Party weekend!

The week before our next guests arrived was a bit of a week of parties (just preparing for the UK!). 

We had seen advertised an event at a restaurant on the rooftop of the 30 floor World Trade Centre where 2 contestants from Masterchef Australia were cooking a 6 course meal and matching wine was also included in the price. We had a nice evening. Although it probably would have been better if we had actually watched more than about 10 minutes of the show! 

It turned out that the contestants didn't actually do the cooking, they "designed the menu" with the help of the chef of the restaurant. The contestants actually just drank a bit too much and answered the audiences questions (mainly slagging off other contestants). The food was OK, and the wine was good, even if the all inclusiveness led to a slight hangover on the Thursday!

Saturday night was our wedding party. I know, a little after the event, but we have been meaning to celebrate with friends and colleagues in India since we got back in October/November. 

We hired out the terrace of a hotel fairly close to us and they put on a lovely Indian buffet. It was a very nice evening with friends, good food and an excellent excuse for us all to get out our traditional outfits again! 

Ben and the girls

Kathryn and the boys

Everyone

Time to invest in a vase!

Sunday and Monday Shravan and Sowmya were holding their housewarming ceremony for the new house that they have just finished building with Shravan's parents. Housewarmings are a really big deal here, and it was really interesting to be there for parts of the ceremony. I'm not sure what time the ceremony started on the Sunday, but we arrived at about 6.30pm, and it then went on until 11.30. We left before that though. It then began again at 4.30am! And was finished at about 12.30 on the Monday morning. For some reason early in the morning is an auspicious time for pujas (Hindu religious ceremonies). Needless to say I came a little later; 9.30am seemed a little more sensible. Ben was working, so unfortunately missed the Monday celebrations.

Each puja basically involved chanting prayers in Sanskrit and then a number of mixtures of rice, coconut water, oil, flowers and fruits were offered to the god in question. Apparently the pujari (priest) did explain each puja and tell various stories about each god and why they were being invoked on this occasion in Kannada (the local language of Karnataka) as well as not very many people speak Sankrit. Not that this really helped us much!

The purari (in yellow) performing part of the ceremony

A break from the rituals

Shravan and his family decided not to let a cow roam around their house and instead used a cow idol for some of the ceremony. Getting a cow to enter your home during your housewarming ceremony is very lucky in Hindu culture. However, the cow's were not to be perturbed; they arrived the following morning and sat outside the house in a kind of vigil!

Cows.......outside Shravan's house!

Food was provided both in the evening and at lunchtime the next day which was really excellent. It was a thali style meal (although I think that actually means the stainless steel dish it is served in), in this case served on a banana leaf for easy cleaning. It basically means you get a little bit of everything. Except for Shravan's parents who were involved in all the pujas, the rest of the guests were kind of expected to come and go through the proceeding and get food whenever they fancied. It was a really interesting event to be part of. Even if we didn't really understand what was going on!

My lunch!

Sri Lanka - part 2 - Wildlife, temples & beaches

For the second half of our trip we hired a car and driver to give us a bit more flexibility. Bernard picked us up on Sunday morning and we headed to Tissamaharama. En route we stopped off at Buduruwagala, a Buddhist temple consisting of 7 large statues carved into the rock.

Buduruwagala

Turns out someone got there before me! Ah well, I'll just have to stick to Chemical Engineering in the long term!

The reason for going to Tissa was Yala National Park for which Tissa is a good base. We arrived at about 12.30 and arranged an afternoon safari for 2pm that day. The late afternoon is supposed to be a good time to see the animals and we always had the option of another safari early in the morning if we didn't see anything. Luckily we had a pretty successful trip and saw lots of animals. No leopards unfortunately, but plenty of elephants and other things. Caitlin says she can now die happy having seen elephants!

Water buffalo - we all decided they were up there with our favourites! 

A lone male taking a bath

And we saw some babies too! 

A bee-eater (a green one I think) - among the beautiful birds who posed for us

I have to say we didn't see anything else in Tissa apart from driving through it. The next morning we headed for the coast at Tangalle with a little detour on the way to see the rock temples at Melkirigala. This time there were rooms carved into the rock/enlarged from caves. There were 7 in total at different levels on the way up to the top of a large monolithic rock with a lot of steps all the way to the top. Pretty hot work! Inside all the rooms had a large reclining Buddha of varying sizes and lots of other carving and particularly impressive painted ceilings.

Mulkirigala rock temples

One of the Stupas at the Mulkirigala temple

At Tangalle we spent a lovely afternoon on the beach and finished off with a swim in the hotel pool. We then had a wander along the coast road (trying not to get run over!) to a local restaurant before Caitlin, Ben and I set off for an evening of turtle watching a Rewaka at the other end of the bay. It was a slightly strange experience. As I understand it, Rewaka is different from the other places along the coast you can see turtles. Other places hatch the eggs and you can then release the babies into the sea, while at Rewaka you go and see the turtles laying their eggs and I guess at hatching time you can go and watch the babies heading for the sea. The idea is that you just watch and there is no human interference. That is all very well in theory, but I wouldn't exact say we didn't disturb them! 

We arrived at about 8.30pm and had a look around the really interesting little display about turtles. More and more people kept turning up until there were about 50 of us! And then we just waited. There were a group of spotters out on the beach looking for turtles on their way up the beach to lay their eggs. Once they saw one they radioed back to base and then we all queued up and paid (it was free if you didn't see anything). Then we set off up the beach (no lights allowed, understandably) at quite a pace as of course everyone wanted to get there first. The stretch of beach is about 2km long in total, and of course, this particular turtle chose the far end. When we finally got there we had to wait wait for her to get settled and start laying eggs before we could go and have a look. They called us forward in groups of 10, although of course as they didn't pick people to go everyone went at once. As much as they tried and told people no flash there were of course people who didn't listen. They had a red torch to show you, which is why the photo looks a bit strange. I'm glad we saw her, she was huge, at least half a meter across! But I felt very sorry for the poor turtle there was no way 50 people marching down the beach, talking loudly and flashing cameras at her didn't disturb her! After that is got even more disorganised, they told us that we could stay on the beach and watch any other turtles that arrived, or we could head back whenever we wanted. It was getting quite late, so we decided to head back. The only trouble being we missed the turning off the beach to the centre, we did eventually find it and made it back to our hotel at about 11.30. Rosamund was quite relieved to see us by that point, and we were quite glad to see our beds, ~2.5km march along the beach is quite exhausting! 

Believe it or not, a green turtle laying her eggs!

After Tangalle we pottered along the coast stopping at a couple of sites on route to Galle, a lighthouse (not quite sure which one it was) and a blow hole. The blow hole was something of a disappointment really, the sea was too calm to push any water out of the hole, so you'll just have to imagine the right hand picture with a jet of water coming up out of the middle of it!

The attractions between Tangalle and Galle. 

A stilt fisherman, nearly! He was just getting down to come and ask us for money

We then spent a lovely afternoon on the beach near Galle, with an excellent seafood lunch and some good snorkeling. Unfortunately so good that Ben managed to burn his back a bit, but he recovered! We checked into our hotel in Galle Fort. I can definitely recommend staying in the Fort itself, it has a lovely atmosphere. We had time for a little wander around the fort before sunset and a little shopping, drinking and eating after sunset. All in all a lovely evening and a lovely spot. It was pretty fancy, and had clearly gone in for up market tourism.

Old warehouse on the main square in Galle

Looking out over one of the bastions of the Fort

Galle Fort Lighthouse

Our final full day in Sri Lanka we started reasonably early as we wanted to make the most of our time in Colombo. There are basically 2 routes you can from Galle to Colombo, the expressway only takes about 1 1/2 hours, while the coastal route takes ~3 hours. We stopped off at a few places on the way, so took the coast road. While what we saw was interesting, I think maybe the quicker option would have been better. But our driver was from one of the places between Galle and Colombo and really wanted to show us the places on the way, so we went with it.

First we stopped in at the Tsunami museum, which was a really moving collection of photos from the Tsunami. I guess until then we hadn't really appreciated just how much it affected Sri Lanka. I knew it had, but the news what much more focused on Indonesia I guess. In fact Sri Lanka had the second highest death toll after Indonesia, some 35,000 died. 

Then we moved on to moonstone mine, it was interesting, but a little bit odd. It was pretty much just a big hole in the garden of a kind of manor house, in which was of course a large shop! Still, the jewellery was beautiful and we made some purchases.

Next up; a mask factory with a little museum. The museum was quite interesting, although the guided tour a little odd! Finally we stopped in a spice garden. I have to say, not as good as one we have been to previously, but still interesting to see the plants. They went a little bit overboard on the selling aspect.

Posing half way down the mine

Stones from this mine and from all over Sri Lanka

So we finally made it to Colombo. We stayed in the Galle Face hotel which is one of the famous posh hotels in Colombo. I have also just discovered it is the oldest hotel east of Suez, founded in 1864! The main reason, in fact, one of the reasons for coming to Sri Lanka at all, is that Rosamund stayed in Colombo on business a long time ago. She particularly remembers coming into the lobby of hotel and see through to the Indian Ocean and has always said it was somewhere she would like to come back to.  We don't know if it is the hotel (particularly since half the hotel is currently being refurbished), but it was certainly very nice anyway! We spent a few hours by the pool and then got showered and dressed up (as far as our limited wardrobes would allow!) and headed out for some cocktails on the terrace followed by a very nice meal in the restaurant.

Sunset from the Galle Face hotel

 The following day we headed out for a speedy tour of Colombo. We managed to have a quick look around the Fort area, taking in the Galle Face lawn  Dutch hospital, the lighthouse, the parliament building and the Sambodhi Chaithya temple before we decided it was far to hot for sightseeing caught a bus back to the hotel. We had time for a quick dip back in the hotel pool and some lunch before heading off for our flight back to Bangalore.

Old Parliament Building, Colombo

Colombo lighthouse

Sambodhi chaithya

Sri Lanka was an amazing trip. Some aspects are a bit like India, but for the most part it is pretty different. The craziness is much less, less people, less noise and most of all, no rubbish (that was lovely!). We of course stuck to really touristy places, but I would most certainly recommend a trip to anyone. 

Rosamund and Caitlin headed home the following morning and we settled down for a couple of weeks of normality before our final set of visitors. I got a little bored in those 2 1/2 weeks, but we still managed to fit in some good parties. It was just starting to heat up a bit here, but you will be please to hear most of our air conditioning works! 

xKathryn

Sri Lanka, 1st stop - Hill country!

So, having packed my parents off safely on the Monday morning, I then had a fun filled week of washing, ironing and cleaning before our next guests arrived on Saturday morning. Again, on the direct flight that gets in at 5am. It actually works quite well as you can head to bed for a few hours then get up and do something and go to bed at a normal time that night.

That afternoon we popped down to the local shops for some provisions so we could have lunch and then headed across the road to Bangalore palace. The following day we had a trip to the botanical gardens followed by a bit of shopping and a late lunch after which we had time for a cup of tea and then Rosamund, Caitlin and I headed to the airport. It took us some time to actually get out of the country (a plane full of Indian women who had clearly never been on a plane before really didn't help), but we eventually arrived in Colombo. We got to our hotel at about 11:30 and then caught the 7am train from Colombo to Kandy, so it's fair to say we didn't see a lot of Colombo!

On reaching Kandy we checked in to our hotel and managed to draw breath over breakfast. Kandy is a city in central Sri Lanka in a valley set around an artificial lake. It is a world heritage site as is was the last capital of the Sinhala Kings and is where the Temple of the Tooth Relic is.

So, we set out for a wander around the town (which is not very big) and a tour of the Temple of the Tooth Relic. The temple/palace complex is pretty extensive and impressive. We didn't go to the palace bit, but they are in the same complex. The temple is said to house the tooth of Buddha, not that you can actually see the tooth as it is housed in seven gold caskets inside one another.

From the temple of the tooth we had a well earned milkshake (possibly the cause of our later ills). Rosamund then headed back to the hotel for a snooze, and Caitlin and I went to investigate the Monkey Forest (or Udawatta Kele Sanctuary). We had a lovely walk for a couple of hours and did indeed see some monkeys, and some huge leaves that looked like crinkle cut crisps, which were quite fun! We then met up again for a traditional Kandyan dance show in the early evening, it even included people walking on hot coals at the end!

Given our late night and early morning we had an early dinner and night back at our hotel. The food was really good, it's a shame that was the only thing going for our hotel really. The room, particularly the bathroom, was pretty dirty and not great. Not much fun when half the party spent a lot of the night using it! I was the only one not to succumb, but I guess my digestive system is a bit more used to things.

A huge lizard just chillin' out at the lake (right next to the main road!)

The temple of the tooth relic

Kandyan dance show

After a morning of recovery time, we headed back to the station and continued on the same line to Nanu Oya, which is the station for Nuwara Eliya, about 20 minutes drive into the hills. Nuwara Eliya is known as Little England and was settled by tea planters. The weather was certainly pretty English when we arrived (WET)! Having spent 6 hours on the train, the ill ones, although now in recovery, were pretty tired. So we had a relaxed evening and an early night. After we had booked up our activities for the next few days that is.

The following day we headed up Single Tree Hill which wasn't far from the hotel and overlooks the town. After a lovely walk we thought we'd just about have time to have a little wander around town and grab some lunch before heading back to the hotel where we had arranged to be picked up for a tour of a tea museum. That didn't go quite to plan as the heavens opened en route, so we stopped in a fancy colonial style hotel for lunch instead. It was very nice, but did mean we never made it into town.

As tea museums go, it was quite a good one. It had a very nice cafe and shop where we were amused by the 10 or so Chinese tourists who were buying up all the tea in the shop - literally, they were packing 2'x3' boxes for them!

Picking tea - or pretending to at any rate!

Lake Gregory and Nuwara Eliya from Single Tree Hill

On the way up Single Tree Hill 

The following morning we headed off on our day trip to Horton Plains National Park, one of the reasons to come to Nuwara Eliya. Unfortunately you need to leave at about 5.45am to get the best weather. Still, I'm glad we did, the sunrise on the way up to the park was really stunning. Unfortunately my pictures don't really do it justice.  You wind your way up a mountain to get to the park and then, after the entrance gate where there is a little pause to buy tickets, the land opens out to a sort of a grassy plain, which you drive across to get to the car park.

Along with pretty much all other visitors to the park, we set out on the walk to World's End. It is about a 9.5km round trip to the cliff edge and you can loop back via a waterfall at the end rather than heading back the way you came. The walk takes you through a forested area, along a path that looks like it used to be a river bed, which is quite fun and before you get to World's End you first meet Mini World's end, a slightly smaller drop! The path back then opens out a bit into a valley and then through more trees. We even saw some monkeys, they were a bit far away, but we think they were purple faced langurs. The early morning was certainly necessary, the cloud was just starting to roll in when we got to World's End, if we had been half an hour later we wouldn't have seen nearly as much and by the time we finished our walk it was just starting to rain.

Sunrise on the way up to Horton Plains

Mist across the plains

The view from World's End (or maybe the mini one, I can't remember!)

Baker's falls on the return from World's end and a cheeky visitor to the cafe hoping for a snack!

From Horton plains we headed to the closest railway station to pick up our train. We were exceptionally early (about 3 hours) but there wasn't really anything else to do since by then the rain had set in for the day. Everyone thought we were very strange for not getting on the next train and wanting to sit around on the station, but we didn't really have a lot of choice since that's the one our tickets were for and the one that Ben was on. He had arrived on the same time flight as we caught the night before and caught the train from Colombo in the morning. He was certainly quite relived when we joined him and confirmed he had the right train (particularly as he claimed not to know where he was getting off!).

At least we had a bit of entertainment while we waited; the train going the other way spent a long time faffing about picking up some carriages from our station. Since most of the route only has a single track, only splitting into 2 at stations and a few passing places it took a huge amount of to-ing and fro-ing to put the carriages on the train. All in the pouring rain and with a lot of people trying to direct all watched over by the station master, all dressed in his white uniform and nice hat under an umbrella. It was great fun to watch!

Next stop, Ella, which was a lovely little touristy town. Quite different to Nuwara Eliya which had a bit more of a colonial feel to it, Ella has a slightly hippy touristy feel. We spent 3 nights in Ella, 2 full days. The time keeping of Sri Lankan trains is quite similar to Indian trains, so they were all about an hour late, which mean we didn't have time to do that much the evening we arrived.

The first full day we headed up Little Adam's peak. Which is the peak to one side of Ella gap. Ella is positioned at the end of a valley, and from certain places you get a lovely view down the valley. The walk goes through some tea plantations and then up about 100 steps to the peak, if you are feeling fit you can the go along a bit further and down to the next peak along. Quite a lot further and steeper down and then up than it looks!

The train

From Little Adam's peak toward the sea (Ella gap on the right)

On way way back we stopped at a very fancy resort at the top of a ridge, fairly close to the peak, for a well earned beer that turned into lunch to wait out the rain storm that start while we were enjoying our drinks. We finally left thinking the rain had passed. Caitlin, Ben and I headed off to finished the 10km loop which came back along the railway, over 9 arch bridge and through a tunnel back to the station. Rosamund headed straight back to the guest house as the thought of the bridge put her firmly off the idea of joining us. Needless to say, there was only a short pause in the rain and it then tipped it down for the next hour or so and we all got soaked!

No train coming - go go go!

 We then spent a happy afternoon pottering about reading, doing a bit of shopping etc. before heading out for dinner.

The following day we had a fairly early start, trying to get another good walk in before the rain started. This time on the other side of the valley we went up Ella Rock, which was really nice. A pretty varied walk involving ~2km along the railway track, the top of a waterfall and then a very steep couple of km to finish with. That day had somewhat better whether and the rain held off, so after a quick pit-stop for lunch we caught the bus down the valley to visit Ravana falls. It was quite an exciting bus journey, but we arrived in one piece, and even managed to get off at the right place! The picture below doesn't really do the falls justice (but I like the monkey); they were huge! If you look really carefully their are people sitting on the rock on the right hand side of the photo.

Half way up Ella Rock

Ravana Falls

Icecream anyone?! 

Or a new auto rickshaw?

And that was the end of our stay in Ella and hill country. The following morning we headed south towards the coast. Part 2 coming up!

xKathryn