'bini flashbacks

As we only have three weeks here, this is a bit of a whirlwind tour of Sri Lanka and a completely different style of travelling to what we did in India. In that vein we are now on the south coast, having left Ella several days ago and then spent few days in Arugam Bay, the surfing heart of the country.

We would have stayed in lovely Ella longer but our time limits constrained us and once we had conquered all the peaks and climbs- which we did- we thought we should move on. Will had been keen to try surfing ever since we decided to come to Sri Lanka so the obvious next stop was Arugam Bay. It's the best time to be there now, sunny, warm and beautiful blue water and the town full of very tanned people with dreadlocks and sun-bleached hair (that's surfers...) So we stayed there some time, ate some delicious muesli, swam and got burnt and Will managed to teach himself to stand up on a surfboard and even ride the odd wave (there were also a lot of crashes). I, on the other hand, could see what tremendous effort it was learning to surf- you have to battle out over the crashing waves to even get to the point where you try to catch a wave in, then you either miss it and sit around waiting for the next one or catch it then invariably fall down and have to battle your way out there all over again- and decided I probably wouldn't be too upset if I gave it a miss this time...lazy? Very, but I'm ok with it.

After a few days of this (in keeping with our lightning tour) we decided to head south to a beach called Unawatuna, a place the trusty (though this I'm beginning to doubt) Lonely Planet said was a tropical paradise. Tropical paradise I'm sure it would be, if it weren't for the gently monsoonal weather of right now...we even checked the rainfall at this time of year in our treacherous guide book and it is supposed to be the second driest time to come, but this morning we awoke to a thunder storm and torrential rain and the sky is very defiantly remaining gray and cloudy.

It is also, as our luck would have it, Buddhist festival time. I'm not sure if anyone remembers my post about Lumbini, where we also stumbled on a festival- in fact, I can't even remember exactly what I wrote- but the constant wailing and "singing" being broadcast over the loudspeaker is, as Will said, as if his ears had taste-buds and somebody was squeezing lemon juice into them. Quite a neat analogy and perfectly apt. It's quite horrible. It isn't as bad as Lumbini because our room is pretty well soundproof and we can escape to the other end of the beach when it gets too much, but it beggars belief that the quietest and most peaceful of all the religions would celebrate festivals in this way.

All in all though, it's ok here. We probably won't be able to go snorkelling but we can go swimming and, if we are feeling cliched, for long walks along the beach. We are also staying in a room with hot water and internet that works which is about as luxurious as it gets for us. And it is only $12 a night. (In comparison, our $18 a night room in Arugam Bay came with its own set of frogs that lived in the bathroom and a mosquito net that allowed the mosquitoes inside to feast on our flesh whenever they chose).

So that's the lesson from today's post everybody- it's all a balance. Yin and Yang and all that (I knew I got my tattoo for a reason...)

Now, a few days after this post, I'd just like to add a postscript- the weather cheered up a bit and it's been perfectly sunny and tropical and I've taken some pictures that would make everyone at home, in the cold, very jealous (if only I could figure out how to upload them). 

tea drinking and view hunting

Welcome to Sri Lanka us. After being in India for the last 3 months we have not been able to get over how clean it is here, how much empty space there is and how much more pride the people seem to take in their surroundings. Also how nice and helpful the people are (this, as always, does not include tuk-tuk drivers). We were on a train the other day and as we were going through a station we noticed the car park was completely empty...something we hadn't seen ever in India. Also instead of beggars and half-dead dogs, the train stations here have fish tanks and hanging pot plants...

The travellers here are also a different breed to what we got used to in India. There we were with our own kind- the smelly, sweaty, thrifty kind of backpackers who don't mind a bit of an upset tummy from that street-stall dinner because it saved them $3. Once we arrived in Sri Lanka our smelly dirty clothes suddenly seemed to stand out a lot more...here it is all families with young kids or young couples on a no expenses spared 3 week tour around the country. To put it plainly, everyone dresses up in the morning, puts on their make-up before they leave their fancy air-conditioned hotel for a day of sightseeing in the hired car.

It's a lovely country though. Certainly not as interesting as India but a lovely relaxing wind-down from the sub-continent. Tea is big business here. It brings in close to US$1 billion per year and provides employment to a huge number of Sri Lankans. We have duly visited a tea museum and a tea factory and walked 7km's through tea plantations to 'Lipton's Seat', where Thomas Lipton (the man who began the company who now produce the iced tea everybody loves so much) used to sit and entertain his fancy guests and survey his growing tea empire. We learnt the process through which fresh tea leaves are turned into the little black things that go into our teapots- it's a lot of rolling and sifting and blowing with hot air but it actually only takes about 10 hours for fresh leaves to become tea-pot ready. We learnt about James Taylor who, along with Thomas Lipton, made the Sri Lankan tea industry what it is today...he came from Scotland and grew and produced his own tea, never married and only left his plantation once, to go to Darjeeling to study tea. So he was a  little tea obssessed. Thomas Lipton, another Scotsman, ensured the rest of the world grew to appreciate tea as much as the folks in England did...he marketed very cleverly and grew his own tea which he sold in his own supermarkets at a lower price, to entice the working classes. So these men are much lauded here. We have also done our bit by drinking as many pots of tea as we can- very difficult job, someone's got to do it.

The other main thing to do here seems to be climbing things, view-searching you could say. So far we have climbed a big old rock, atop of which there are the remains of a monastery. That was quite a lovely view. We could also admire the very old frescoes of colourful women painted into a niche in the boulder, and scratch our heads as to how the artists didn't fall to their deaths whilst painting.

We also (very misguidedly) climbed a mountain called 'Adam's Peak'. It is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists who begin the climb at 2am so they can make it to the top in time for the sunrise, which is supposed to be spectacular...I think the reason we saw no pilgrims as we were lumbering up the 5000 steps in the middle of the pitch black, raining, fog-laden night was that they knew there was no chance of seeing the sunrise at this time of year. And hey, turns out they were right. We did get a killer view of heaps of fog though, and probably came quite close to catching pneumonia...but we did it, despite everything, so now we can gloat over all those lazy souls who decided the warmth of their beds was preferable to the storm clouds and cold. Anyway, bad view.

As I said, we also climbed to Lipton's Seat which I'm sure would have been a simply splendid view had the blanket of fog decided to lift at any stage...didn't though. It was a nice walk however so it scores points on Adam's Peak.

We have hit the view jackpot now though. We are in a little town called Ella in the hill country. It's very much set up for tourists but it has some amazing views of mountains, hills covered with tea plantations and forest and waterfalls dotted about the place. And best of all, no fog obscuring any part of it! So we have finally found the view we've been searching for and can reward ourselves with cake and coffee at the relaxing cafes after spending the morning wandering amongst it.