Sri Lanka
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Gorgeous gardens. I had an Uncle who was stationed on Ceylon (Sri Lanka), he brought back some lovely local jewellery and other crafts for my Mum when she was in her teens.
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I assume then, Moulesy, that you'll be doing a modicum of gardening on your return.
Hoping, of course, that any samples, cuttings, etc etc are taken from the very latest Thompson & Morgan catalogue 
!! ( Other Gardening manuals / suppliers do exist of course 
)After that little 'mickey - take' I thank you for your posts M, almost makes it worth while leaving my cuppa to go cold
Brian
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Today we've come right up into the mountains to the town of Nuwara Eliya which is about 6000 feet above sea level. The town is about as typically colonial Ceylon as it gets! The hotel is like something out of an Agatha Christie novel, with sumptuous furniture in the public areas and wonderfully manicured gardens. In the town itself is a famous post office and post box, illustrating the origins of the place.
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By contrast, there is a bustling fruit and vegetable market and an utterly chaotic bus station!
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Along the way there were some spectacular views and we passed mile after mile of tea plantations. We visited a tea factory to hear a bit about tea production and it makes you realise just how much work goes into the making of a daily cuppa! We didn't see any pickers as it's a public holiday today (they have one for every full moon) but we were told that the women have to pick 20kg of leaves a day to earn roughly the equivalent of $8 a week.
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Great pictures throughout your trip, keep them coming. The fruit on the market looks too good to eat!! Did you try some of the more exotic ones? How many more days are you away?
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Nellie - we didn't try any of the fruits, but there were some interesting looking ones there. We've got another 6 nights yet, 3 down in the national park including a couple of safari drives and then the final 3 which will be a bit more relaxing on the coast.
Micky - I had a real stroke of luck yesterday morning. I was sitting out on our balcony enjoying a cup of coffee when this bird of prey swooped across in front of me. About the size of a buzzard but with a gorgeous chocolate brown coloured body and a pure white head. I had to Google it to identify it and it was a Brahminy Kite. Too quick for me but if you look at Google images you'll see what I mean.
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More wonderful photos and interesting info moulesy. Thank you. I loved the look of the botanical gardens, the fruit market and the 'Agatha Christie' hotel.
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We had a long and rather tiring 8 hour journey down to Yala on the very south tip of Sri Lanka today. Passing some wonderful mountain scenery and waterfalls along the way. The highlight was the visit to the elephant orphanage at "lunchtime"!
The orphanage cares for baby elephants which have been abandoned in the wild or whose mothers have died. The aim is to stabilise them until they are about 7 years old and then, if possible reintroduce them to the wild. Apparently, it has been a great success. It was quite a comical spectacle watching them being allowed in a few at a time to get to the milk station and then across to their food. The tiniest ones really sprinted in to make sure they got their fair share. Some obviously found the grass on the other side of the fence more appealing though! We watched them for about half an hour before they all trudged off back to the reservoir.
To cap it all, when we arrived at our hotel which is right in the centre of the park, the first thing we saw in the car park was this huge bull elephant. The hotel is actually a series of lodges set over a large area and we aren'the allowed to move between our lodges and the main reception area without an escorts because of the danger of wild animals on site.
Tomorrow is an early (5:30!) start for the first of our jeep safaris.
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Some wildlife from around the national park - plenty of monkeys, warthogs and water buffalo but sadly no elephants or leopards today!
Also plenty of birdlife though most far too quick for me. But we did see this gorgeous pair of green bee eaters and this tiny blue humming bird.
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We also visited the beach where the Boxing Day tsunami hit Sri Lanka in 2004. There is a simple but poignant memorial sculpture and stone right next to the foundations of one of the beach bungalows which was swept away in the disaster.
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Wonderful photos moulesy. What a wonderful experience you are having. I look forward to the next instalment.
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My daughter and husband came back from Sri Lanka last weekend. They flew out from Birmingham with Emirates, travelled independently and booked accommodation via Airbnb - and were glad they had booked it as they were surprised how busy those places were, especially more Germans than Brits. They found Airbnb hosts very helpful - for example in booking a tuk tuk for full day tour in and around Kandy and telling them what and what not to pay.
They toured using trains and taxis, but met many people who had a car with a driver meet them at the airport and staying with them the whole time - people who admitted they were too cautious to travel alone but who said that making conversation at every meal with a local driver got very tedious. They tried to assure those people that it was easy and safe to travel without a full time driver, but failed .
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Yesterday evening we went to the holy town of Kataragama, one of the few sites in the country where there are Buddhist, Hindu and Moslem temples in the same compound. We visited the large stupa where tradition has it a lock of hair from the Lord Buddha is kept. We saw a colourful procession and we're then blessed by a Buddhist monk (who rather spoilt things by then telling us he'd lived in London for 35 years and could recitell every London postcode and location by heart!
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As it went dark we were invited to witness the actual Buddhist ceremony. I'm not sure we knew exactly what was going on but it was a colourful and noisy spectacle all the same.
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a Buddhist monk (who rather spoilt things by then telling us he'd lived in London for 35 years and could recitell every London postcode and location by heart!
Leslie Welch( the memory man) has become a Buddhist monk?
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We had another 5:30 start yesterday for our second jeep safar, this time in the Bundala National Park. It mainly consists of wetlands and was primarily a bird watching trip. There was a fantastic variety including several species of kingfishers, herons and lapwings. Unfortunately my tablet's not up to close up shots but you'll be able to make out the colony of painted storks in the first photo and the tiny speck in the second is a beautiful blue tailed bee eater which sat posing for several minutes. We ate a picnic breakfast overlooking the Indian Ocean, then, on the way back the driver got very excited when he saw these two male elephants "playing" on the road, though it looked a bit rough to me! Eventually they crashed off back into the forest, literally - there's little finesse with these beasts, they literally trample any plants or treestate in their way. It makes you begin to understand the hostility which some remote villages show towards them as they can literally destroy a whole farm's crops in minutes.
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We talked to our guide about that. Apparently over the past 10 years or so the government has been working hard to extend the range of the national parks to reduce the incidents of confrontation between man and beast. They've also been investing with the Born Free foundation to aid the works of centres like the orphanage we saw. It's quite a heartening picture really!
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We've reached our final port of call, Beruwala on the west coast about 50 miles south of Colombo. We stopped off briefly at Galle on our way which has some interesting Dutch buildings and an historic fort. The old fishing area is quite picturesque but otherwise there's not much of distinction that we noticed (apart from the Test Match cricket ground right next to the fort!
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Beruwala is really little more than a beach resort and the hotel is not like any of the others we've used - large, noisy and very, very busy. But there is a beautiful mile long sandy beach to stroll along and use up the last few rupees at the inevitable tat (sorry, souvenir) stalls!
We fly home tomorrow; it's been a wonderful holiday on an island with so much history, nature, culture and interesting buildings. So much more than just a beach destination, though having said that, the long sandy beach here is not a bad memory to take home with us.
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