A trip to Sri Lanka (Part 1/3)

"Ayubowan":) to our notes. The first Sinhalese word we learnt. This is warm greeting you get from every Sri Lankan you meet and means "Live a long life".

Day:1 (19th December '09)

Our journey started at 6AM 19th Dec 09. The Bangalore Airport looked like Majestic bus stand with long queues everywhere. We took the Jet Airways via Chennai and reached Bandaranaike International Airport (Negombo) at around 2PM. The first thing I saw in the airport was a big Buddha statue which reflected peace. I started taking pictures with my new camera standing in the immigration queue. A security guard walked to me not to take photos. The LTTE pictures flashed my mind as I thought through it. We stepped out of the Airport and found a man holding a board Subramanya Brahmanda (name as in passport) written on it :) . We walked with him while he greeted Praveen alone :) . He asked us to wait for 5 min while he brought his car from the parking lot and we kept ourselves busy watching the crowd around. We then saw a silver colored BMW 7 series arrive with the chauffer smiling at us. I was totally convinced that he received us. Praveen n me got shocked for a moment and we started walking towards the car and the porter started loading our luggage into the boot. I was thinking of the pics I can take of the car once we reach the hotel :) . Suddenly a man comes running behind us saying this is his car :) . We came out of our dream immediately and laughed at what happened. In 2 mins our Chauffer arrives with a Red Lancer and we got into the car. I need to mention that this car was very comfortable to go around in Sri Lanka. The Chauffer introduced himself as Mr. Kapila and told us that he was appointed by Asian adventures to be our guide for 8 days and we will be toured in his car. Praveen started asking about our hotel in Colombo and the plan for the day. I was busy looking at the roads n instantly noticed that coconuts are orange in color and autos are in every possible color (red n black , green n black ,blue n black ). I immediately asked Mr. Kapila if the color code signifies anything. He laughed n said nothing in particular Mrs. Praveen. Then I introduced myself " I am Madhuri :) ".

On our drive to the hotel we found out that Colombo was divided into 15 sectors for administrative purpose and our hotel was in Colombo 1. The hotel Grand Oriental was right behind the Police head quarters and next to the Colombo harbor. Mr. Kapila left us to rest for the day but we walked towards the petta street in the evening as there was nothing much to do. We stepped into the room and we were quite disappointed at the first sight of it. TV was the only interesting thing in the room. One memorable thing in Colombo is the restaurant, It has a very beautiful view to Colombo harbor.

World Trade Center (Colombo)


Did YMCA come first or YMBA?


Days 2 & 3
Beruwela was our destination for day 2 & day3. This place was a 90min drive from Colombo and we checked into a beautiful sea resort Riverina. The resort is a perfect destination for leisure. Private beach, big pool , club house .. . what else can make a better holiday :)


We visited Bentota town and went around looking for water activities either in Bentota river or in the sea but none of them were too exciting and they cost a whole lot, so we decided not to take them up and spend the time in the private beach of the hotel. It was very calm and beautiful beach. The sunset in the sea is very picturesque. There was an Indian fancy dress show organized by the resort in the night and we being the only Indians around had good time in the audience ;). The food was ok in fact this was probably the best food we tasted during our trip to lanka. Madhu fell sick the second day and we spent the whole day in the hotel playing TT , watching India - Sri Lanka cricket match on TV and going for a long walk on the beach.

We stayed in Riverina for a couple of days but one day should be good enough at this place...
The water looks so pleasant yet can get very wild as it happened the second day when it rained heavily.. Truly magnificent and serene atmosphere...

The feet together ...

Another boat....

Boat sailing in the sea.. Pleasant sight




Finally the Sunset

Part 1 ends on Day 3.. We'll continue the journey in parts 2 & 3 ...

A Trip to Sri Lanka (Part 2/3)

Day:4 (22nd December '09)

I don’t know why, but we haven't realized that this journey would be about 7 hours before we started although we had the map and the Srilanka Tourism book which I was reading to get an insight into the places we were going to see that day.This turned out to be the best drive of our trip with the lush green surroundings, ghat roads in the mountain region and also the place we ended up going… Nuwar-Eliya

View from the Home Stay/Coffee Shop

On the way from Bentota/Beruwela to Nuwar-Eliya we've been to a Coffee Shop. It’s a home stay in the making and their backyard led to a river kelani which was very beautiful. The view was picturesque and they had a special ayurvedic tree that is used to treat heart ailments.

Flowers from the Home Stay garden..

White Water Rafting: This was the most exciting part of our trip. On the way to Nuwar-Eliya we stopped at Kitugala (which is about 2 hours drive from Colombo otherwise) where river kelani has a white water section with 4 Level 2 and 3 level 3 raft sections. To be honest I was a little hesitant initially since both I and Madhu did not know how to swim but then gathered some courage. We did still water rafting (I don’t know if it can be called rafting at all or not …) in Kemmangundi (Karnataka, India) before but that would turn out to be in no comparison to what we were about to do. We got into a boat with 5 Polish people who were there at the same time, incidentally they were all doing it for the first time too…
We had two guides one sitting at the front and one at the back. It started slow with still water and within 3 minutes or so we reached the first level 2 when the raft sloped through the rocks the guide (the front one) was the first one to fall as the raft tilted from one side to the other amdist the rocks and the flow was quite fierce.
On our way...
Rafting place (Kithugala)

We continued as he got onto the raft quite easily and in no time we reached the 2nd Level 2 and this time one polish lady fell into the water and was floating with her life jacket. The guide immediately jumped into the river to get her back. As soon as we finished this we entered a wider section of the river where the famous Hollywood movie "Bridge on the river Kwai" was shot. The guides showed us the rocks between which the bridge was built during shooting.
Then came the consecutive level 3's in a row… The guide gave us a few instructions before we entered the level3 to keep the body weight inside and to come completely into the boot once he yells. Since everyone was an amateur, all of us jumped into the raft s soon as the white water section came. The raft tilted to both the sides and we managed to pass it without overturn.
For the second Level 3 the guide told us that there could most probably a overturn and so it happened. The boat overturned and every one fell in different directions. I was floating on my back but Madhu was almost going down as she could not float probably because of the way she fell and was clinging onto my life jacket. The guides had a lot of work to do during this section they had the set the raft back and get all the people into it. It was such a wonderful experience although fraught with danger. The third level3 was also good but all of us were in the boat this time…
By this time the Level 2's were not that much fun anymore :) so we passed through the other level2's quite easily. We thanked the guides once we reached the other side of Kitugala and moved on to have lunch…. I would say this experience is something I can never forget. I realized that water is really exciting but very dangerous indeed.

Water Falls: Nuwar-Eliya is a hilly region about 1868 m from sea level where temperatures drop quite drastically within about 200km from Colombo. The temperature was suddenly sub 10 Deg. C. On the way to our hotel we saw Devon Water Falls and St. Clair Water Falls both from a distance and they are indeed beautiful. This is probably the quietest and unpolluted places in Srilanka. The landscapes and mountains bring the much needed freshness to the travelers and I would say this is a must see place in Srilanka. By the time we reached Nuwar-Eliya it was already dark and it was getting quite cold so we could not explore too many things tonight but tomorrow on the way back to Kandy we're going to start early and see some places before we push off to Kandy.

St. Clair Water Falls

Landscapes on the way to Nuwar-Eliya

Devon Water Falls

Gallway Forest Hotel: This is probably the best hotel we've stayed in Srilanka. Although not contemporary and modern it brought a sense of peace and calmness. The view from the room is really good and apart from a very few hotels thankfully this place in not yet commercialized and its nature in the purest form with some civilization around.

Day:5 (23rd December '09)
Nuwar-Eliya (Spelled: Nuwa-Reliya) to Kandy

We started at about 8 O'clock after breakfast at Gallway Forest. It was very cold and was filled with fog..On the way back to Kandy from Nuwar-Eliya we first stopped at the "Gregory lake" with horses and cows grazing the grass next to it. The greenery was such a pleasant sight. This place is also called "Little England". The pictures below should give you an idea of how beautiful it is… Tea plantations , leek plantations and fresh vegetables are something that one can see everywhere. The fresh vegetables made Madhu think about all she can cook with them :).


Landscapes at Nuwar-Eliya and Gregory lake

Sita Eliya Temple: The Hindu Epic Ramayana has a connection with this place People here believe that Ravana hid Sita in this place. It also has a mark of Hanuman foot. You can see a glimpse of the foot in the pic below. By the way this is just one of the many places where they claim this.. Interestingly, there is a special tour called "Ramayana Tour" in Sri Lanka where they show all the places they claim that sita stayed..

A view from the temple

Monkey at the temple
They claim that the hole is Hanumans' foot

Tea Factory: Nuwar-Eliya is one of the most important locations for Tea production in Srilanka. We went to a tea factory where they explained the process of manufacturing tea from leaves. They employ hundreds of women, each one plucks about 22kg of Tea leaves per day. We reached Kandy about lunch time and went to a restaurant called Devon. We were the only people apart from the staff in the restaurant as we reached in only by 4.00 PM

Tooth Relic Temple: Now comes the very famous Tooth Relic Temple in Kandy. The tooth was brought to Srilanka by a princess named "Hemamali" from India in her hair and it remained in Srilanka since then. The temple has a museum where they portray the LTTE bombings that destroyed the temple in 1998. It’s a very beautiful and sacred temple for Buddhists


Lord Buddha at Tooth Relic

View from Tooth Relic
Cultural Dance: Our guide made us run to a auditorium 1 km away from the tooth relic temple so that we don't miss a bit of the cultural dance program :). There were 7 - 8 forms of dance (which were more like folk dances in India ) and some of them needed great practice with the props they used and postures they adopted. The dance ended with few men walking on fire. The whole show was more tribal and they used lots of drums in the performance. With an ear for Indian music and classical dance honestly I should say I didn't enjoy it much. But it took me back in time imagining the tribes performing for the Kings.

Shopping: Street T-Shirts which had Srilanka written on them. It was the only local shopping we did in Sri Lanka apart from buying a Buddha statue. We bargained and were successful to get the T-shirts for about the half the quoted price.

A trip to Srilanka (Part 3/3)

Day:6 (December 24th '09)

On the way from Kandy to Sigriya we visited
Noritake Ceramic Factory
a. A Japanese company with its manufacturing unit 20km away from Kandy. They have an outlet where you can buy dinner/tea sets for a reasonably good price. They also have seconds items which are slightly damaged (I couldn’t find any damage in them :) )which are at a very affordable prices compared to in India.

Batiks
a. This is a factory of Hand made Batiks. There are lot of these along the way from Kandy to Sigriya but we went to Baba Boutique where the factory supervisor religiously explained the process of creating the boutique. The stuff there was really good but it was quite expensive so we had to settle for a small batik.. I've seen such stuff in Rajasthan and other northern parts of India at a much cheaper price… The process these guys are using may be very old and hence all these hand made stuff is very expensive.. The supervisor was saying that because of the war in Srilanka these workers are hardly able to work for 10-14 days a month and they do on a rotation basis.

Spice Garden
a. Ayurvedic garden where they have cocos, vanilla, papaya, pineapple, ginger, cinnamon, choco, lotus, allovera they grow this stuff and convert them to oils that are used in ayurvedic treatment of various diseases .
Again there are a lot of these spice gardens on the way from Kandy to Sigiriya, the one we went to was called Number 9 New Paradise Spice Garden (Check the name) They served us chocolate tea, it was good.. Again if you go the shop to buy any of these stuff its quite expensive.


Dambulla Golden Temple
a. About 200 steps to climb this temple has about 5 caves where there are different poses of Buddha. The temple is completely surrounded by greenery. Photography is allowed but as in all the Buddhist temples you are not allowed to pose for a photographs with Lord Buddha behind you. There is a huge buddha statue in Gold color and I believe to have read somewhere that this is the biggest Lord Buddha Statue in the whole world.


Dambulla Golden Temple
We bought a small souvenir of Lord Buddha made of Mohogany wood for our house from a road side shop.

Sigiriya Hotel:
a. Hotel Sigiriya is good and very eco friendly compared any of the other hotels we stayed here. It was the 4th One day international between India-Srilanka today and since the standard room in this hotel did not have a TV we had to go to the common place where they were showing the match. There were only a couple of other Indian people around but the atmosphere is as charged up as it is in India. Old, young, men, women all stuck to the tv to watch the match and they were clapping for every shot hit by Tharanga and other SL players and showed huge signs of relief when Sehwag and Tendulkar were dismissed, I could see the disappointment in every SL face around when Gambhir and Kohli played marathon innings to get India out of trouble, they were discussing various strategies that Sangakkara could have applied just like we would do in India.. In short, the atmosphere and enthusiasm for cricket is very similar to that in India…

Sigiriya Rock on the way to Sigiriya

X-mas celebrations and food was so damn expensive :)..Its very difficult to find any other restaurants around so we stuck to the hotel restaurant although the vegetarian options are quite limited. The spaghetti was quite decent though. We were in Sigiriya on 24th & 25th December which happened to be Christmas so the buffet was very very expensive (about 1600 INR) and with about 4 vegetarian options so we skipped the Christmas dinner and settled for a portion of French Fries and Vegetarian Sandwich (I had two diaquiris :) ) Interestingly no alcohol is served in any restaurants in Srilanka on all New Moon Days, public holidays including Christmas.

Day:7 (December 25th '09)

Sigiriya Lion Rock: Claimed to the eighth wonder of the world in Srilanka (Like we Indians claim that TajMahal is the eight wonder of the world). Its apparently recognized as one of the Worlds heritage sites. The trek was pretty good. I believe that it was about 118m steep trek but the guide claimed it to be 300m. It rained very heavily on our way up and down which made it slightly more difficult than it would have otherwise been but it was a very satisfying experience. The top of the rock was completely filled with fog. Although the palace is not there anymore this provides a great view point for the surroundings. You should visit the Sigiriya Museum before you start the climb as that gives you a good historical background of the place and the rock. I managed to click some photos on the way up and down…

View from the foot of the rock

Grazing cows..

Entrance to the climb...

Rock to climb...
View from half way up ...
Monkey is also climbing with us...
Lions paw..
It was pouring down at the top ... completely foggy

Day: 8 (December 29th '09)

Pinnawale Elephant Orphanage:
This was our last destination in Sri Lanka on the drive back to the Airport. This Orphanage has around 40 elephants that are taken care by the government. The elephants have a daily routine for food and water. At 9:15 in the morning the visitors can feed the baby elephants with milk and then at 9:45 all the elephants are taken to a river nearby to drink water. Each elephant usually has 200lts of water per day. So they are taken to the river twice everyday. The baby elephants are very cute and but unfortunately they are chained :(. We managed to take some pics posing with the elephants.


Elephants at the orphanage...
The trip was awesome.. With the war now behind them Sri Laka will certainly attract more tourists now than it has in the past 20 years..

Ayobowan :)