After a rushed hour at the airport with just enough time to grab something to eat and buy a few snacks for the plane journey, (not being in business class meant that we weren’t going to be offered snacks every 45 minutes!) we rushed over to the crowded boarding gate and onto the plane where we were delayed for another 50 minutes!!
Finally, we took off and after a rather innocuous meal I fell asleep and was woken up up 8 hours later by a member of the cabin crew asking me to pull my seat back up because they were about to serve breakfast.
I smiled at Tooting Tony, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself for being able to sleep through the majority of the flight. He forced a smile back at me but I could see his eyes were slightly deranged whilst he sucked hard on his nicotine tablet; he hadn’t really heard what I’d said as he was busy fantasising about getting his Vape back once we’d landed.
We arrived in Colombo in 31 degrees of heat and found our driver and guide for the week. He introduced himself to us, he has very long name - as is custom in Sri Lanka. We stared at him both wondering how we could remember it. (I’ve already forgotten), smiling he said “But you can call me Jay for short”.
Jay drove us to our hotel, we were staying at The Inlak Hotel in Negombo, which was about a half hour from the airport.
After checking in at the reception, where the receptionist told me how much she liked my hair, then asked to touch it. We were invited to take a seat and cold drinks were brought over while we waited to be told our room was ready. We waited and waited and waited. After about 15 minutes I asked Jay how long it would be and he informed us that the room had been ready since we got there.
The room was lovely, I think even TC would’ve approved. We had a quick wash and went for a short walk along the beach, where a man selling various souvenirs told us we looked English because of my hair, then we went for another short walk along the ‘high street’ where a Tuk-Tuk driver stoped mid-conversation with a colleague to tell me he liked my hair and finally we stopped off at a charming little restaurant for a quick bite to eat, before heading back to the room where I sat down to write up some notes and woke up ten minutes later with the note pad on my lap and the pen still poised in my hand.
The alarm was set for 7:30, not necessarily an easy time to get up whilst suffering from jet lag, (the UK is five and a half hours behind Sri Lanka), plus being woken up at midnight by fireworks exploding outside, then the bass from a party next door going on until the early hours of the morn, really didn’t help. But after hitting the snooze button a couple of times we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and were washed, dressed and breakfasted in time for Jay to pick us up at 9.
Our first stop was the Elephant Orphanage in Pinnawala which was about 3 hours away by car.
Jay filled us in on a few facts en route; apparently, although the country is mainly Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim there are a large number of Catholics from when the Portuguese and then the Dutch had occupied. But this was mainly on the coastal towns. So driving through Negombo you can see plenty of large churches scattered all around, over 100. In fact, he told us that because of this, there is a well known joke:
A man gets onto a bus in Colombo to go to Negombo and asks to be dropped off at The Church, to which the driver replied: “Which one?”
Jay laughed and looked at us looking at him - we were waiting for the punchline. He said “It’s a funny joke isn’t it?” We then realised that apparently was the punchline and joined in laughing.
As we travelled along the road I pointed out the numerous Tuk-Tuks - more than I’ve seen on my previous travels. Jay told us that it was becoming a problem as too many of the young men were going straight from school to become Tuk-Tuk Drivers because it was easy to do and easy money and now the country is starting to run short of men working in other professions. In order to put a stop to this, the government is introducing a new law whereby you cannot get a Tuk-Tuk license until the age of 35 and 100% bank loans are no longer available to buy the Vehicles, the maximum is 50%. This law has not been met with much support, but in the long run it is for the best.
A short while later, I asked Jay how many letters they had in their alphabet, he told me 66! Tony asked if that was why they all had long names; in order to use as many letters as possible. Jay laughed, but like us with his joke that morning, I don’t think he really found it funny.
After a couple of hours in the car, we arrived at The Elephant Orphanage. I have to say, I was not as impressed as I thought I would be, more to the point I found it quite upsetting. Maybe it was more of an Orphanage in 1975 when the place first opened to look after 5 orphaned baby elephants. But now I suspect it is more of a show for tourists. Personally, I don’t think the elephants look very well treated. We watched them down in the river allegedly having their bath time, but a couple were chained in place while the ‘carers’ scrubbed them clean. When I asked why they had to be chained, Jay said that they were the ones that misbehaved and had to be trained. He shrugged when I said that they didn’t look happy and that they don’t need to be laid down and scrubbed, elephants are perfectly capable of bathing themselves. In fact none of the elephants looked happy at all as they were ushered around and I would urge people to avoid going there altogether. In fact, when Jay asked if we wanted to ride one of the elephants, that confirmed for me that this set up was not about the welfare of these beautiful beings but just a money maker for those involved.
I was quite happy to leave and we climbed into the car and headed off for about an hour over to Dambulla to climb the few hundred steps up to the 5 cave temples in 34 degrees of sweltering heat! But not before stopping off at The Green Curry Thai restaurant for lunch: a Thai restaurant in Sri Lanka that served Chinese food?
The Dambulla caves dates back to the days of The King Vattagamini Abhaya. He first reined in 103BC then lost his throne to a group of Tamil raiders. During his 14 years in exile he hid in these caves and once he reclaimed the throne in 89 BC he had the temples built within each cave to give thanks for their protection the rock had given him.
The individual caves themselves are man made, building partitions between each one and each further embellished by the proceeding reigning monarchs.
The walls and ceilings of each are covered in colourful murals, Cave 5 contains statues of Buddha made from plaster and brick, whilst those found in the other temples are carved from the rock. There is too much detail within each cave for me to write about but suffice it to say, it was definitely worth the long and slow climb, (The Tootster was being very patient waiting for me as I crawled up the steps).
What was very strange was when we went into one of the caves; I could hear a really high pitch whine played in three notes over and over again, which actually started to give me a headache as the sound pierced through the cave. It was really loud and offensive - probably played to keep bats away - but my South London Geezer couldn’t hear it at all, only the clicking sound between each repeat.
We decided that I was probably a bat in my previous life ... or a dog. Well I did used to think as a child that seeing as my dad had dark hair and my mum was blonde that I had inherited my red hair from our Irish Setter?!
After our visit to the cave we headed back down the steps, avoiding all the monkeys that were hanging out for a morsel of food, or some would even pose for pictures as soon as you took your camera out.
Jay met us down by the Golden temple at the bottom of the steps, atop of which sits a 30m seated golden Buddha in all his refinery. A sign claims that he is the largest Buddha in the world, but rumour has it that’s possibly not true!
And so finally, after an interesting but tiring day we were dropped off at our Hotel for the night; The Nice Place Hotel, which it definitely was and hopefully we can get a full nights sleep with no disturbances ready for our day trip tomorrow to the ancient city of Anuradhapura ....
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