country. it is supposed to be alcohol free to keep it pure, and every year they have a huge party/parade with hundreds of elephants that walk through the streets on red carpets – the country’s greatest spectacle. if the cow is india’s favorite animal, for sri lanka it is the elephant. one particular kandyan elephant has even become something of a national icon. kandy is centered around a lake, on which is a temple said to contain one of buddha’s teeth. the temple of the buddha’s tooth relic draws buddhists from around the world. people bring flowers to place before the shrine inside the temple. of course i also had to check out sri lanka’s largest shopping mall which is in kandy – lets just say there are good reasons that no one visits sri lanka for its malls. as was expected at some point, i became physically ill in kandy, so everything became a bit of a blur toward the end. i did go the national botanical garden, however, where, in addition to a long nap induced by dehydration, headache and fever, i saw some really beautiful orchid varieties and a very large fig tree. also saw a traditional kandyan dance spectacle for a couple dollars that ended with fire throwing and barefoot coal walking. the original ancient inhabitants of sri lanka, the veddah people, still live in an isolated mountainous region east of kandy. if i had a few more days i would have loved to go find some of them. they still speak their own language and there are only a few thousand remaining.
on my final day in sri lanka i drove the four hours west back to the airport, stopping at an elephant orphanage along the way for another nap, and to hang out with lots of elephants! watched them bathing in a river and got to pet them, including two of the most adorable hairy little baby elephants you’ve ever seen! these things were so small and fresh from their mother’s oven that their skin was still soft! you could even feed them with a bottle for a mere two dollars.
sri lanka is probably the coolest country ever and everyone should go there. it has the otherwordly charm of india but without the incessant touts. english is widely understood and travel distances are relatively short. even the cops are friendly, some of them even remembered me from when i had driven by the previous day! paradise on earth i tell you!