From Here To Eternity via Dickwella

Safari: The act of being present while exploring.  We have been safariing for one month now. First in the jungle, than a dense forest, than a walking safari, a jeep safari, back of the truck safari, another walking safari with a guide for it was way too dangerous to go alone, and now it's a beach safari.  We're at Dickwella in a white sandy cove. Luckily we arrive on a weekday in the late morning when literally not a soul is out. Even the fishermen are back from fishing. A white curve of sand surrounds the palm trees, some succulents, small pools of water, and one hotel. Ok, make that two, but we didn't come across the second hotel until the evening when we are trying to find a restaurant and realize that hotels are the only restaurants in town.  The word "hotel" in Sinhalese means food, bakery, chopsy, but not a meal. Anyway, we have a citronella-lit dinner for the power is out. Apparently the power in Dickwella has been going out nightly for a few days. Carlos says it may be government or local control.

So back to the safari. We take the plunge and dress appropriately for rolling on the sand like Debra Kerr and Burt Lancaster in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. While the waves come rolling in, we sit and let each wave roll over us. It is heavenly. Water is tepid, ocassionally cool. No shells for there must be a coral reef breaking the waves.  The rest of the day is on our deck watching a large rock in the water.

Upscaling in Unawatuna

We're taking a 3 day hiatus from airbnb and the interesting lives of others by recouping at a very nice hotel and ayurvedic retreat, Thambapanni Retreat in Unawatuna. Complete with swimming pool, head and shoulder massages, Balinese treatment, yoga classes that we continually seem to miss, fine Sri Lanka dinners of hoppers and coconut curry or rice and a compliment of curries. It's a tough life, but someone has to do it. Back to the real Sri Lanka world in 3 days, but until then we´re reading Tarquin Hall´s books at the pool.

                                               The daily 20 minute rainstorm

Ella is a small town with a big heart

It's 7:20 pm.  I'm sitting on the porch, scratching previous spider bites, waving away an ocassional mosquito, and loving the flowered air, the stars, the sounds, the grasshopper walking by, the song bird who wants one more trill, and the small village where no one lives in town yet town is the hub. This is Ella. Tea country.  There is nothing flat for miles and miles of mountains.  People build their homes on the sides of steep mountains and years later a road may or may not appear.   Not important. Everyone knows everyone as there " is only one high school'" says the locals.

Back to sounds: Crickets are chirping, a bat's wing slides along the roof line, frogs croaking, voices from 6-year old Passan's struggle to not do his homework with his Ama and grandmother (Ketieama)  are within a cricket's toss from me.  Passan started his first day in school just 6 weeks ago.  Before that he went with his grandmother to the Montesorri preschool where his grandmother is the assistant.  "I go up the hills. After 30 years, I am tired,"

Today starts with Nimalka serving breakfast of spicy curly noodles and an omelette.  We have every intention of walking into town, but a tuk tuk magically appears and whisks us to town.  We make arrangements to go to Udawalawa National Park tomorrow at 9am, get directions to the post office from the tourist bureau which happens to be staffed by police, negotiate a price for a tuc tuc to get us up steep 4km road to Finley's Green Tea Plantation and factory, and check out the very cool town slowly emerging as a hip place to climb a mountain or buy yoga pants.

The green tea plantation turns out to be better than good. This is an international factory and they work in volume.  We don caps, face masks, and shoe coverings and are introduced to the initial drying process to take 25% of the moisture so as to stop the fermentation. Then the leaf rolling process and then another 25% of moisture taken from the leaves.  By this time the leaves still retain their shape and have a leathery feel.  Next step is 350 degree oven for 16 hours for thorough dryness.  Then a mechanical shifting refines the leaves into 6 grades. All steps are down by machinery with people guiding.  It's quite fascinating for the guide also shares the current tea economic woes because Russia and the Middle East are having economic issues, which is effecting Sri Lanka tea; thus there is now a backlog of tea waiting to be sent out.

We walk out of the tea factory and take a local bus with the Tamil tea pickers until Carlos sees a line of beautifully dressed women and men dancing to drums and horns.  My man bounds off the bus and we stand on the sidelines taking photos.  But an older woman catches my eye and the next thing you know, she is waving me over saying dance with us, follow, come.  We are now celebrating the final day of a Hindu 12 day celebration of a god who, if he is impressed enough with the dancing, the incense ceremony of the men, the milk carried on the heads of all the women in silver vessels, the chanting, the prayers, the laughter and life of the congregation, will provide rain  for continued growth of tea, the livelihood of these workers.  So we follow, we take photos, we dance, we observe with folded prayer palms, and people approach us, smile, speak, and before long we meet the principal of the local school and his wife, who turns out to be my daughter of another country. She is 47, her mother recently passed, and she is touched when I say I can be her mother from another country.  Well I tell you, for the next 7 hours we are thick as thieves. We enter each ceremonial phase joyfully and with artistic photographic flavor.  Everyone wants a photo, a handshake, an acknowledgement of their place in the ceremony and community.  Women, men, children, drummers, spiritual leaders, dancers, food preparers, each step is choreographed on centuries of rituals. 

Ella is a small town with a big heart.

Kithalella and Ella may sound similar, but they are boars apart

Traveling takes on major issues at times, but this looks like a no-brainer.  Our train car from Kandy to Ella has stewards who set up TV trays in between our seats for rice and curry lunch. Mmmmm.  The 6 hour ride is punctuated by tea plantations, rolling hills, mountain peaks that only 20-year old Germans climb, eyeballing others on oncoming train cars, playing imaginary poker which decades later I continue my winning streak, and more tea plantations.  

We keep track of all the towns and where we are with the map on our lap. When it gets close to our stop, Ella, I speak with the steward and the dialogue goes something like this:

"Not now, eight stops," he says

"But the map says 2 stops."

"No, 7 stops. Hai-Ella. Train. Stop."

"No, I want Ella. Kithalella. Look here on my map. It says the train stops at Kithalella."

"No madam, Hai-Ella better."  

This goes on for a while and then the train stops and the steward says, "ok, get off."

So we hustle and C gets off while the train almost stops and the bags are thrown to us. C looks around and says, "Tuk tuk here?"

The station master says, "no tuk tuk"

"No tuc tuc? Where is the road?"

Station Master says, "no road.  Road up the mountain."

So it's 7:05pm, no road, no tuk tuk, no lights, no people, no cars, nothing. We're in the wrong spot. Bats are flying by, boars and deer are the only neighbors at night. There is a dog that C has been been trying to befriend but it doesn't look like the dog knows how kind and intelligent C is, and Station Master, who just married one month ago and will work in this tiny no-frill train station for five years before he moves on to Ella, leaves at 7:30. "My house this way...1 km." 

"And what happens then?"

"I go home."

So we call our Homestay Mama. Between broken Sinhalese and English, she calls a tuk tuk and says "tuk tuk driver come 20 minutes. Stand on road. Blue tuk tuk." But there is no road and the way to the dirt road is through the thick jungle. With head lamps, two suitcases, a purse, and a backpack, we can't even make it up the muddy first hill and it's pitch black by now. 

Twenty minutes later we hear rustling, and our tuk tuk driver shows up, slings the two suitcases over his shoulder and cuts a path through the plants. Then it's a harrowing tumble down the mountain side for another 20 minutes, up the next hill, transverse another mountain, eventually passing buses and motorcycles until he turns up a steep 45 degree driveway. The disco ball light on the porch is going to be our home for the next three nights.

If I wasn't so arrogantly dead certain that I can read a map, we would have missed this scary situation and would have been having dinner outside on the porch two hours before we do.

Aftermath:  apparently the farmers in KeithElla pooled their funds together and decided to open their own railroad station since there are no roads nor transportation to haul their pumpkins and goods to market.  It took them years to fund this station.  They are gambling on the government to eventually build a road through the jungle to the railroad station, but as of now... we and the wild boars are the only ones using the station at night.

Driving A9 south from Habarana to Kandy

Driving A9 south from Habarana to Kandy is not for the timid.  First there are the buses, cars, tractors, dogs, and bikes to contend with, but then the real problem arises... spice gardens.  Yes, these spice gardens are a tourist nightmare. First you stop out of curiosity and then you stop for the free face massages, the cinnamon tea, and then there are the wickedly good leg rubs with the  promise of clearing up skin, varicose veins, and future arthritis or heart issues.  It's easy to drop some SL rubies here. 

The moment the car door is open, a sincere and expert greeter is showing me a plant and explaining the benefits to me while enticing me with smells of banana oil and chocolate, gels of coconut extraction, and rubbing coconut oil and who knows what into my palm and forearm while sharing plant knowledge and confidence.  I tell you I wanted it all, but how am I going to carry it for the next five months?  Thank buddha Carlos was there, for I might not have made it to Kandy at all when the free full ayurvedic massage was mentioned.

So back to the driving which is more like a video game than actual driving.  There may not be bomb explosions or dinosaurs lurking behind falling rocks, but speeding buses and tractors are definitely playing head-on chicken. Our driver was ok with it all, even the elephant that darted out of the jungle and slowed down for the farmer with his herd of water buffalo, but then his wife called on the cell phone while we were making a U-turn on the major boulevard and his attention waned.  It was a near miss but we're now in Kandy and that's all that matters.

Five caves of Dambulla

    

     

Think about being king for only five months before war breaks out and your entire kingdom is overrun by militarized army from South India. Well in this case Valagamba did what any self-respecting king would do. He took off and spent 15 years in the shelter of huge caves before reclaiming his rightful kingdom of Anuradhapurna. Once he was back on the throne, he summoned engineers, sculptors, artists, monks, cooks and housekeepers to rebuild the interior of these caves that were so large they could accommodate thousands.  And all of this was dedicated to Gautama Buddha, the first Siddhartha.

We spend a rainstorm day at these caves and are so enthralled that we revisit each of the five caves twice.  Somehow the engineers of its time constructed pipelines within these massive rocks so water does not and did not seep into the caves but around and outside under the rocklike eaves.  Now the current monks protect and guide the faithful, both people and caves.

Rainstorm? Any good rainstorm deserves a dominoe game at the closest diner. This time we meet Shiniva, who sits with us and within 15 minutes of coaching by Carlos is playing dominoes independently.  Since we couldn't find any dominoe games in SL to buy, Shiniva gets out a pen and creates her own.  "It's just mathematics," she says.

Next task for us is to find a photo developing shop.  Once the photoeditors hear we're from California, they find the Eagles on youtube and for the next hour we sing "Hotel California" while editing the photos for our Habarana family. All this without English.

Train travel

          Train travel is the prime affordable way to travel in Sri Lanka.  

Train travel and classes:
Third class is sitting along either side of the oldest cars with plenty of standing room space. Fans whirl, doors can stay partially open, and folks hang out watching the world go by and eyeing any available seats.

Seat assignments on second class: These cars have been around for decades. The overhead fans operate, vendors literally run the aisle selling water, pineapple slices, popcorn, and newspaper packages of curry and rice. Second class is the preferred class for tourists since it's possible to stand between the cars as well as take photos through the open windows

First class seat assignments with air conditioning is fine for long trips for many of the blue cars have recently been made by the Chinese, stewards serve lunch, but the windows stay closed in the air conditioned cars.

First class with broken air conditioning is the way to go, for lunch is served on these new cars and windows are magically opened for us

  

second class open window 

Early morning in Anuradhapuna, Sri Lanka

It's 5:45 a.m. The sun hasn't risen.  Howlers are up. Birds are calling. Chirps. There must be a woodpecker nearby for the thumping is rigorous and in spurts.  Two storks just flew by and I can make out a large pelican floating among the lilypads. The air is sticky and it's not hot yet but everything tells me it will be another scorching day.  As long as I have a bit of shade ..... The parrrots are restless. They're almost ready to leave the large trees but they are still wrestling among the branches.  Last night's settling in took the hundreds of parrots close to an hour before they were quiet. The owner of this jungle house and airbnb is up and stirring in the kitchen.  I can hear the pans clanking. Most be a million frogs and mosquitos out buzzing; quite a racket.  

Fifteen minutes of typing and there is more bird action.The howlers are at it again. There must be two groups for the hooting on the left is much louder and deeper than the first calls.Herons are flying by and a humongous brown, possibly, heron is sitting in front of my window. 

I'm on the second floor with a floor to ceiling window pockmarked with mosquitos and fascinating bugs clinging to the outside glass.  This is a Tamil establishment and where Sinhalese was used in the South, Tamil is a whole new ballgame.  I've elected the owner's daughter, M, to be my teacher.  Hello is vanacom and tasty is rusey.  I start with the basics.

Oh, the morning light has a nearby flutist playing.  The longest necked white lovely stretching in the water.  Birds seem to be flying to the left. I wonder if the lake's fish are gathering there.

C will be up in soon.  We want to be out and exploring the ancient city of Anurdhapura before the heat prevents us from climbing. We'll call Fernando, a tuk tuk driver who gathered us at the train station, and ask him to guide us.  Jungles are jungles and it's too easy to get lost, so a guide who speaks a smattering of English along with Tamil will be nice. 

Colombo fashion

I can't take my eyes off the women of Colombo.  How can they possibly look so cool and put together in this 96 degree heat?  But yet, they do.

 

Once we head towards the Pettah, the Muslim section, near the train station, we see the damage of civil war. While the banks and ports of Colombo were bombed, they were rebuilt in the last few years. Not so for this area. Check out the partially paved roads in this highly commercial area.

 
 

  

Living with a Hindu temple in the front yard

Next stop, a spectacular Hindu stone temple in the middle of a very, very poor neighborhood of Colombo. We never would have found this place without Faezer.  This is a second century temple that has stood the centuries of time by worshippers repainting and smoothing out the hooves of a bull, a tit of a woman, a horn of a goat.

The shared walled apartments are within ten feet of the temple and day to day tasks of cooking, brushing teeth, laundry are taken care of in the street for lack of space and privacy.

Faezer says there are 2,405 Hindu gods.  This is the start of a very long five month trip filled with gods, ancestors, and worship.