Sitting here in the cool on our balcony in Ohiya overlooking the lush and peaceful tea plantation, it seems a far cry from the heat, dust, and hustle and bustle of Colombo where we started this sojourn to the south of Sri Lanka and up into the hill country. Our friend Leonie joined us for this trip on her way back to Australia following a two week holiday in Spain and Morocco. After meeting her at the airport in Negombo, we spirited her away to a very comfortable AirBnb in the suburbs of Colombo to recover from her journey. She was on speed recovery though as we were meeting some other friends later that afternoon for a drink and dinner near the harbour in Colombo. Our friends, Steve and Ines, were on a cruise from Singapore to Southhampton, and had one day and evening in Colombo. Serendipity played its part and this one day in their itinerary happened to coincide with ours. Leonie did a mighty job to struggle through her jet lag and endure the peak our traffic to arrive at the Galle Face Hotel for a late afternoon drink with Steve and Ines, who had spent the day touring the city.  How surreal for this group of Melbourne travellers to be sharing a plush lounge on the deep veranda of this hotel which harks back to the British times. We spent a pleasant few hours catching up as the sun set over the Indian Ocean before we moved on to find somewhere to eat, which proved too daunting a prospect with the time constraints that Steve and Ines had, given that their ship was due to sail that night. They returned to their ship to eat on board, and we found a little Chinese restaurant.

Our AirBnb in Colombo was run by a relative of Phil’s cousin who married into a Sri Lankan family. Lasantha and Ishani have two guest rooms and a bungalow in their well appointed family home in a leafy suburb. They are a lovely couple and made us ever so welcome in their home. After one of the legendary Sri Lankan breakfasts prepared by the housekeeper, Piyaseeli, we spent our second day absorbing Sri Lankan history and culture at the National Museum and Viharamahadevi Park. Our last day in Colombo was dedicated to finalising the details of our trip and venturing into the Fort railway station to book our seats for our three train trips. We had managed to get somewhat of a grip on Colombo’s buses so we got a taste of the chaotic public transport system and traffic that the locals have to battle with every day. Colombo is like many Asian capital cities – crowded, hot, dusty and noisy with little in particular to recommend. There are many large trees lining some of the streets, and these coupled with an afternoon breeze, provided welcome respite from the conditions. We were ready to move on.

We were up before the crack of dawn the next day (which was to become a bit of a theme!), and with a packed breakfast of Piyaseeli’s curried egg sandwiches in our bags, headed in to the Fort Railway Station to catch the train to Galle. We had reserved seats in the observation carriage which counter-intuitively is the last carriage. It does however have large windows including on the back of the carriage, which means you get a very good view of where you have been. The train track follows the coast for most of the trip to Galle so it was very scenic.

 

 

I had taken the advice of the Lonely Planet guide and booked us into a guest house located inside the walls of the Galle fort. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made for this trip. The fort is still intact and there is a whole community who live and work inside it. Despite the trendy cafes, restaurants and shops for the tourists, it has an incredibly historic atmosphere. After checking in, Phil and I visited the Marine Archeological Museum while Leonie cooled her heels back at the guesthouse. We had sundowners at the Galle Hotel, found a good Indian restaurant for dinner and collapsed into bed.

 

Marine Archeological Museum housed in an old wharehouse

The original fort entrance- there is now a new one built to take the greater flow of traffic

Our one full day in Galle ended up being a girls’ day out. Phil had been struck down by a bout of gastroenteritis and spent the day at the guesthouse. Leonie and I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours following the Lonely Planet historic walk in the fort, with a detour into the new town for a spot of shopping (well, it was a girls’ day after all!). Luckily Phil had seen most of the fort area the previous day when he went for a walk in the late afternoon. He would have been seriously disappointed to have missing seeing it. Leonie and I joined the locals for a promenade along the sea facing fort wall in the cool of the late afternoon, followed by a traditional rice and curry at Mama’s restaurant.

 

 

 

As Phil was still a bit borderline the next day, we hired an air conditioned car and driver to take us to our next stop, rather than endure the two bus rides and then tuk tuk which would have been needed to get us from Galle to our guesthouse near the gates of the Udawalawa National Park. We had a bit of a Fawlty Towers experience there with different sets of lights going off and on, and a non-functional television – initially a disappointment for us as we were looking forward to a spot of TV entertainment. Anyway eventually the lights were fixed after several conversations with the young men who were running the guest house – that turned out to be a blown fuse. The television was fixed by the guys installing the set top box which had not been left in the room.

We were up at the crack of dawn the next day (told you this would become a theme) to go on a safari through the park. Our driver and guide picked us up in the jeep and drove the short distance to the park entrance. We were a bit apprehensive when we saw the number of jeeps milling around and there was a bit of a jeep jam at one point early in the safari, but we did all spread out a bit after that. We saw quite a few groups of elephants, and got close up to a mother and her calf feeding along the side of the road. There are very few “tuskers” (male elephants with tusks) in this park and we were lucky enough to see a young tusker.

 

We stopped for a break at a large wet land area and saw loads and loads of birds fishing for their breakfast in the early morning light. Up to that point, it had been a pleasant but fairly unremarkable safari. However, we caught a lucky break when we drove past two large male elephants who appeared to be squaring up to each other for a contest. Sure enough, one charged the other and there was a bit of head butting until one backed right away from the aggressor. The vanquished elephant was not altogether happy though as he then proceeded to knock down a tree, while the aggressive one became a bit too interested in our jeep. This was the cue for our driver to accelerate out of there- he sure moved fast. Phil was lucky enough to capture this encounter on video (still shot from video below).

We were back to the guesthouse in time for a late breakfast. Again we gave up on the idea of getting a bus to our next destination, Haputale, in favour of a car and driver – a very cautious one at that, so we had a slow trip as we started our climb up into the hill country. The driver was unfamiliar with the location of our guest house and so it took a little bit to find the narrow dirt road that led up to the guest house located on the side of a fairly steep hill. This place, Leisure Mount View Holiday Inn, had simply magnificent views and we were lucky enough to have adjoining rooms with balconies overlooking rows of neatly manicured tea bushes.

Leisure Mount Holiday Inn

As we were a bit of a distance out of town, we elected to eat at the guest house and enjoyed a tasty buffet comprising of a number of curry dishes and of course, rice. We had another Fawlty Towers experience that night – the hot water services were a problem, and then Phil and I had a light come on in our room in the middle of the night that we couldn’t turn off. Phil ended up taking the light globe out! The lock on our door was not functional either, and the bathroom door did not shut properly.

We had a tight schedule the next day as we wanted to visit Lipton’s rest, the viewpoint where Mr Lipton used to sit to survey his empire, walk through some of what was the Lipton tea plantation, and do a tour of the Danbatenne Tea Factory, get back to the guest house to pick up our luggage and get to the station in time to catch our 1pm train. Our guest house manager assured us we would have time and arranged for a tuk tuk driver to ferry us around according to our schedule. The view from Lipton’s rest was indeed magnificent. We were most amused that the statue of Sir Lipton was just painted fibreglass.

View from Lipton’s Seat

Our driver took us part way down the hill, and we walked a bit through the rows of tea bushes and watched the pickers for a while. The pickers are all women and all from Tamil families originating from India. None of them speak any English and they are some of the most marginalised and poor people in Sri Lanka. It was interesting to watch the picking process and to see the morning’s picking being weighed in the field before being loaded onto trucks for transport to the factory. Each picker had a small book that she kept tucked into her sari, and in which the weights were recorded for later payment.

 

We managed to fit in a tour of the tea factory, which was also very interesting. This factory is the same one that was built by Lipton in 1890 and the processing of the tea is pretty much the same now as it was then. In less than 24 hours from when the leaf is picked, it has been fermented, dried and packaged. As a dedicated tea drinker, it was a great experience to walk through a tea plantation and see the processing first hand, especially in Sri Lanka where some of the world’s finest tea is produced.

We had a short, but absolutely spectacular, train ride climbing even further up to our next destination, Ohiya, which must barely qualify as a town, comprising the station and a couple of shops. We had booked into a place called Hill Safari, which got rave reviews on TripAdvisor, with lots of caveats about the drive up there being not for the faint hearted. We piled into the two waiting tuk tuks – Leonie and I in one, and Phil and the two suitcases in the other. The road was a windy, gravel track with a very steep drop off, and only just wide enough in some places for two small vehicles to pass. The tuk tuk drivers were clearly accustomed to it though, and Leonie and I just had to close our eyes and talk about something else. The views were worth the drive though – simply unparalleled, and again we were lucky enough to have a room with a view. This guest house included dinner as well as breakfast as once there, you wouldn’t want to have to endure the drive down and back to the “village” for a meal.

View from our room at Hill Safari

The main purpose of our visit to Ohiya was to do the walk through Horton Plains National Park to World’s End, so Phil and I were up at the crack of dawn (again). Leonie had elected to pass on this three hour walk. The local advice is to get to the World’s End lookout before 9am, since after that the mist starts to roll in and obscure the view. We enjoyed the walk, which was quite varied over different types of terrain and alternated between open plains and rain forest. The view from World’s End was terrific but we thought that the Lipton’s Seat view was better. The guesthouse had provided a packed breakfast which we enjoyed at the view point. It is a very popular walk, and so we did have to share the experience with quite a few others, including a rather noisy group who did not seem interested in the potential for spotting any wildlife. We had a quiet afternoon back at the guest house enjoying the views and watching the mist roll around.

The walk through Horton Plains

And the view from World’s End

The next day it was back down that narrow track to the train station for the journey to Kandy, during which we enjoyed more scenic views. Our arrival in Kandy was quite a shock after our tranquil few days up in the gorgeous hill country. Unfortunately, I had not checked the Sri Lankan public holiday calendar when we were planning our trip and so our few days in Kandy coincided with Sinhala and Tamil New Year. The celebrations entail returning to the family home and eating together. The times for cooking and eating this meal are determined by astrologers and so the timing can be quite unusual from our perspective. Anyway Kandy was absolutely choked with buses and people in the few days leading up to new year. The queues in the supermarkets were unbelievable. It was madness. We stayed in an AirBnb which comprised the whole upper floor of a house just back from a very busy street. The accommodation was very nice indeed and we had our own kitchen, living area, and two bedrooms with a giant shared bathroom. It was nice to cook a few ordinary meals and to be able to have simple breakfasts and lunches for a change. Unfortunately, it was very noisy due to the proximity to the street and also given the extra traffic associated with the holiday.

While in Kandy, we did a day trip to the nearby village of Pinnawala where there is an elephant orphanage. The village is on the banks of a river, and the elephants are walked through the streets and down to the river to swim twice a day. We got the bus from Kandy and arrived in time to watch the morning swim. What a sight to see about 20 elephants in the river together! There was a mixture of adult ones and young ones. Some were chained but most were not.

The highlight though was seeing them walk in a group through the street, and then across the road (with the police stopping the traffic to let them cross) back into the orphanage. We had positioned ourselves strategically and got a great view of them walking towards us, and then past us, quite close. It was just fantastic! I was struck by how quiet a herd of elephants can be!

Here they come!

We had planned to visit a tea museum just outside of Kandy, but we got there to find that the staff had taken off early for the new year holiday and it was closed- a day earlier than it was meant to be. I was very disappointed as I had been really looking forward to the museum, and also to be able to buy some of the good quality tea. We made our way back into town and cooled our heels with a drink at a flashy hotel. Later that afternoon, we went to a Kandy Cultural Show and saw the famous Kandian drummers, and quite a number of different traditional dances. It was an excellent show- just long enough but not too long, and great value at only $10 each.

 

 

We had heard that Kandy is a very beautiful city, but up to this point, we had been less than impressed, finding the city itself to be quite dilapidated. The hills surrounding it were green and pretty, and the view from the tea museum had been lovely. We ended up staying an extra day, as the buses were not running on new year’s day itself, so Phil and I could not get back to Trincomalee. Our AirBnb hosts treated us to a Sri Lankan breakfast on that last day – it was the best one we had. They are a couple who have traveled extensively and lived outside of Sri Lanka for many years, and we spent an interesting couple of hours with them. The new year actually started at 8.10am so we enjoyed our breakfast with much ruckus outside as fire crackers were popping off everywhere throughout the city. Later that afternoon, we went for a walk around the lake and that was quite beautiful.

Kandy Lake – plenty of beautiful flowers available for new year offerings at the temples

We found our way to the Royal Bar, hoping for a late afternoon gin and tonic, but while the establishment was open, the bar was not serving alcohol due to the holiday, so we had to be satisfied with soft drinks and coffee. We were greatly entertained from our seats on the veranda by a game of street cricket – a very fitting end to our Sri Lankan holiday. We were up at the crack of dawn the next day to start our respective journeys home – Leonie to the airport and back to Australia, and Phil and I to the bus station and back to the boat in Trincomalee, where we found everything ship shape. It had been a terrific two weeks, and all the more special to share it with Leonie.

Bye Leonie – see you back in Australia!