Sri Lanka, Week Two: Hill Country

Saturday, May 12

We were up early this morning to take our guided hike through Sinharaja National Forest with Bandula, the Sinharaja Rest owner. It was cool-ish, but super humid (humidity is generally above 80% in the rain forest). Bandula really knew his stuff and showed us all kinds of trees and plants, including a carnivorous fern and a cocoa tree with fruits that they make cocoa from! On our walk through the jungle, we saw snakes, spiders, lizards and bugs, a monkey and some pretty birds. I also got my first experience with leeches, which was creepy and icky. Some of my socks will need to bleached because of the blood stains. It wasn’t a difficult walk but it was about two hours long and we had a lovely morning of it. We also got to swim in a waterfall, which with some effort I could swim to and float beneath for as long as I could take the beating!

On our drive back to Deniyaya, we visited Lumbini tea factory, which was really interesting! The process is pretty complex and this particular factory fairly modern and complex. In general, this is how the tea we drink comes to be:

First, tea plantation workers pick the leaves. These are gathered, bundled and delivered to the factory. If it’s white tea, the flowers are picked by hand from the leaves and separated for their own treatment. Otherwise, the first step is withering, where the leaves are spread out on long tables which send steam through them. This doesn’t cook the leaves, just “withers” them a bit. Then they’re shoveled through a chute which has large holes in it so that smaller leaves are discarded. Then the leaves head for sorting, which involves a process of rolling and shaking. This can happen up to five times if the leaves don’t get crumbled correctly the first time. Next comes the "cooking,” and discarding burnt bits using a high-tech camera machine that senses the color of the leaves. The leaves are then graded according to size and packaged. Unfortunately, due to competition I’m guessing, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. I did buy three different types of tea for about 3420 rps (~$30 USD). Then it was back to the guest house. A good, tiring day!

Sunday, May 13

We seemed to have started a trend, because we were up early again today. This time it was to catch our first of two buses for the day. Have I explained buses here yet? They’re quite the experience. The seats are made for slightly smaller frames than Westerners generally have, so Beny and I have to squish to fit on one. The ones we’ve been taking are primarily local buses, which means no AC, which is fine when the buses are moving. Unfortunately, the buses stop a lot and then the heat settles in and becomes a bit stagnant. Also, when the bus becomes packed with bodies in both the seats and the aisles, well… it becomes stifling. I was lucky for the first bus: I had the window seat. Beny had the apparently common Sri Lankan bus experience of having elbows in his back and bags placed on his lap as the aisle filled and people were jammed against those in the seats. The first bus to Penduwala took four hours.

The next bus, which took us to our destination of Haputale, took about two and a half hours, and the only time we got to sit was during a rest stop when everyone left the bus for a few minutes. Otherwise, we stood in the packed aisles, never positioned far from the huge speakers that were bungeed into place on the luggage racks, alternating the length of the bus, and blasting the entire way. I didn’t mind the standing but the music made my head pound.

Haputale was beautiful, luckily, and after getting ourselves fed we eventually found Bawa’s Guest House. Arrived Haputale exhausted, bus back door not opening for bags, went to look at Sri Lak but weird with pricing; ate lunch for 200 rps and then went to Bawa Guest House, which had a very nice room with balcony and hot/cold water for 1,000 rps. We walked to a nearby Christian monastery but arrived fifteen minutes after the gates closed. It was a nice forty-five minute walk with a stop to buy fresh strawberries and check out a bit of bird sanctuary forest, so all was well! We had dinner at Bawa’s which included really nice curries and vegetables.

Monday, May 14

After a nice breakfast at Bawa’s, we took a bus to Dambutale tea plantation and then hiked up to a viewpoint called Lipton’s Seat. Apparently the tea baron Lipton enjoyed bringing guests to this viewpoint, which is a concrete gazebo perched on a cliff overlooking his plantations. It was a real climb up through tea plantation which was huge and quite beautiful, row upon row of tea plants arrayed on the sloping hills all around. We saw many women and some men working in the fields, picking tea; most waved to us with big smiles. By the time we arrived to Lipton’s Seat, though, there was no view due to the mists. On the other hand, we parked our butts in some plastic chairs and had a picnic lunch there, with our staple foods of buns stuffed with spicy cooked vegetables and bananas and water.

We then hiked around blindly in the woods bordering the plantation for a bit before coming back onto the regular paths to start the hike back down. On the way, we met plantation kids asking for pens and money and photos. It made me really wonder about the whole business of tea, you know? I mean… there are plantation kids. Most of the workers are Tamil's imported from India and I wonder about the fact that there are schools and hospitals on the plantation. Do the families ever leave? Is there a choice, really? It made me feel really uncomfortable. We were able to catch a minivan bus, which was weird because it was packed with plantation workersand us. It made me feel like a real jack-ass for taking a seat.

One other thing about tea plantations, on the “nice” side of it: they’re really quite interesting to look at in terms of landscaping. The rows of tea bushes are interspersed with tall, Dr. Seuss-like trees, which we learned a few days earlier are actually bean plants that help put nitrogen in the soil. They take different shapes in different climes, but they always have a sort of odd look to them.

On our way back, we were discussing the phrase “every cloud has a silver lining” because there was a bit of silver lining in the sky, and Beny hadn’t ever actually seen that before. As we looked at the sky, we realized something far more awesome was there: a sun dog! It’s the first time I’ve ever seen one and my camera couldn’t quite catch the glory of it, but let me tell you, it was freaky and beautiful at the same time even if we could only see the edge of it from behind a cloud! Iridescent and glowing, it seemed otherworldly.

Tuesday, May 15

Although we debated it because of the reputed high price, we decided to drag ourselves out of bed at 4:30am to take the two-hour tuk-tuk ride to Horton’s Plains National Park. It’s really hard to nap in a tuk-tuk, in case you were wondering, but it was a rather pretty drive at least. Once we paid the 5,540 rps (~$50 USD) entry fee, we took the nine kilometer path to see World’s End, mini World’s End, and some waterfalls. The name “World’s End” is really what attracted me, and the descriptions of “an escarpment abruptly ending and dropping down” (paraphrased from many sources). Overall it was a nice hike but not worth the exorbitant entry fee, sadly. The views were pretty neat, the landscape different and interesting, and the red rhododendrons dotting the path and hills were pretty too. It’s just that seeing the local price set at around ~$5 USD and then seeing the “foreign visitor” price at so much more was really frustrating. I understand that it costs money to maintain and protect these areas, but they’re pushing it with the 10x inflation for tourists. Especially when that nine kilometer path is it – you can’t do anything else in the park.

When we were done with the hike, we took the two-hour tuk-tuk ride back, which set us back another 2,300 rps (~$20). We had a cheap lunch in Haputale’s main town area, then headed back to Bawa’s for showers and a nap. Later, we packed up and took the evening train – our first train in Sri Lanka! - to Ella (100 rps). It was such a BEAUTIFUL train ride, so much nicer than buses! Beny smiled a lot, pleased, and hung out between between the train cars to watch the lovely landscape and gorgeous sunset go by; I watched from my window, enjoying the breeze and beauty. At Ella, a tuk-tuk from Soorya’s Guest House, which we’d called earlier, met us, a surprise! After checking in to a 1,000 rps room, we crashed. 

Wednesday, May 16

Not surprisingly, we slept in late. Once we did manage to wake up, we went to a highly recommended Curd Shop for breakfast and ended up meeting Sophie, the Belgian girl that we met in Galle. We all decided to do a hike to some nearby waterfalls, and instead of taking the path up the hill, we clambered up the rocks, which was an adventure. We swam in the pool at the foot of the falls, which was lovely, and sunned on the rocks.

When we got back to Ella, we had lunch at a place Sophie had been often and the staff all knew her there, so they were super nice. Beny and I switched guest houses to go to Mountain View, where Sophie was staying and which had a nicer view (1,000 rps/night). Unfortunately, the place we vacated decided we had to pay an extra 300 rps for leaving “after checkout time” which was a bit of a swindle, as no checkout time was mentioned and we’d been there less than twenty-four hours. Ah, well, it’s down season so I guess they get what they can from who they can. Beny and I did a sunset hike to mini Adam’s Peak, which had pretty views. We made it back for dinner with Sophie at Dream Café, which was good, but I realized that I wasn’t too hungry and that it was a bit unusual because I haven’t been eating much at all lately. Odd, but not too worrisome.

Thursday, May 17

After compromising on time the night before, Sophie and Beny and I decided to leave for a hike to Ella Rock at 7:30am. It ended up taking two hours, during which an unsolicited guide took us up a “short cut.” It had me huffing and puffing and my legs were getting a real workout as we climbed, up and up and up. As always, this hike ended in a nice view. We also visited the top of the falls that we had checked out from below yesterday. I surprised myself by taking a good two hour long nap when we got back, to be followed by chilling out on the porch, taking a shower, doing laundry and chatting. I felt like some alone time, so Beny and Sophie went to dinner and I had some me-time to look at the stars, write in my journal and in think in general.

Friday, May 18

Back to the curd shop for breakfast with Sophie this morning. The curd here, by the way, is made from water buffalo milk, and is usually drizzled with treacle, which is a kind of palm honey, and at this place it’s served with cubed fruit on top. Yum! We walked to the post office and I sent some post cards. Then it was time to say good-bye to Sophie, who was headed to Haputale, and to catch the bus to Weliwaya. It was a quick-ish drive, but made Beny a bit motion sick which is a new experience for him. At Weliwaya we battled off the tuk-tuk touts and caught another local bus to the entrance of Buduruwagala.

Here, we actually did decide to take a tuk-tuk because it was a four kilometer walk in the sun to see the attraction here: a huge slab of rock with Buddha figures carved into it. Huge Buddha figures! They’re supposedly from the 10th century AD. It was a pretty peaceful place, although not much else to see besides the one rock face with the carvings. I walked along a short pathway and found a gorgeous flower, which turned out to be the Sri Lankan national flower, a kind of lily. We tuk-tuk’d (a new verb!) back to Weliwaya and hopped the bus to Ella, but decided to jump off when we saw the Rawana falls. After the hot and stuffy bus it felt so good to take a swim, even if the locals were using it as a bathtub/shower, with soap and shampoo and loofahs. Beny stuck out a thumb and we hitched a ride back to Ellawith a Sri Lankan NGO worker. After an early dinner at Dream Café, we hung out for sunset on our porch. A lovely day!

Another fascinating week in Sri Lank!

--Z