Grand tour of Haputale

 

Feb.23

            We had another good breakfast on our porch and then packed up and walked to the train station to head for Haputale.  They wouldn’t sell us train tickets the day before so we got there early to make sure that we wouldn’t be left behind.  The station was packed for the tourist train that came before ours.  The ticket guy wouldn’t sell tickets to me until the current train was finished but he did have tickets for the tourist train so I got those.  It cost a bit more but got us there at least an hour and a half earlier than otherwise.

            Our trip was as scenic as before and we were at our destination in about an hour.  The Haputale train station was the one place in Sri Lanka where we were hit up by touts as soon as we left the train.  They asked us where we were going and offered overpriced tuktuk and car rides and followed us after we kept saying no.  If it weren’t for them, we might have actually grabbed a tuktuk to our hotel.

            Our place didn’t look far away on the map but it took over half an hour to get there, with the usual wondering whether Google maps had an accurate layout of the small town.  The first half of the walk was downhill, first through the small town and then along a highway.  We saw a sign with our place’s name on it and so knew we were on the right road, but Google maps had the layout wrong.  We kept going along steep switchbacks until we fianlly got there, sweaty and tired.  It was a nice place with a flowery garden that had a stream flowing though it.  All of the rooms had a porch with a great downhill views and lots of space inside.  Our host was very friendly and informative and offered us breakfast even though it was afternoon (it was the only meal they were prepared to serve).

           

We walked into town to see what we could see.  Our host had mentioned a shortcut to get there but we couldn’t find him so we went back the way we came.  The town was fairly small, almost every street we poked around petered out after a few blocks.  Household and food shops were open but many other businesses were closed.

            We stumbled upon a local market which was only open on Sundays and so appreciated our lucky timing.  This seemed to be where most of the town was and the large lot was covered with people selling household items and food.  Meg bought some chips and we admired the view, as the lot the market was on looked down on a valley.

            Nestled above the market was a restaurant recommended in our guide book so we headed there.  They had a nice balcony overlooking the valley and we sat on it outside but had to soon head inside because of high winds.  The restaurant looked as if it had once been really nice but now had piles of junk here and there and a few broken chairs and tables scattered about.  It had a logo for “Olive’s” that we had seen on other businesses in town and so we wondered if it was part of some Haputale chain of businesses.   Our soup came quickly but our main meal took almost an hour to get to us.  We watched the kitchen staff meet in the kitchen in apparent confusion, which didn’t have a functioning fume hood so the restaurant kept filling with enough smoke to make us cough.  Three different waiters checked our order and then went back to the kitchen to frown over whatever was going on there.  We were the only people there ordering food so it must have been our meal that was causing the fuss Again, it seemed that having a large staff was of no benefit and few people were willing to do anything or make decisions when a problem arose.

            When our meal finally got to us it wasn’t what we ordered.  We had intentionally ordered a grilled fish plate as it only came with cooked vegetables (not trusting the raw ones in this place).  What we got was a fried fish fillet with salad and a half-cooked egg on top.  The waiter was all deer-in-headlights but we had no intention of waiting another hour for the correct order so we had the rice and fish, avoiding everything else.

            The owner at the cash was friendly and seemed unsurprised that our meal was wrong and didn’t charge us for our main course.  We headed back to our place, not wanting to be caught walking along the busy road after dark.

            The owner was hanging around so we spoke to him of our experience.  He told us that he used to own that restaurant but had to give it us because of the COVID shutdowns and now he concentrated on his hotel.  He said that Olive’s liked to buy up local businesses but didn’t really do quality control, which explained our experience.  We then reserved a tuktuk driver through him for our early hike the next day and headed off to bed.

Little Adam's Peak

 

Feb. 22

            We got up and lingered over another excellent breakfast on our porch before meandering downtown to find Little Adam’s Peak.  Adam’s Peak is a different attraction, where you would get up in the middle of the night to drive to a site where crowds of pilgrims would be lined up to climb hundreds of stone steps with the goal of summiting the peak at sunrise.  That attraction was in another part of the country and the description of the climb wasn’t enough of an incentive to go that far out of our way.

            Little Adam’s Peak, on the other hand, has got to be one of the most accessible viewpoint hikes in the country.  After walking on the main road out of town, you turn off to a well-marked side path lined with small cafes and trinket sellers.  The path is busy with people and would be a nice pedestrian walkway except for the frequent tuktuks whizzing past and expecting the pedestrians to jump out of their way. 

            Eventually the tuktuks had to park and the last 10 minutes or so were on steep steps with foot traffic only.  At the base of these steps was a fancy hotel with a pool and terraced bar that we considered grabbing a drink at on our return trip.  There were also adventure opportunities with a climbing wall, zip line and a big swing that you could dress up in fancy clothes and have a ride on while someone took pictures and video for you to purchase afterwards.  The capitalists were doing well here.

            We watched people swinging for awhile as well as the swimmers in the fancy hotel beside us as they took pictures of each other with their butts visible above the water.  We made the final, busy ascent and then checked the place out.   The views were impressive with several spots offering a 360 degree panorama of the town behind us and the mountains and valleys around.  There were some Buddhist artifacts around a tree that appeared to be a shrine and lots of people taking turns posing at the best spots.  Probably one of the most photogenic points was further along the ridge but I started walking towards it and decided the trip wasn’t worth it.  The path had steep up and down parts that were so well worn that it would have been lots of dirty slipping and sliding rather than trekking.  The day was hot and I convinced myself that it was the wisdom of age behind my decision to enjoy the views that we had rather than seeking something more just because it was there.

            Me met our Belgian housemate and helped each other with our pictures before heading down.  The trip back was uneventful and hot but we held off getting the drinks at the posh hotel as we figured our money would be better spent at a local vendor.  We ended up back at the UFO where the drinks were yummy but the food wasn’t as good as the previous day.

            After some simple shopping we headed back to our place for some afternoon downtime.  For dinner, we decided to check out a local place recommended by our hotel-mates who had enjoyed eating there the previous night.  We located it, an open concrete area with a few tables and lights and no other customers.  The walls were covered with patron testimonials and praise for the cooking classes that apparently happened there.  Once we arrived several family members came over and the open kitchen was soon busy with five people chopping and cooking.  While we waited, people began showing up until, by the time our Belgian housemate showed up for a repeat visit, the last table was filled.  We chatted with a couple at our table, one of whom was a British Air pilot and then it was announced that the meal was ready.

            The food was laid out in a buffet style which made us wonder if that was always the plan. Would have had it the whole buffet to ourselves if we were the only customers or did our hosts increase portion sizes as more people showed up.  The food was excellent and most people had seconds.  It was nice that we only had a short downhill walk back to our place after eating as it was now dark.

            On the way back we spotted some fireflies and watched them for awhile.  Some local kids were walking by and wondered what we were looking at but kept shining their flashlight in our direction, negating the experience.  Once they left, we spotted more here and there all the way back to our place.

The Seven-Arches Bridge

 

Feb. 21

            We had a lovely breakfast on our porch and took it easy for a while before heading into Ella.  Our shortcut along the train tracks made for a quick walk as we headed to the town described by many travelers we encountered elsewhere as being crazy and overrun. 

            Maybe it’s crowded by Sri Lankan standards, but it was a walk in the park next to navigating India or China.  There were few sidewalks but the only real problem was when you met a pedestrian coming the other way and had to negotiate who inched further into the moderately busy traffic.

            We wanted to head to the famous seven-arches bridge.  Our guidebook gave us fairly cryptic directions there, but a big sign next to the road pointed us in the right direction.  A short and pleasant hike through the woods led us to an open lookout above the bridge with simple benches and different train schedules posted which contradicted each other.  One of them had a train listed in the next 15 minutes so we took a break, hydrated and enjoyed the view.  A few minutes later we heard chugging and were in luck as we got to see a train slowly cross the bridge right beside the many tourists and vendors remaining on the bridge.  Meg is really proud of the footage she got.

            We did the short hike from our lookout down to the bridge and entered a cluster of makeshift cafes with vendors hawking foodstuffs and trinkets.  The path beside the tracks on the bridge was fairly wide, to accommodate all of the people were heading in every which direction.  There were lookout areas on either side, paths down to the lower river and a restaurant overlooking the tracks that probably charged premium prices for the birds-eye view.  There was construction going on which we feared was for some international tourist hotel but the posted signs said it was for erosion maintenance.

            We wanted to avoid retracing our steps so we followed the tracks back into town.  This first leads you through a dark, damp tunnel with bats on the ceiling at its deepest part.  We figured that we were safe from meeting a train as we saw one go past half and hour previously but another one came by just after we emerged from the other side of the tunnel.  We were lucky, as there was space to move off the tracks inside of the tunnel but the safe areas were wet and murky.

             The trip back along the tracks seemed much longer than our walk there, probably because it was less interesting and the day was very hot.  Walking with us were mostly families, who would go off on side paths to their homes in the Ella “suburbs”.

            We eventually came to the train station and walked down town to look for lunch.  We settled on the UFO bar with a cool open-concept huge grass hut vibe as well as excellent drinks and decent food.  We did some shopping for postcards, gifties and a few groceries and headed back to our place for afternoon relaxation.

            We were supposed to visit our monk host at the school where he was the principal  but he didn’t return our texts.  Later he said that government officials showed up for an inspection and so it wasn’t a good day for guests. 

            We headed back downtown for dinner and Google maps led us astray in search of a top-rated restaurant so we settled for a just okay place that was close by. The walk back to our place was dark along the tracks but quick.

The Most Beautiful Train Ride in the World?

 

Feb. 20

            During our final excellent breakfast at Bernard’s we asked his wife to book us a ride to the train station to grab our train to Ella.  She asked the helper to do this, who didn’t.  He ordered a car which wouldn’t get to our property for 10 minutes and at this point it was 20 minutes until our train left the station.  He seemed perplexed that we weren’t grateful for his assistance.  We walked to the road and hailed a tuktuk.  Our driver was able to weave through Kandy’s traffic jams (a car would never have made it on time) and we got to the station with 10 minutes to spare.  As a bonus, we now knew that we could fit ourselves and all of our luggage into a tuktuk, which we weren’t sure about before.

            Of course we didn’t know that our train would be late, but we were in the right spot and killed time by chatting with other tourists while our heart rates returned to normal.

            The Kandy to Ella train has a reputation as being one of the most beautiful train rides in the world.  Tickets can be hard to come by, as I was able to get ours due to my insomnia and checking the website at 4 am on the day they were released.  Most people we spoke to got theirs from travel agents or vendors, so scalping is probably a lucrative business.  The train we were on was a special tourist train, which probably wasn’t too different from the regular one except for an inflated price and a higher proportion of first-class cars.

            The trip itself was a beautiful one but no faster than the roads.  It’s 137 km that takes 7 hours so the pace is quite leisurely.  We figured that it looked so good because of different regulations from North American trains. We're used to train tracks to be on rounded mounds that avoid drop-offs and favour flat areas.  The trip takes you up through mountains and tea plantations which would look great anyway, but you are so close to them that they pop out at you.  The edge of the tracks passes right by houses and fields and often you can look almost straight down into valleys from your train car.  Guide books might tell you to go 2^nd or 3^rd class so that you can hang out of the doorways but we could get out of our seats and walk between cars to look out unobstructed as much as we wanted to.  There was usually a short line to do this but both of us got the close-up view as much as we wanted.  Leaving our seats also made us aware of the food car where we could sit at a comfortable table and have tea and buns, which we certainly did.

            We arrived in Ella to a chaotic parking lot.  We eventually got ourselves a tuktuk and went for a longer ride than expected.  Our place was close to the station as the crow flies but a long ride up over and down a hill with long, slow switchbacks.  Walking it would have been brutal so the tuktuk was the right call.

            We were staying at a place next to a Buddhist temple calling itself the "meditation monastery stay".  The tuktuk driver had to let us off at the end of the driveway as there were several dogs lying on the ground across it who refused to move even when the loud machine was almost on top of them.  We walked in front of the temple, peeking in windows until we came to our hotel just past the main temple.  Our host was a monk and we were welcome to join him in the temple for chanting and meditation in the evenings or just chanting in the mornings.  Each room had a nice patio area in front of it and two elaborate fish tanks were visible outside.  We met a German couple and a Belgian woman who were staying there and went to our room.  We were the only ones on the second floor, with a kitchenette room and a flower-lined patio with a great view at our disposal.  A nice touch was the big ceramic jug with a spigot full of filtered water right in the room, much better than using bottles.

            We got some advice as to where to grab dinner and were told to take some steps down to the rail tracks and follow them into town.  This took about 10 minutes but it seemed that almost every time we took them a train went by us, even though the station only had about a dozen trains listed daily.  Still, it was much better than the long route along the road.

            We stepped off the tracks to see the place we were told about, a narrow dining area beside the road that had a line-up, even though we were there at about 5:30.  We perused menus and watched yummy plates go by while we waited and it didn’t take long to get a table.  The place actually deserved the line, food was uniformly good and service was super-efficient.

            We walked back to our place and went to the temple for our session.  We thought it would be with a group but it was just us and our monk.  He chanted for awhile and then led us in a basic meditation followed by a talk and an opportunity to ask questions.  His answers tended to be long and vague so we didn’t ask too many.

            We retired to our room and had a good night’s rest.

The Knuckles Hike

 

Feb. 19

            We got up super early to head out of Kandy to hike the knuckles range.  Bernard’s brother drove us the two hours to get there as he was busy with other jobs.  Even at this early hour, Kandy was already bustling.  Along the way we stopped for breakfast at a small place that just looked like another convenience store but had delicious curries and good buns to take away for later snacking.

             The road wound uphill through tea fields and got rougher and rougher until we had to park the car and start up a narrow path on foot.  Along the way we checked out the rental cabin run by a friend of Bernard’s which was quiet, rural and beautifully done inside.  If you were serious about doing this hike, you’d overnight there and then get an early start to avoid spending the most comfortable part of the day driving. 

             At the cabin we met our guide, a teenager, and Bernard’s brother also came with us.  The trail started out with wide footpaths that went by the park office where we got our permits.  Hikers are supposed to have a guide with them as lost tourists have been a problem along the unmarked trails but we met many visitors who were on their own over the course of the day.

            Once we left the wide path for a narrow trail through some bushes things got tougher.  Most of the trail was constantly elevating along dry streambeds.  You were tired from always going up and there were many loose rocks underfoot on top of some well-worn areas that were tricky to navigate.  We had breaks at a waterfall and when crossing a couple of streams but it was hard work on a day that was getting seriously hot. 

            Meg decided that she probably wasn’t going to make it and so went at a slower pace with Bernard’s brother while I went ahead with the younger guide.  I needed to stop every 15 minutes or so to catch my breath and was starting to feel pretty tired.  I asked my guide how much longer and he said 1 ½ hours and that was beyond me and so I said we would turn back.  Once we caught up with Bernard’s brother on the way back down he heard where we turned around and said that it was only 30 more minutes from there, which I probably would have tried for.  Apparently the view from the top is spectacular but we weren’t meant to see it.  Meg was glad for the company heading back and the young guide left us after a while, maybe because he realized that he gave me the wrong advice.

           We stopped on the way back while Bernard's brother hunted in the bush for a specific plant and got us some raw cardamom pods to chew on.  They were green, juicy and delicious - we had only ever had them dried before. It was still slow going back and we were glad to arrive at the main road and drained several pitchers of water after returning to the cabin.  The drive back was scenic and we were grateful for the air conditioning. 

            Back at our room, we showered and rested before heading down the hill to dine at Devi’s family’s place.  We picked up a cake on the way down and Meg grabbed it off of me halfway there.  I was doing the trick I used in India of swinging bags into any traffic that seemed to be getting too close.  Indian drivers didn’t care much about hitting people but wanted to avoid bags as they might contain something heavy.  Meg was more worried about the cake than our personal safety but we ended up arriving intact, both us and the cake.

            Their place is on a main road but set back far enough not to be noisy.  Her dad and sister live there and provided the typical (huge and delicious) multi-course Sri Lankan spread.  The food and conversation were all wonderful.

            Devi and John walked us part of the way back to out place, showing us a route where the tuktuks weren’t buzzing quite so close to us.  We said goodbye, as this would be the last time we would see them until our return to Canada, and walked the rest of the way back up to our place.

The Temple of the Tooth and Kandian dance

 

Feb. 18 

            We got up early so that we could see the morning puja at the temple of the tooth.  Our tuktuk got us there in plenty of time but there was still lots of traffic happening in Kandy at this early hour.  We checked our bags in security, removed our shoes and followed the packs of tourists into the temple.  Soon, temple officials were walking around in groups and some musicians came out and started playing.  It was quite slow and drawn out which allowed us to slowly move to the front of the group as other tourists moved on.  There was an inner room that we could glance into as monks came and went but we weren’t allowed near it.

Tooth temple puja performance.

            After a while we joined the lines heading upstairs.  We first waited in the slow one but then switched to the quicker one as we were more interested in seeing what people were doing rather than waiting half an hour to get a closer look at a tooth.  Apparently, the tooth belonged to the Buddha.  I thought that keeping holy body bits was specific to Catholicism but Buddhists do it as well.  Devi and John said that the tooth doesn't look human, more like a horse's tooth, but we didn't verify this observation.  The slow line snaked into an opening to a room that we could only slightly glimpse from the hallway.  The locals seemed to outnumber the tourists in this line and many offerings of flowers and fruit were piled up in the area. 

            We poked around and joined another line that slowly took us to a high room that was full of documents.  Another hallway took us to a high-ceilinged room full of shiny Buddhas from all over the world.  The temple itself was well-constructed but more functional than ornamental.  We poked around for a bit longer and then headed to the on-site museums. 

            The museums had many crafted pieces of sculpture, weaving, calligraphy and other items used in temples.  Many had excellent work but the rooms felt like they were more piles of stuff in glass cases and most of the curation wasn’t worth reading.  A weird display involved two walls covered with photos of the damage done by a Tamil Tiger bombing and the work taken to repair it.

            A more interesting museum was the history of Buddhism building which devoted one or more rooms to every major Buddhist country’s interpretation of the practice.  Here the presentation was interesting with a variety of media and many contrasts visible in what they chose to focus on.  It felt like an expo with each country trying to put its best foot forward and show itself off.

            On our way out of the museum we saw a working elephant and its handler and wondered if it was really used for regular work or mainly was putting on a show for the tourists.  We let John and Devi know we were done with the temple complex and met them at a big hotel a short walk away to enjoy some lime sodas.  The bar had an old colonial feel to it and one could imagine it full of walrus-mustached Brits wearing pith helmets.

With our spice vendor.

            We walked around downtown and grabbed a simple lunch before heading to their favourite spice vendor in a surprisingly quiet market area.  He lets us sniff and check out much of his stock and it did smell amazing.  Devi had vouched for the quality of his stuff so we stocked up on powders, peppercorns, vanilla beans and cinnamon.  I was surprised to learn that most of the cinnamon that we use in Canada is cassia cinnamon from Indonesia, not true cinnamon from Sri Lanka.  You can read lists of health problems linked to cassia and benefits linked to Sri Lankan cinnamon but I'm not sure that we eat enough for either of these effects to be substantial.   Next, we went to the hotel where Devi and John had a workout membership.  We paid for day passes and enjoyed a long swim at the top of the hotel with excellent views of the city.

            We grabbed tuktuks back downtown and walked by the water before they left us to our Kandian dance and drumming performance.  We had gotten tickets that morning but wanted to arrive early to grab good seats.  There were few people there but we soon found that all of the good seats were reserved for large tour groups and we could either be at the back of the ground floor or the middle of the balcony.  We opted for the balcony and grumbled as the good seats filled up just before start time.

Plate spinning at the Kandian dance show.

            Everyone’s attention was grabbed when the first rain we had experienced in Sri Lanka came down in sheets on the metal roof, making an impressive noise that let up by the time the show started.

            The drummers came out first and rotated on and off the stage for varying solo and dance accompaniment work.  They seemed together and skilled but we only saw what they could really do when they took turns doing solo work at the curtain call.  The dancers came out in different costumes, almost always with the men and women performing separately.  The women were less together and had less striking dance moves.  We were told that this was because traditional dances were almost exclusively male and the troupe had just come up with its own, underwhelming, female choreography. 

            The men did fire waving and eating as well as show-offy flips.  They let a woman join them for the plate spinning and everything was accompanied by a driving drum score.  The tourists had programs briefly explaining things but otherwise we had no context for the dance origins.

            At the end the dancers spilled out into the audience for picture ops so we took the opportunity to beat the rush in the parking lot and grab a tuktuk back to our place.  We went to Le Charcoal again and had more excellent chicken and mojitos and hung out with the owner for a bit.  A busy but satisfying day.

The ancient city of Anuradhapura

 

Feb. 17

            We got up early and grabbed our breakfast to go in order to beat the heat.  It was Monday, so the weekend pilgrims had gone back home.  For most of the day, we had the sites of Anuradhapura almost to ourselves which added to the atmosphere of the ruins. 

            We started at the museum, which was full of pieces recovered from the sites but with not so many photos and models as in the previous museum.  After poking around for a bit we settled in a green area by the parking lot to eat our breakfasts with some workers just arriving at the museum.  The standard breakfast sandwich we were given was full of scrambled egg with spices and vegetable, served between two slices of wonder bread.  At breakfast too, wonder bread was served but we usually left it untouched as we enjoyed roti, paratha or hoppers.  One of the places we stayed at explained that the Sri Lankan bread was cooked from scratch and not sold in supermarkets  so wonder bread was easier to prepare.  We would have been okay with almost anything else but the sweet, spongy stuff we were given did not make for a pleasant sandwich.

Stupa repair crews.

 Bernard and I quickly retreated to the car to finish our meal due to the many stray dogs in the park.  Meg stayed and managed to keep her meal to herself.  We noticed later that the workers brought food for the dogs so they expected us to provide for them as well.  Bernard told us that all of the street dogs went to homes at night but we found that difficult to believe.

Meg and Bernard by the monks' pool.

            From there we drove around and looked at various stupas and ruined areas.  We were familiar with stupas, so mainly admired them from a distance and moved on.  The ruined areas were nice to walk around as there were so few tourists.  There was the occasional well-defined piece on display but most of the areas were covered with broken foundations.  The most interesting part was by the former monastery which housed thousands of monks.  We saw the pits where their meals were cooked and served and a huge pool that they used for bathing which was very peaceful to sit by.

            Once we had explored the highlights of the site and exhausted our tickets we headed back to Kandy.  Along the way, Bernard wanted us to lunch at a real local place by the side of the road and we had a tasty feed of rice and curry there.  For dessert, he wanted me to try the jaggery pudding, which looked like an unappetizing brown blob but had a wonderful creme brulee taste to it.

            Back in Kandy we got ourselves organized and then went out for dinner, this time to a smaller local place that smelled wonderful as we approached it.  The aroma was due to the barbecue in front of the place that was charring chicken, which we ate with nice, cool virgin mojitos.  No juice explosions or ants crawling on the menu, just good food and only a short walk away from where we were staying.  Yum!