Over the hills and far away

Tuesday 12th June, Kandy to Thissamaharama

So, the party is bonding quite nicely, everyone gets on Well now. Apart from Chris who knows everything, has been everywhere, and is always moaning. Here we are outside the Amaya Hills Hotel, except Dave who was at the loo!

Today would be a bus day. We had to get from Kandy in the middle of the country, over the mountains to Thissamaharama in the South for our visit to Yala National Park. Due to the school run ( must be the same in every country) we had a latish start, leaving at 8.30. We started to climb up and soon came to the first of the many tea plantations. Ravi knows everything about tea. We stopped off to watch some ladies plucking. 


They need to get 25k of leaves each day before they get paid. It looked like backbreaking work. Apparently they don’t automate it to ensure these families still have work. We then had a tour round a tea factory, where all the machines are old and lots of the work is manual, for the same reason. 


After they gave us a taste of their best tea. Here we found out that Welsh Dave has never ever had a cup of tea in his life. He loaded it up with sugar and forced it down. The verdict? He finished it to be polite but wouldn’t want to drink it again. 


We continued on up the mountain, passing loads of massive waterfalls, coming across a temple snided with monkeys. They do love a temple. Apparently they steal all the offerings!  


As we climbed a road full of hairpins a young boy waved a bunch of flowers at us, obviously trying to sell them. We rounded the bend and there he was again, he had run up the banking. This happened about four more time, causing a few of the guys to ask Ravi to stop. He had deserved his 100rupees per plant (about 50p). 


At the top of the pass is the town of Nuwaya Elia where the temp is a lot cooler. It was like Nepal, they all had thick coats and Tibetan hats. Ravi says temps can drop to 3 degrees, which is amazing when you consider we are almost on the equator. The road down from the summit is spectacular, and a bit scary, with not much in the way of an edge barrier. At the bottom Ravi let us get out and photograph Rawana falls. More monkeys here. And more salesmen, this time selling rocks. 


Selfie sticks rule!

We arrived at Badulla where we would take lunch in an old colonial building. The traffic was chaos, school home time, but as we pulled into the hotel it was like an oasis of calm. 


Ravi had asked us to order in advance, chicken or fish. I had gone for fish, mum for chicken, but she swore blind it was fish she had ordered. So I was a martyr and took the chicken, which was really dry. 

We still had another two and a half hours to go, so most of the bus took the opportunity to nod off. In truth, most of the bus nods off as soon as they get on, especially Ian and non-welsh Dave. After a long, sweaty day we arrived at the Hotel Chandrika. It’s lovely. We are in an upstairs villa that is huge. The bathroom once again has a massive shower, and a corner bath that I made use of straight away. However, there are no robes or slippers. I haven’t paid a fortune to not get a dressing gown! 


Great bed art

Next up, Safari!

Man of the day

Has to be the flower salesman

No New animals today





Comments

  1. Heather14 June 2018 at 08:08

    Good to read your blog again. I hope you did stop for the young boy with flowers.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rabbit in the Moon

Image
Sunday 10th May, Kandy So I have gleaned more info about the group. Mum is originally from East Dene although she lives down south now. Her son is Andrew and is actually really nice. Welsh lad is David (obviously), nice people from Hampshire Are Shane and Karen. Other two couples are both nice, contrary to first impressions. Malaysian Anne is lovely, Her husband Chis is still a first class plonker. The phone woke me heinously early and we were breakfasted and on our way by 8am. We passed this range of hills on the way, known as the sleeping soldier. Can you see it? It was a ‘temple day’ and ‘temple clothes’ were a requirement. First up was the temple set in the Dambulla caves, right at the top of a hill. Luckily Dave dropped us off near the top so we didn’t have too much up to go. We took off our shoes before entering and left them with the shoe protectors. It was here that, after 55years, I first heard about the Buddhist belief of the Rabbit in the Moon. I won’t repeat it as I’m sure ...
Read more

R and R

Image
Friday 15th June, Colombo to Kalutara   Our last few days in Sri Lanka were to be spent relaxing at the Royal Palms Beach Hotel in Kalutara. Only Shane and Karen would be going with us. Mum, Andrew and Welsh Dave we’re going home. Sharon, Dave Sussex, Chris and Anne were off to Another Hotel north of Colombo. And Pat and Dave Suffolk had a few days in the Maldives to look forward to. We all breakfasted together for the last time then waved the others off before a man with a van with air-con drove us four, with only a few hairy moments, to our R and R base.  The Hotel is very nice, although it has no bath, no Robes, and no Slippers. Luckily I stole the Amaya Hills slippers. The beach is littered with people trying to sell you saris and day trips so we avoid it, the sea is too rough to swim anyway. The food is great. And VERY plentiful. I had decided to do nothing (so not much to blog about) but was persuaded I needed to rise and be out for 8am one day to do a day tour. Good dec...
Read more

Space invaders, surprises and Ceylon Tea

Image
Friday 8th June Its unusual for a plane journey to be exciting, but this trip to Sri Lanka certainly was. We left half an hour late due to ‘trouble over Germany’ and my next door neighbour was trouble from the off. He was very polite, calling me ma’am, but he was a terrible space invader. He had a huge bag that he insisted on putting on the seat with him, his arm was constantly over the armrest, and whenever he went to his inside to pocket, which was every 10mins, he elbowed me in the face.  Still , I managed a bit of sleep, until the breakfast currie was cleared away when a giant cockroach dropped from the luggage rack right onto the girl across the isle from ian!! She screamed, it scuttled off under the rows in front, everyone leapt up, and the stewardess calmly sauntered over and caught it in a tissue.  I wouldn’t like that to happen again! We arrived at Columbo airport and sailed through customs, collected our luggage, bought a few rupees, and exited to find our guide, Rav...
Read more