A Sri Lankan Interlude

Tonight we said goodbye to our dear friends Caroline and Johnny, as they return to England after a two week whirlwind tour of central and southern Sri Lanka. And what a trip it’s been….

The Kearney-James family found themselves stuck in sleeper class (a sort of third class with bunks) for a long train journey from Canacona in south Goa to Trivandrum, in South Kerala. 22½ hours. It wasn’t as skanky as you might expect, although startling noisy when the train flies through a tunnel with crashing feedback through open barred windows. It’s enough to wake the dead, let alone a Mancunian full of diazepam!

Maya, our Canadian traveling friend rejoined us in Cochin, and we sneaked into her AC compartment as what seems like half the train alights at Alleppey in Kerala. This train was as stuffed as a sardine can (hence the earlier ticket problems) and when I go to find Maya, she’s about 1km away at the opposite end of the train. I swear it’s the longest train I have ever seen in my life. Great food tho.

Arriving in Trivandrum late evening, we opt for walking to find a guesthouse. We have learned that everywhere seems horrible when you arrive late, it’s dark and you’re sleep deprived, and it also happens to be raining. The first rain we have seen in months. In this hyper tired state, we fail to immediately notice the smeared dirty walls and filth caked floor in the rooms, and book into one of the filthiest hotels in Trivandrum - but possibly one of the cheapest and we have a TV.

I picked up the tickets from Sri Lankan Airlines first thing on Sunday morning and after a brief scoot around Trivandrum I return to the hotel with Weetabix and a carton of milk (major brownie points from the children). The children and I decide to stay in the grubby room and do face masks while watching mind-numbing American television while Lee goes off to explore the delights of Trivandrum. This is the man who had an enjoyable experience in Mangalore, so when he says it was interesting this needs to be interpreted with caution ;-) We tackle the airport at dawn on Monday, and after reams of security checks, we finally escape India to meet up with our lovely pals.

We’ve all been acutely aware that there have been some unsettling events between the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and Sri Lankan security forces during the last few weeks. However this trouble has been isolated in the north, and mostly around Jaffna, so we opt to stick to central and southern areas. We also opted to stay in the very plush tourist area of Mount Lavinia – firstly to avoid the grotty Colombo and secondly, cos JA and Caz are only here for two weeks, so we decided ages ago to forget the backpacker budget, go with the flow and enjoy some luxury.

The Mount Lavinia Hotel is the old governor’s mansion set on a stunning bit of coast with huge views back towards the capital, sweeping sandy beaches and frothy bright blue sea. Not surprisingly, we find our pals drinking G&Ts by the pool (for the quinine of course, it’s medicinal don’t you know). We opt to stay for the Sri Lankan buffet at the hotel which was not one of our better decisions of the tour. Surprisingly, for a predominantly Buddhist country, there’s not much vegetarian food. Bitter gourd is…. well it’s just bitter (despite smelling so delish and so I piled it high on my plate), banana flowers… well they’re just wrong (so of course we are served this just about everywhere we go) and just when we think we’re chowing down on a nice cashew and pea curry, we get a mouthful of pig. Suddenly none of us are too hungry anymore. Jet-lagged and train weary we retire early.

We take the train from Colombo to Kandy. Fortunately, Johnny Allan’s rugby experience means both him and Lee can hold back the scrum like pushing, aggressive crowd to prevent the children ending up between the train and the track, while I try to grab a few seats. There’s a lot more shoving and pushing on board, but our newly bred Indian tenacity means we grab scattered seats. The journey is incredible. Okay, Sri Lankan trains are rickety, noisy and slow (and rather dirty) but you can’t have it all. We are rewarded with some of the most beautiful and lush landscape we have ever seen. It just gets greener and greener. Every shade and hue of green lit by bright clear skies. And it’s soooo clean! I joked to Maya at the airport that while we shouldn’t get our hopes up, wouldn’t it be great if Sri Lanka was a beautiful as India, but cleaner. Well, it’s certainly that… and then some.

We stayed at McLeod’s Inn which has a lovely hillside location with stunning views down to Kandy lake and the Temple of the Tooth (Buddha’s tooth apparently). They rebuilt this temple in 1997 after it was blown up by the Tamil’s. There’s a lot of security but perhaps that’s a good thing for us just now. I get to practice yoga on the large balcony watching the sunrise (I will try and write something about my yoga course in Patnem at some point – suffice to say for now that it was really excellent and I have progressed in a number of ways).

In Kandy, we seek out Indian thali (not very nice) and a bit of shopping before visiting the Tooth Temple after a lakeside walk. We pay excessive amounts of money to eat average food at The Pub – gotta be our own fault really – if only we we were more inclined towards banana flowers.

Our first big day out is to Pinnewala’s elephant sanctuary. En route we stop at an ayurvedic herb garden and all part with substantial amounts of cash for somewhat low quality products. The orphanage wasn’t great either. Very few mahouts for large numbers of elephants and the whole feeding arena is a bit circus like and unpleasant. It has to be remembered that these elephants would be dead if not for this place and it’s not a sanctuary – they have retired ones, young orphaned ones and some wild elephants who’ve been injured (one poor fellow lost his leg on a landmine). Watching them bathe in the river (away from the sanctuary) was the best bit and I must have taken a whole reel of slide film photographing their antics.

The next day we headed up to Sigiriya, an ancient rock fortress in the central provinces. Unbelievable 360 degree views from the top – it really was awesome and wonderfully breezy despite the blazing sun. On the way back, we visit the ancient Buddhist caves at Dambulla, which were very interesting. We stopped for lunch and banana flower curry made its third appearance in as many days! We go out for great Chinese food that evening in Kandy and then all flopped early into bed, totally exhausted.

From Kandy, we realized that going to Adam’s Peak would fall on a weekend, when it is much too crowded and not at all peaceful. We opted to head straight to Ella in the heart of the tea country. After another aggressive boarding of the train and less successful seat grabbing, sitting on our bags we start a long (>8hrs) rickety journey over Sri Lanka’s highest peak to Ella. The views were just mind blowing. At one point it seemed as though you could see from the east side of the island to the west. Just incredible.

On the first day, Lee and I and the children take a short hike to see if we can find Little Adam’s Peak. We miss the turning but come across a tea factory set amongst very picturesque plantations, with views down through Little Adam's Peak. We decided an educational excursion was in order for Tevo and Roisin, especially as we have been travelling too hard for them to have time to do some structured work. We all rather enjoyed our tour of the factory more than we expected and left with large packets of their best cut.

Our guesthouse makes some okay food and this saves us from the truly bad and overpriced food being sold in and around Ella. We also have a cracking view through Ella gap and down to the southern plains, and a wonderful balcony for more sunrise yoga. The second day we take a lovely hike up to small Rawana Falls and return to Ella following the railway track – check out the photos. Very ‘Stand By Me’ and a most enjoyable afternoon.

After Ella, we headed to the south east corner of Yala National Park. Fantastic dawn safari accompanied by our chillin' guesthouse owner cum guide. We saw two lone Tuskers, a wild dog, grey macaques, lots of exotic birds, crocodiles, iguanas, wild boar, wild buffalo and samber deer. Everyone throughly enjoyed themselves.

Note to self: must do more safaris!

Back in Goa for Christmas

Arriving back at Agonda Beach we were greeted as great friends returning home, and that's exactly how it felt...home. The tourists had changed, other than a few, but all else remained the same. It's the perfect laid back location to surf, swim and beach it for a while.

We spend more time discovering nearby places now. Chaudi or Conocana town is blessed with the Darbar that is "Udupi". We eat south Goa's best thalis, somosas and dosas regularly, and shop here for food, all essential new pillows and Christmas presents.

Another new discovery is Patnem Beach, south of Palolem. We enjoy good food here and the slightly busier beach with some cafe music. This is a nice alternative to our shanti shanti Agonda. Also, Jac and Simon are taking an intensive five day yoga course here. Ultimately though we do have to go into Palolem, which we have lovingly renamed "Pandemonium". It does have a few redeeming qualities, in particular, the restaurant "Cheeky Chapati". Hands down winner for good name and veggie English style sunday dinners... We eat here once and decide that the Christmas dinner venue is decided.

Maya rejoins us at Dersey, closely followed by Guy, Kay and Martin who have been in Gokarna since we left them and also decided to spend Christmas here. We are as happily surprised as are they. Days later Simon and Gina wander in and our previous possee is all but complete.
Along with Brett and others we celebrate Christmas at Fatimas and all learn to sign, as in sign language. Tevo is now hands down most competent and fastest signer, practising daily with great enthusiasm.

We all over endulge during the hugely enjoyable festive days and start almost nightly beach fires. On New Years Eve, in a fantastic night of fire works and fun, and the biggest fire of all we all sing "Message in a Bottle" and "Wonderwall" and numerous other songs to Simon's superb guitar playing. Tevo gives a marvellous rendition of Road to Amarillo - it made Tony's night apparently. We are about thirty people strong and as happy as you can be.

Breaking away from South Goa for a couple of days we visit Panjim, Goa's capital, and Old Goa.
Panjim is pretty hectic but strangely calm at the same time. We eat at the superb "Venite" cafe in the Sao Tome area, and Sher E Punjab Tandoori Restuarant, reputedly the best tandoor in Goa. There is a big presence of Portugese buildings which are particularly interesting and gives certain areas a real charm. There are pavements to which is a novelty. It almost seems like you're in a gorgeous mediteranean enclave then the smell of effluent and waste slaps you back into a pungent reminder that this is definitelyIndia (that and the suicidal traffic). Old Goa is all but destroyed other than four Portugese Cathedrals. These include St Francis of Assisi, and the largest in Asia, Se Cathedral. Also the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where St Francis Xavier's body remains are displayed in an elevated glass case. He was hugely responsible for converting people to Catholicism and it is said that after his death, his body remained in a fresh state for many years afterwards until eventually various body parts were removed for examination and he then started to decompose.

Roisin and I take a long walk through the staggeringly beautiful southern hills of Agonda one day, using the sun as our compass. We also lay out our route with markers. We find a road after four hours not seeing another soul (quite a feat in India). Next day we learn that there is a tiger in the area, with many men looking for it.

Eventually we have to think about moving on. Jackie spends many days trying to get train and plane tickets for the next stage of our travels. A word of advice: buy tickets out of Goa around Christmas/New Year time very early. It seems that it's been an awful lot busier here than we realised. Eventually her exhaustive efforts are rewarded. On the 13th we train south to Trivandrum in Kerala and fly to Colombo, Sri Lanka a few days later.

Lastly, we have decided to return to India after Sri Lanka. There is more we would like to see of this ever amazing country. Our plan, at the time of writing, is to return late January to Chennai (that's Madras), visting Kolkotta (that's Calcutta), and Darjeeling on the way to Sikkim, east of Nepal and firmly into the East Himalaya. Again, this was a family decision. The children showing a great desire to return to the mountains. We have thoroughly enjoyed this rest time, becoming part of the village and spending lots of time with other people. We are extremely excited by the near future. Not just to be on the road again, but also we meet Johnny and Caroline in Sri Lanka, our best friends and a chance to catch up on events in Manchester in the last four months.

Happy New Year indeed!