An old-arse wooden temple, and a botanical garden
Peradeniya Camera Roll
Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan Wedding Camera Roll
A Sneak Peek into a Sri Lankan Wedding
Balapitiya or: The Weirdest Home Stay Yet.
It was 1:30am and Jackson wakes me up with a start. I crack my eyes open to see something black flying over the edge of the bed.
“What was that?” I mumble. Too tired to consider it anything serious.
Jackson, immediately alert, says: “Something just crawled across my face.”
“What was it?” Reading something wrong in his voice.
“I’m not sure.” He answers, tensing as he looks around his pillow and the edge of the bed.
I’m awake now. “Jackson… Was it a bug?”
“Yes.”
I glance at the mosquito net that surrounds us. How could a bug get in with the mosquito net over us?
“Anyway, I think it’s gone.” Jackson says, lying back on his pillow. I lie back on mine and wait for sleep to come. A few minutes later Jackson jerks upright again.
“It’s back!” He says, leaping off the bed and going for the light switch.
“What!? What’s back? What is it?”
“I think it’s a roach.”
Nothing on this planet gives me the heeby-geebies quicker than the thought of a roach crawling across me.
“WHAT THE FUCK! WAS IT CRAWLING ON YOUR FACE!?”
“Yeah, I could feel it near my mouth when I woke up.”
There was a cold pause.
“Where is it now, Jackson?”
“I don’t know, but I won’t sleep until we find it.”
I shot out of bed. Mosquito net be damned! I didn’t want to be near the bed.
“KILL IT!!”
Jackson grabbed his phone and a shoe and went to work, carefully checking the bed for any movement. I stood on a small patch of rug (no chairs in the room otherwise I would have stood on that and squealed).
Seconds rolled by. Jackson couldn’t find the bug.
“We need to move the mattress.” He said.
We did. Ripping the thing off the bed posts and sliding it across the room.
Still nothing.
Jackson started hitting the bed with his shoe, coaxing the Demon Spawn out with his thumps.
Then: like a horror movie, I could see antenna, frantic little legs and a black, beady head stick itself out of the wooden slats of the bed. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep from shrieking. It was big.
Jackson, waiting like a trained hunter in the jungles of lore, slowly raised his shoe for the death blow. He had to be quick and he had to be accurate, because if he missed that Hell-Splinter would crawl back under the bed.
His strike was sure and true. I tossed him a napkin and he took the extra measure to make sure there was no roach second-life by crunching it again and then tossing it in the garbage.
After putting the room back together we lay on the bed in silence.
“Jackson? Remember that HUGE iguana we saw today walking across the balcony to its hidey-hole in the roof?”
“Yeah.”
I slapped at a mosquito which had just landed on the inside of the net. “That roach was way worse.”
“I can’t believe it crawled on my face; I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for a while.”
“Me neither…”
The next morning, our host, Harrison, asked us how we slept.
“Fine.” We lied. How could we tell him about the nightmare of the night before? What could be done about it? We did, however, leave the carcass “butter side up” in the trash bin so that whomever cleaned the room would see that there had been a just murder of evil.
Jackson and I had the unfortunate luck of getting a cold. Thankfully, we got a cold at the same time so we could sniffle and sneeze together. This also meant that there was no energy for going to the beach, exploring, or doing anything more than reading a book on the balcony that overlooked the gardens of the home stay.
Harrison, a balding retiree from the air force, was a very nice, but very strange host. Throughout our stay he would show us every piece of paperwork he had about himself, right down to how much his pension was a month from the government. He’d also pop up randomly throughout the day to the balcony we were sitting on, one time coming up to us with a battery powered keyboard and playing (and singing) us a couple of Sri Lankan songs with his index finger before standing up and walking away, leaving the keyboard and no explanation.
“I am your Sri Lankan Father!” He’d proudly state at dinner, as his wife, Indra, set the table. Sri Lankans, as a whole, are quite formal. Guests will sit at the dinner table and eat and the hosts will not join them, but instead hover around the diners in case anything is needed. It’s really disconcerting when you are trying to eat dinner, but the person who’s house you are in is standing over you and watching while you eat. Not Harrison, he’d pull out a book filled with declarative statements translated from Sinhalese and shout “You are my daughter and son! I will never lie to you! I will never cheat you! Your happiness is my happiness!”
Jackson and I would sit in bemused silence, nodding and chewing.
“Harrison? Did you know there is an iguana that lives in your roof?”
“Yes!”
“…cool.”
Tangalle
Hello. Dinner for two?
Would you like to have your meal on the beach? How about on a private beach? And we’ll set up a bonfire for you as entertainment.
Would you like your own fresh-caught fish? And we’ll have the stars come out as the last of the day dies away and the waves will serenade you as you eat. Let’s say… 7:30pm? How much, you ask? Oh, about $30 USD should be more than enough. Just buy the cook a bottle of arrack beforehand to butter him up.
This is what would have been the conversation had I mapped out a perfectly candle lit dinner for two with the universe’s representative. I mean… To describe fully what that dinner was would be an understatement. It was magical. It was unexpected and while it was happening it felt unreal. The staff as Alska Home stay Pulled. Out. The. Stops.
While Tangalle doesn’t have too much to offer the culture vulture, the beaches on the southern coast are really pretty.
My only critique would be of the surf which can get really rough and isn’t encouraging to swim in. Otherwise, you’ll find palm-lined beaches with coconut trees and large lizards poking their head out of the shady undergrowth.
On our first night, the cook at Alska Home Stay was out so we decided to go for a quick walk to check out the local restaurants. Picking up a wanderer on the side of the road (Alex, from Belarus but now lives in Holland) we got dinner at “Turtle Landing” which turned out to be really overpriced and not great. Plus, Alex talked our heads off with stories of I-don’t-remember-what. No thanks, we don’t want to go on a safari to Yala with you tomorrow, ‘k bye!
Thankfully, the cook, Rohitha, at Alska, showed up the next day and made some of the best meals we’ve eaten in Sri Lanka!
Delicious vegetarian and vegan plates piled with fresh vegetables and crispy, salty papadum. For dinner on the first night we ate on the beach (like the first paragraph stated) and on our last night Rohitha made us a platter of delicious seafood! Fresh squid in a salty curry broth, steamed shrimp, and lightly curried fish served with a salad of banana and tomato (weird, but worked!) and fluffy garlic rice. It was all so good.
Tangalle- Alska- treated us really well.
Haputale and Horton Plains
Haputale was a delightful accident.
Haputale happened because our other plans fell through. The AirBnB host we had booked in another town bailed with a quick “Sorry, I’m diving in the Maldives? So, like, um, no one is there to let you in. K’ Bye.” (I’m paraphrasing a little…).
Scrambling at the bus depot Jackson made some hasty plans to go to this tiny town to the East of the National Park called Haputale (Ha Pu Tah Leh).
It took us about 2.5 hours to get from Nuwara Eliya to Haputale by bus. We hopped a bus from N.E. to Bandarawela then a local bus the extra 25 min to Haputale.
Haputale sits on the edge of a mountain range that gives the viewer a chance to look out on creation itself. The views from the road that snake down toward the coast is absolutely stunning. It feels like the edge of the world is on one side, Haputale on the other.
Our accommodation, Hotel Nature Horizon, sits on the edge of one of these cliffs and affords the guest absolutely stunning views of the mountains that march off into the distance.
We had the view it all to ourselves, as the hotel was a 10-min drive from Haputale and felt like it was in the middle of nowhere.
I would recommend staying in this hotel for the views only. Otherwise, it’s not very clean and the food is pretty meh by Sri Lankan standards.
We agreed to pay the hosts’ son, Malith, to be our guide and get us to the park the following morning at 5am. As it so happened another couple from Melbourne, Claire and James, were staying in the room next to ours and we all got on like a house on fire, so we agreed to share the ride to the park.
It took about 1 hour 20 min to get to the entrance to Horton Plains. We left around 5:15am and Malith drove us through some seriously twisted roads. Near the top of one of the hills leading to the park, Malith pulled the car over and the four of us watched the sunrise. It was delightful.
No other tourists and no other people to be annoying. Nice.
Horton Plains is a gorgeous national park. I would HIGHLY recommend a trip there. It’s up in the mountains so it’s really not very hot, there is a lot of wind, and the views are stunning.
The main hike took our group of four about 2.5 hours to hike around. It is one large loop that takes the visitor through jungle, plains, and up to the edge of the world.
The entrance came to 3,000LKR each ($20USD) and we got a discount because we were in a group of 4. Malith explained that a ticket for one would come to about 4,200LKR, so it’s best to go as part of a small group to get a better ticket price.
Other than the annoying tourists (and there were a lot of them) at World’s End View Point, the park felt relatively empty and we could move at our own pace.
Claire and James asked if we could recommend Ella and after the visit to Haputale: no. Skip Ella and just stay in Haputale. It’s quiet, there are no tourists, the views are great, and you can see waterfalls on the side of the road! Why wait in line to see one in Ella?
Also: eat at Sunrise Restaurant in Haputale. The curry lunch special will run you about 450LKR (about $3USD) per person, which is a great price for some delicious food!
Kandy 2.0: The Second Visit
We went back to Kandy because it’s such a good central point for jumping into the rest of Sri Lanka.
We decided to give Kandy one day to see some of the stuff we’d missed the last time we came through. Rather than going into the center of town like last time, we opted to stay outside at a home stay we found on AirBnB.
Our hosts at the AirBnB we were staying in gave us a list of suggestions of places we could go, including some of the places we’d been last time. (So many Sri Lankans seem absolutely floored by the fact that we are back for a second visit. Then, they promptly suggest that we go and do all the same things we’d previously done. Trying to suss out new places to see is a little frustrating for this reason!).
We hired a tuk-tuk to take us out to Embekka Dewalya Temple, boasting 750-year-old wood carvings and a chance to see more of the countryside. The drive did not disappoint! We drove past rice paddies and small farms in the backwaters of Kandy. It was idyllic and beautiful and felt a little forbidden, as if we were traipsing into someone’s private estates.
The temple was a small one and when we pulled up, the driver turned to us and said he’d wait. 30 minutes? We were hesitant, would there be other drivers here? Unlikely. In fact, when we pulled up we were the only visitors. Looks like we’d need to fork over another 1,000LKR (about 7.5 USD) for the 25min ride back.
For the price of $2USD per person, we took our shoes off and went inside for a look.
The temple was quiet and old. It was small, too. The bodhi tree in the courtyard spread out its massive limbs and took up a good chunk of the space. We wandered the pillars of carved wood and spoke in whispers.
Felt like the kind of place where using your full voice would be inappropriate. Near the back was a room devoted to the local god. It was a small room with painted ceilings and walls depicting bodhisattvas and buddhas in yellow.
It felt like such a precious little space and I felt so large being inside of it. As I left I whispered a “thank you” to whomever was listening.
Our next stop was the Royal Botanical Gardens. The admission was 1,500LKR ($10USD) each. The guides said that we’d need about 2-3 hours. We took 5.
This place was amazing! It was clean, quiet, there were lots of plants and trees! There was even a really cool display of different types of grass from around the world, which I loved.
We walked all over and eventually came to the green in the center for a cat nap under a tree. The air temperature is a lot cooler in Kandy than it is in Colombo, so it felt really good to be outside and not choking on fumes and humidity.
This trip was really different from the last visit. It felt far more relaxed and at a slower pace. This is probably due to having been here before and not being so slammed by the new experiences. That said, however, by this point we were still suffering mightily from some of the worst jetlag I have ever had! Once 8pm came around I could not keep my eyes open! Then, around 3:30am I’d spring awake in bed. It was a vicious cycle.
Our homestay host also made us a delicious meal. It was some of the best dhal curry I’ve had in Sri Lanka.