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!

Morning lake tour and another ancient city

 

Feb. 16

            We got up before dawn, not nearly as well rested as we should have been.  Our host drove us a short distance to a property at the edge of the tank where we were met by our tour director and his father.  They helped us get through the electric elephant fence and onto a flat-topped pontoon boat equipped with two cottage chairs for us. 

             We set out on the water in the dark with our hosts paddling lightly, so it was nice and quiet.  We watched the sun rise with many birds flying all over the place and locals fishing on the water.  We seemed to be the only tourists on the water.  Our guide had limited English so we weren’t sure about what types of birds were seeing but kingfishers, brown eagles, pelicans and tons of cormorants were definitely among them.  We came close to the shore to look at some buffalo grazing and then headed out to the centre of the lake to check out bird island.  As we circled it, many of the birds took off and then landed after we left their part of the island as the closest alternative roosting spots were far away.  It was quite a wonderful trip.

            We came back after several hours to have banana pancakes with fresh fruit and real coffee on our lakeside porch.  After some packing and lounging Bernard came to pick us up and we were off.

            Much of today’s route involved retracing yesterday’s stretch of highway and then we headed west for Anuradhapura.  This was the first major capital city of Sri Lanka but it kept being attacked by India.  It’s more ruined than Polonnaruwa but is more spread out and has many holy places that are still visited today, including many functioning temples.

Bird Island!

             We got there in mid-afternoon so Bernard suggested visiting some sites right then to take some of the busyness off of the next day.  We got our tickets, again large and perforated, and checked out the museum by the ticket office.  He pointed out many stupas (big, solid domes) in the area, including one which was the second highest structure in the world to the pyramids way back when.  We’d seen lots of stupas elsewhere so we didn’t feel the need to get out and walk around each one.  Many people were doing these walks and all of the places we went to on this day were crowded with busloads of the faithful.  Bernard told us that this was an important festival and that small villages made an annual pilgrimage to these temples as a local group.

            The first temple had nice pools around it and a rooftop walkway to check out the view.  The second was much larger and busier as it had the sacred bodhi tree inside of it.  This is the ancestor of the Buddha’s enlightenment tree in Bodhgaya and was actually used as a source to replace that one when it died.  We walked around the outside but it was busy and we were tired so we didn’t go inside.

The Bohdi tree temple.

            We headed into the modern town, which was fairly large, and tried to find the place we were staying.  It was on a back alley and had no sign so it was tricky to get to (a few of the places we stayed at were like this -what’s so tricky about putting a sign up?)  but had a really nice courtyard and a big, clean newly-renovated room.  The courtyard looked out onto a tank and the plan was to walk along the water and hit one of many restaurants nearby.  Instead, after two days of excessive walking among ruins, we opted to eat at the hotel.  The food was fine and the courtyard was an excellent place to watch the sun go down.

The Ancient City of Polonnaruwa

 

Feb.15

           

            After another hearty breakfast we parted ways, with Devi and John grabbing a bus back to Kandy and Meg and I continuing with Bernard for three days of visiting ancient cities.

            On the drive there we went by a few national parks with empty parking lots.  Bernard explained that people go on elephant safaris but not to specific parks.  The guides follow the elephants so that on any given day some parks might have almost no visitors while others are overflowing.  We managed to see one by the side of the road with a few other vehicles pulled over to have a look.  Bernard said that that particular elephant was almost always there.

            We went straight to the site of Polonnaruwa and got two large tickets with many perforations that were gradually ripped down as we checked out various sites.  The ticket booth opened into a busy museum, which had many fine pieces recovered from the site.  Most interestingly it had models of what the buildings used to look like and sequential photos showing various sites’ progressions from identification to restoration.

            It was made a capital city in the 10^th century after rulers got tired of their old capital constantly being invaded and pillaged by India.  They set up what is called a “tank” (artificial lake) and a complex irrigation system to serve a large city with many impressive buildings.  Of the two cities we ended up visiting, Polonnaruwa was better preserved but not quite as sprawling (though it was plenty big).  Bernard took us through about a dozen areas with our tickets slowly diminishing in size.  Many places had forests of pillars as well as some carvings, still in great shape.  We wore nice, thick socks as we were warned that many of the most impressive sites were still holy for Buddhists, meaning long walks on hot stone with no shoes.  The palace here was one of the tallest buildings in the world in its time at seven stories and all sites were busy with tourists.  There were some enormous Buddhas statues as well as ruined foundations stretching out in all directions and into the woods.  We did tons of walking in the hot sun but the sights were well worth it.

          

  Bernard drove us down a long dirt road to our hotel, which was a small cabin right by the “tank”.  Apparently, the owner had to keep the structures small because of restrictions for building on protected land.  The room with small but functional.  The big attraction was the porch, which had a mesh around it to keep out larger animals.  The porch looked onto the lake and we could watch all of the birds coming and going as well as a steady stream of monkeys and even a wolverine.  John had given us some beer before we left so we spent what was left of the afternoon reclining on our porch and checking out the wildlife.  They even had a cupboard with everything you would need to make yourself some tea, but we did not avail ourselves of it in the heat.

            There was a highly recommended restaurant nearby so we set off early as we had to get up in the dark the next day for our sunrise lake tour.  It was down some dirt roads that were so identical that we marked the one we came in on so that we could find our way back.  Some kids followed us for part of our journey and threw a rock that might have been meant for us before disappearing, which made the area feel creepy.  The restaurant offered cooking classes to busloads of tourists and so had large cooking areas that were empty on our arrival.  The eating area was also empty except for a series of clay puts sitting over candles.  It was one of the few places we went that had many mosquitoes so we re-applied some DEET.  We spent most of our trip soaked in repellent and sunscreen as Dengue fever is a thing in Sri Lanka and being white Canadians in the middle of winter, we were prone to sunburn.  Eventually a girl came out who had a little English to take our juice orders and put down a mosquito coil.  We were the only diners in the large, covered outdoor area.  When she came back with our drinks, she went around and stirred about a dozen different pots.  We were given woven plates covered with a banana leaf and given a quick description of the pots.  It was an all-you-can-eat buffet which we didn’t need but it was the only place around.  Many of the dishes were quite good and so we did go back for seconds.  The mom then came out and offered us tea and dessert.  By the time we finished we were still the only ones there and really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. 

      It was dark when we headed back but we were able to find our correct path.  Along the way, a few dogs started to follow us and then once we got to the main road they encountered a rival faction of dogs and had a snarling standoff.  Sri Lanka has occasional cats roaming about but stray dogs are everywhere.  They are mainly very similar breeds of brownish-yellow and in varying states of health.  They would often lie on busy roads and not even get up when cars and trucks came really close to them.  They are usually docile on their own but, like we saw in Istanbul, they can get aggressive when they’re in a pack.  We had a standoff going on in front of us with no way around it.  Our momentary conundrum was solved when a motorbike came by, dividing the forces and letting us by.

            Back at our cabin, we settled in for the night.  We didn’t sleep great because of nearby hammering that started at about 2:30 am.  Later on, our host explained that they were woodworkers chiseling souvenirs for tourists and worked at night to avoid the heat.

Sigiriya - Sri Lanka's Machu Picchu

 

Feb.14

            Our hotel provided us with another huge breakfast before Bernard caught up with us and we headed up to Sigiriya.  This place is considered the #1 attraction in Sri Lanka.  It was the capital of the country for a short time and sits up on a flat-top mesa with 360 degree views of the surrounding area.

            We arrived before noon to beat the crowds and skipped the onsite museum so that we could get going.  From the parking lot, you walk through huge areas of ruined foundations with the occasional pool or larger structure.  This walkway gave us an idea of how the city once spread out far beyond the mountain-topped centre.

            On the way up we saw signs telling us to be quiet due to killer hornets in the area, but fortunately we didn’t see any.  We were told that it used to be a real crunch to get to the top of Sigiriya but now the stairways are well-maintained with the up and down streams of people usually being separated. 

After about 15 minutes of walking up stone and then metal steps we paused at the first landing.  There was shade here but also monkeys so we had to keep our snacks close to us.  The main feature here was a huge pair of lion’s claws bracketing the stairs heading up the rest of the way.  The views were impressive but didn’t compare to what was coming.

The next set of stairs were steeper but over quicker.  There were a few narrow places where we had to wait for slower tourists but these were minimal.   In the stone beside the steel steps we saw footholds carved into the rock which were apparently part of an older ascent route.  These steps didn’t look too supportive and it was a long fall down should one slip.  We were definitely appreciative of the newer safety measures.

Lion paw steps.

            At the top of Sigiriya the ground was divided into a series of flat plateaus covered in ruined foundations or pools.  We could see a crew working on fixing some of these with a mortar that looked like it was made of the local soil, perhaps to follow original construction methods.  Again, the presence of the place probably isn’t captured in the pictures.  Being high above your surroundings in a ruined capital was a unique experience.

We poked around the site and looked at the views from all sides as well as what the tourists and workers were up to.  After about a leisurely 45 minutes or so we were ready to head down and move on.  Unsurprisingly, going down required less exertion.

            On the way down we went by a mirror wall, which was stone polished to a shine.  We also had the option to head up to a cave with Buddhist paintings, which was a trip that Meg and Devi declined but John and I were up for.  There were only about half a dozen figures visible as they were working on the cliffside pathway and so a large part of site was closed off.  The paintings were vivid and must have been restored as almost nothing of their background existed.  Most of the figures were bare-breasted women which varied from the Buddhist images we had seen in other places.  The real value of visiting the cave was the trip up and down on spiral stairs with a clear plastic exterior which allowed you to look up, down and outward from their cliffside location.

On the walk down we went through a few ruined areas, just less open and more bouldery this time.  Before hitting the parking lot there was the expected gauntlet of tourist shops but none of the vendors were particularly aggressive.

On the way back we stopped at a local farm shop and had a juice break, choosing from their extensive selection.  I tried the bakeapple and tamarind juices which were both thick and excellent.

The rest of the day was pretty lax.  We spent more time in the pool and went to the same place for dinner which was as good as we remembered.

Dambulla Cave Monastery Tour

 

Feb.13

            We had another yummy breakfast and got ourselves packed up to move on to our next place.  Our host, Bernard, was also to be our transport and guide for the next 5 days.  We left one of our bags at his place and the others came with us.  We picked up John and Devi and headed out of town with Bernard in his car.

            Driving in Sri Lanka is very much like being in a video game.  The lanes are merely guidelines and everyone is super aggressive.  The big trucks and busses just plow through where they will and it’s on the smaller vehicles to get out of the way.  The tuktuks and motorbikes weave through all of this, dodging the larger transports while trying to get ahead themselves.  Roundabouts are a game of chicken, with vehicles whipping around while they can and everyone else slowly edging in until those going around need to let them in, at which point their row bursts in as quick as they can around the other edging vehicles.  What’s amazing is that there’s almost no road rage.  Everyone is constantly cutting off everything else on the road but there’s nearly no honking and few drivers got mad.  Any one of these actions would have sent a Toronto motorist into a blind fury, but not here.  In India, people were constantly yelling and honking at everyone else on the road while they themselves drove like lunatics.

            Instead of heading to our hotel, we went right to the Dambulla cave monastery site which started off with about 15 minutes of climbing stairs.  It was a hot day so we took many breaks while hopeful flower and doodad sellers offered their wares.  At the top we had to hand over our shoes since this was a holy Buddhist site.  Those of us wearing socks were glad for this condition as the stone on the ground had been baking all morning.

You can see the cave structure in this pic.

            Dambulla is a World Heritage site with apparently 80 caves.  The 5 that we could visit were set up like Buddhist temples, having many Buddha statues and paintings inside. The way they were hollowed out used the organic lines of the cave nicely  and the images were all very well-looked after.  The decoration of the caves started around 100 BCE and the monastery is still active.  It’s really one of those places where photos don’t do it justice, the space has a presence and just by being there you feel like you’re somewhere special.  The larger caves were more impressive but they all were worth checking out and people were generally quiet in spite of many large school groups visiting.  Many signs were around, advising tourists of what they were not allowed to do.  They were repainting some of the figures in one cave and told us it was because a tourist had posted a disrespectful picture of herself with the statues online.  I guess by changing their appearance they were trying to nullify what was put on the internet.

        

What the cave complex looks like from the outside.

    Back in town we stopped at a local place full of families for lunch.  You basically ordered what kind of meat you wanted and had it over rice and curry.  It had a big open kitchen so that we could see it was clean.  Our waitress wasn’t confident in English and hurried away several times when we tried to order drinks, which was odd because two of our party could speak Sinhalese.  The food was still delicious with my fish being amongst the best that we had during our trip.

            The rest of the day was ours to relax at our hotel.  The place was hard to find as Google Maps didn’t have many of Dambulla’s street names but after asking around we got there.  We made good use of the swimming pool, which went well with our beer and chips. 

When it was dinner time a local staff member told us of a good place on the main road.  He even offered us a lift in his car as he said he was going there himself.  It was a buffet where you chose a starch and three curries and we took our time choosing.  The staff was really friendly and allowed us to go back into the serving area to check out what was on offer.  The food was great and they had lime sodas for us, which became our signature drink for fighting the heat of the country.  We called our car guy afterwards and he drove us back for a few rupees.  By this time jetlag had set in and we fell over and went to sleep as soon as we got to our room.