Updated with photos!
My next few posts might be shorter than usual and with fewer photos. The home I'm staying at in Kandy, Sri Lanka has an older computer with dial-up connection to the internet, so I don't have my usual tools but I can finagle a system to get some posts done. I'll also have some dates out of order, as I haven't uploaded my final thoughts about Tanzania yet and they are saved on my netbook.
I got to Colombo at 8am, had the easiest time ever going through immigration, and my guide Sarath was waiting for me. He lives in Kandy, which is sort of in the middle of Sri Lanka, and I'm spending my first two nights in his home. His family had a small apartment built in the back of their house for guests, so I have my own space and will have meals with the family while I'm here. That's nice, having people to talk to. They keep telling me that this is my home but then waiting on me hand and foot, so I'm not sure how to behave lol. In my own home, I makes messes and the butler never serves me my tea, but they cooked me a small feast.
Since I had an overnight flight from Tanzania with a long layover in Qatar last night, I didn't get a lot of sleep. So I slept for several hours today and in the car on the ride to Kandy. But we did make one stop between here and Colombo, at an elephant sanctuary. There are a couple nearby and the one we stopped at lets you wash the elephants (they like to lie in the water and get scrubbed) and even ride the elephants! I almost felt silly, doing the most stereotypical tourist thing in Sri Lanka. But the experience was pretty cool. And the elephants didn't feel like what I'd imagined. They are quite hairy, with coarse stiff hair. And the ride was pretty smooth, except for one point when my elephant sped up going downhill and did this rolling walk. I held on tight then, but otherwise she was quite easy to ride.
Indian elephants are a lot smaller than african elephants and are tame (or at least tamable). I was told, but don't quite believe, that they "like to work" (who likes to work!?) but they seem a lot more like horses than like wild animals. There are still wild elephants in Sri Lanka, but many work on farms or other places, or live at buddist temples.
That was about it for today. Tomorrow I'll get a tour of Kandy, which supposedly is Sri Lanka's most beautiful city. So far the whole country looks very nice -- everything is green and lush. In part that's because it has rained every day for the past 3 months (really!). It's not monsoon season, they don't know why it's raining like this. But from what I've heard, it's also raining too much in Australia, so I guess there's something funny with the weather around the Pacific Ocean.
Oh grr, after trying to upload a single photo for 20 minutes, I'm giving up. I'll add them when I can!
My next few posts might be shorter than usual and with fewer photos. The home I'm staying at in Kandy, Sri Lanka has an older computer with dial-up connection to the internet, so I don't have my usual tools but I can finagle a system to get some posts done. I'll also have some dates out of order, as I haven't uploaded my final thoughts about Tanzania yet and they are saved on my netbook.
I got to Colombo at 8am, had the easiest time ever going through immigration, and my guide Sarath was waiting for me. He lives in Kandy, which is sort of in the middle of Sri Lanka, and I'm spending my first two nights in his home. His family had a small apartment built in the back of their house for guests, so I have my own space and will have meals with the family while I'm here. That's nice, having people to talk to. They keep telling me that this is my home but then waiting on me hand and foot, so I'm not sure how to behave lol. In my own home, I makes messes and the butler never serves me my tea, but they cooked me a small feast.
Since I had an overnight flight from Tanzania with a long layover in Qatar last night, I didn't get a lot of sleep. So I slept for several hours today and in the car on the ride to Kandy. But we did make one stop between here and Colombo, at an elephant sanctuary. There are a couple nearby and the one we stopped at lets you wash the elephants (they like to lie in the water and get scrubbed) and even ride the elephants! I almost felt silly, doing the most stereotypical tourist thing in Sri Lanka. But the experience was pretty cool. And the elephants didn't feel like what I'd imagined. They are quite hairy, with coarse stiff hair. And the ride was pretty smooth, except for one point when my elephant sped up going downhill and did this rolling walk. I held on tight then, but otherwise she was quite easy to ride.
That was about it for today. Tomorrow I'll get a tour of Kandy, which supposedly is Sri Lanka's most beautiful city. So far the whole country looks very nice -- everything is green and lush. In part that's because it has rained every day for the past 3 months (really!). It's not monsoon season, they don't know why it's raining like this. But from what I've heard, it's also raining too much in Australia, so I guess there's something funny with the weather around the Pacific Ocean.
No comments:
Post a Comment