Nuwara Eliya Colonial Post OfficeWhat Nuwara Eliya really looks like
Left Hill club early to drive (via Nuwara Eliya) through beautiful hill country, to Ella Pass Rest House…
Ella Pass vistaElla Falls
and on to Tissamaharama for lunch and onto jeeps for safari round Yala National Park – very interesting – saw water buffalo and elephant at close quarters, crocodiles, ibis etc. We even saw a bear (very rare – only 20) but not a leopard (rare – only 25).
Yala sceneSpot the peacock
Got back to Tissamaharama dusty and late – went straight on to Hambantota – Peacock Beach Hotel – washed thoroughly and ate (good meal with limbo dancers!). Early night.
Part Two of our two-part photo album for this Sri Lanka trip can be viewed through the flickr link below – there are 75 photos therein:
Real gluttons for photo punishment can see raw scans of all 430 photos we took unedited and unlabelled here:
Part One of our two-part photo album for this Sri Lanka trip can be viewed through the flickr link below – there are 69 photos therein, ending as we leave Kandy:
Part Two of our two-part photo album for this Sri Lanka trip can be viewed through the flickr link below – there are 75 photos therein:
Real gluttons for photo punishment can see raw scans of all 430 photos we took unedited and unlabelled here:
Very early start to Sigiriya Rock – climbed all the way to the top – via the Sigiriya damsels (5th century wall paintings) – so high has a splendid ruined castle.
So high, but look at the crumbling old ruins…and product placement opportunity
Returned to Sigiriya [Village Hotel] for swim, packing and lunch (best meal at Sigiriya) before leaving for Kandy.
I wasn’t going to miss that place, despite them saving the best till last food-wise.
On the way we stopped at a wonderful spice garden where all the edible and medicinal herbs were explained to us.
We had massage and tried spice tea at that herb gardenThere we saw a wood carving man using his feet as part of the process
We then stopped at a daft batik factory before going on to Kandy.
We were starting to find these commercial breaks quite tiresome, especially when, as the day went on, the scheduled touring was seemingly more like a short break between these daft commercial visits.
Before dinner we went to a performance of Kandyan dance including firewalkers.
Let’s hope he knew what he was doing
Dinner at Hotel Suisse – better than Sigiriya. Early night.
Part One of our two-part photo album for this Sri lanka trip can be viewed through the flickr link below there are 69 photos therein:
Real gluttons for photo punishment can see raw scans of all 430 photos we took unedited and unlabelled here:
Early start. Morning trip to Polonnaruwa – really bumpy ride – second oldest capital (11th/12th century).
On the way to the main site, we stopped at this place, apparently the Hindu Temple of Penis & Vulva. There was no sign there saying “thanks for coming”, sadly.
[Polonnaruwa] ruins in slightly better repair than Anuradhapura – several temples to see plus more dagobas (stupas).
No, those two are not the Buddha images; that’s Ged & Daisy
Back to Sigiriya Village for mediocre lunch then on optional tour to Dambulla.
Climb up to cave temples – wonderful old (15th century?) Cave paintings and Buddha images – well worth the trip. My feet were attacked by killer ants as we left.
Were the locals laughing at my ant-induced discomfort, my sartorial inelegance, or both?
Yes, goodness knows where those biter ants came from, but as I came out of the cave temples entrance all of a sudden my feet were covered with ants – it felt like hundreds of needles being pressed into my feet. I think I made a bestial roar and started running around and shaking my feet to try to remove the ants. For some reason, this seemed to amuse the local tourists no end. My feet went red briefly and then returned to normal within just a few minutes, as if nothing had happened.
Perceptive readers might have noticed that I was not overly impressed by that hotel, especially in the matter of the grub. Our other beef with the hotel was the paper-thinness of the walls. Although we were in “cottages”, the rooms were semi-detached halves of cottages.
Indeed, the thing that probably put us off group touring for good after this holiday was the vocal double-entendres at breakfast the next morning from our nosy neighbours, who left us and the rest of the group in no doubt that you could hear anything and everything from the next room.
So there we were, on a Kuoni tour around Sri Lanka.
Lucky us, in 1995, we were able to go as far north as the ancient city of Anuradhapura -it was often out of bounds for tourists in those troubled first few decades of Sri Lanka’s independence.
Long drive out to Anuradhapura, stopping at Kurunegala Rest House for rest and Miridiya Hotel for lunch – not bad.
I have very few relics from this two-week holiday in Sri Lanka, apart from my trusty (though quite pithy) journal notes and quite a lot of photos, only the highlights from which have been put into an album.
No itinerary, for example, although I do have a contact list…
This Sri Lanka trip was to be the last time we did one of these guided tour in a group things. We got a little frustrated with the regimented nature of the tour…
…and the difficulty/inability to really get to see places and meet local people on our own terms. Some of that sense of frustration will emerge from my verbatim transcription of my (at the time of writing, in early 2020) 25 years ago journal.
We must have left London reasonably early on 16th to arrive in Colombo early on 17th.
Arrive at Columbo only 40 minutes late – despite early two hour delay at Heathrow Terminal Four due to power cut.
Get to hotel early morning – everyone travel weary – therefore slept until afternoon.
Took optional tour round Columbo.
Not a very interesting city – saw municipal buildings, old colonial buildings etc.
Galle Face Hotel
Our guide, Barney, took us to the Galle Face Hotel at end of tour. He helped us to find recommended Seafood/fish restaurant where we tried hoppers, gambas, seer fish curry and Barney’s recommended tuna dish, ambul thiyal. Very good meal.
Tony, Phillie & Charlie Graham (Janie’s twin & family) were living in (or rather just outside) Bad Homburg, in Hesse for a few years. We only visited them there once. This was that visit.
Charlotte was still a primary school kid so of course she was in a show and we went along to see it. The music was Carnival Of The Animals by Saint-Saëns. The children dressed as animals and danced.
Charlie was the elephant, Phillie in pinkBalleticTake a bow, children
The Graham Family had taken a town house on the outskirts of the town; modern build but the shape of a Georgian or Victorian town house in England – i.e. several floors with more or less a room per floor.
Janie and I occupied the basement spare room which could have been a granny flat.
Phillie’s OCDs were in full swing by then, so if we used the bathroom we’d here the patter of feet down the stairs soon after and Phillie would be in there cleaning. She’s have been fine in the time of Covid, he realises writing this up in early 2021.
We had a day out as best we could at that poor weather time of year – Tony fancied Heidelberg so we bundled into his Merc and off we all went. It was a good choice and the weather was not too bad. The vista in the headline picture is from there.
A market stall in HeidelbergDon’t call me a square…oh I see, a picture of me IN a squareHeidelberg grandeur
On Sunday morning I recall military-style operations in order to deposit garbage at the municipal dump. Apparently such matters are verboten auf sonntag, but such rules are not for Phillie so off we all went for some civil disobedience. Tony’s penance was to clean his car’s hubcaps afterwards with various accessories including, at one point, a toothbrush.
You learn a lot about your nearest and dearest if you stay with them for two or three nights.
On the Monday, we bade them goodbye and spent a few hours in Frankfurt before our flight home. We visited the Goethe House, which I loved. We also had time to take a lunch of Schweineshaxe which is a bit of a rare treat favoutrite for both of us and put us in a thoroughly good mood for our flight after a very enjoyable long weekend with the kin.
The grueling experience that was the journey home from this wonderful holiday is well documented in my letters of complaint (which follow).
My main beef was the diabolical service and poor hygiene on the replacement plane, especially the Jakarta to Bangkok leg, plus the constant “goal-post moving” in terms of what we were told about the timing of when we’d get back to Heathrow…not the fact that a scheduled plane was delayed due to a technical problem.
Connoisseurs of complaint letters, dissembling responses to complaint letters and follow up complaints complaining about the dissembling responses as well as the original complaint…
I do recall a friend of mine, familiar with airlines from being “in the business”, reporting that Garuda Indonesia was known in the trade at that time simply as “Ruder”, in honour of it’s infamous service ethos.
My only other strong memory of this matter – absent from the complaint but vivid in my memory – was Janie’s ability to sleep on hard plastic chairs in bright lighting and with large noisy tour groups marching back and forth past our seats at Jakarta airport. No-one other than Janie in out unfortunate collection of passengers got a wink of sleep in those circumstances. I also recall some of the other passengers finding Janie’s ability to just curl up and sleep that way very amusing.
