A Bellingen Diary

No, it’s not a strange Sri Lankan religious festival, but a description of our painful day at Kataragama …

Kataragama is a place of worship and pilgrimage for Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians. It’s a huge complex of beautiful temples, mosques and stupas. As a sign of respect, all shoes are removed at the entrance – hence the cause of our burning feet. After several hours of walking on baking sand and hot stones, running from one patch of shade to another, we could take no more and retreated to our bus.

Unfortunately, two of us (one me) had to use the public toilets barefoot !!! I can’t even begin to describe the experience, nor could I bring myself to take a photo. I will leave it up to your imagination.

Finally, the south-western monsoon has caught up with us…

At Nuwara Eliya a former British hill station high in the mountains of central Sri Lanka, the rain sweeps through in sheets, hammering on the roof and gushing down the streets. The temperature has dropped to 15C and we are more than a little under-dressed. Perfect weather though for gathering around the fire at historic Jetwing St Andrews for high tea.

It’s a great pity that Sri Lanka’s coffee plantations were destroyed by coffee blight in the 19th century as I’ve been forced to drink the dreaded tea !! Now, I won’t say that I have actually grown to like tea, but there’s something different about drinking Broken Orange Pekoe when you know it has come from the hill just metres away.

Our group sponsored a dinner for the children at Paynter’s Orphanage and we all brought gifts of books, crayons, pens and exercise books. The children were an absolute delight. So bright and happy in spite of their mostly tragic backgrounds. They had prepared a singing and dancing performance for us and were so excited by the end of the evening that I suspect none of them slept a wink that night.

Next stop … Kandy, historic capital of The Highlands.

Elephants, water buffalo, spotted deer, jackals, crocodiles, wild boars, squirrels, hares, tree snakes, land monitors, mongoose, langur monkeys, wild dogs, and the painted stork, black wing stilt, pelican, hornbill, hawks eagle, jungle fowl, peacock, bramany kite, blue crane, green bee eater, spotted dove, blue tailed bee eater, kingfisher, koel, oriole, egret, western reef eagle, cormorant, paradise fly catcher, red wattle lapwing … we’ve spotted all of them and it’s supposed to be the “off season” at Yala National Park!

There are no fences at Cinnamon Wild Yala so wildlife roams at will. Guests require an escort to their cabins after dark as wild boar roam freely in search of food.

Langur monkeys frolic in the trees at dawn, they are sweet faced and very cheeky but will trash your cabin looking for food if you are foolish enough to leave a window or door open.

The food is wonderful and the weather is perfect … it will be hard to leave, but another exotic location awaits us.

We’ve been “on the road” for three days now, travelling down the west coast of Sri Lanka, threading our way through cows, goats, dogs, tuk-tuks, cars and pedestrians. It’s slow going, we gasp and drivers toot as their loaded buses pass each other with millimetres to spare between their mirrors.

We experienced a wild night at the beach resort of Hikkaduwa as the south western monsoon moved in from the sea, blowing tiles off the hotel roof, damaging houses and uprooting trees. Sadly, the region’s fishing fleet was badly hit, there have been 8 deaths, 17 fishermen are missing and 36 boats are still lost at sea.

Still, apart from a few heavy showers, the monsoon hasn’t yet affected our plans …We’ve lunched by the beach at Mirissa, visited Kosgoda Turtle Hatchery, a Moonstone mine and the gardens of Geoffrey and Bevis Bawa. Now it’s on to Yala National Park …