Nuwara Eliya & Kandy (Jan 17 -19)

The train ride on Monday was full of surprises. Well one surprise. About an hour into the ride I caught a figure leaping towards me. It was another friend of mine from Waterloo. He and his cousins had decided to go to Nuwara Eliya from Colombo for the day, and by chance we were on the same train. It was the craziest coincident, and after a little prodding, I convinced them to stay and chill with us for the evening and leave in the morning.

(These next two are Reuben's photos)

This is out of chronological order, but it's more of an aside. We had dinner at Remarkos. If you head to the sinks & kitchen at the back, don't look too closely at the ceilings.

Anyway, there's not a lot to Nuwara Eliya other than the marketplace and the tea estates. The first day we didn't want to walk too much (our legs still extremely sore from the climb) so we just wandered the market instead of taking the tea tour. We split from my friends, as they didn't want to pay the "white" tax that Reuben would bring with him. A lot of legit and counterfeit winter jackets were the main selling point here. It seems weird to buy winter clothes in a tropical country, but the jackets are manufactured in Sri Lanka and Thailand, and you can get some good deals.

After walking for a bit, we attempted to rejoin my friends. They were nowhere to be seen. And it wouldn't be until we went back to the hotel in the evening that we found them all asleep in their room. A wakeup call at 4:30am the next morning revealed that they couldn't find us and were really tired, so they headed to the hotel to take a nap. Of course that turned into a 12 hour sleep. Later that morning they left for Colombo, and since it had started raining we opted to skip the tea tour and head to Kandy a day early.

We stayed with some family friend's, a few clicks out of town. On Wednesday morning we walked to the nearby Riverside Elephant Park, which was a rather sad little private elephant attraction. Three of the elephants were in Kandy working, likely in a religious ceremony though it wasn't explained what the work was. The one that was left was a 62-year old elephant that looked sickly. It was likely just normal problems associated with geriatric pachyderms, but still it was hard to watch. Especially when I got close and I saw tears.

On the way towards the bus route, we passed by three stray pups on the side of the road. They were simultaneously adorable and mangy. Like me! To jump ahead a bit, when we came back in the evening to the house I had a little incident with the tri-shaw driver. We had agreed on a price, and after assuring us he knew where the place was, he proceeded to take a longer route to our destination. I knew it wasn't the same way we had traveled in the morning, but I didn't think anything of it. About 2km from our destination, he pulls to the side (and in my head I readied myself for getting jumped and dumped down the mountainside) and in very broken English says that it's gonna cost double because it's farther than he thought. I said no way, and said to keep going. He said no. So I got out, and let him stew for a bit. Then I came back and gave him half of the fare, and said we'd walk. He didn't take the money and tried to sell his new price again.

I was annoyed. It's not the money, because we're talking one dollar here or there. But as we've been continually nickel & dimed, you get fed up with being fleeced at every opportunity. And it does add up quickly. However I wasn't sure how far we were from home, and it was a little later in the evening so I wasn't keen to try and find the place in the dark. As well, I was tossed up on whether this guy was planning on swindling us from the start or whether he was just incompetent and didn't know how far it really was. So I split the difference and offered another 50% on top. He took that offer, but at this point I just wanted to get to somewhere I recognized and get away from the driver. So we got off at the hotel that was a short walk away and he promptly turned around and went back the way he came. Even though I knew it was closer to go in the direction we were headed. So he was just incompetent. That's no excuse. Maybe it did really cost what he said, but if you don't know where you're going as a taxi driver, then don't accept the fare.

Anyway, that side story took longer than planned...so we walked from the hotel, and heard crying and whimpering from roughly the same spot we saw the puppies in the morning. As I got closer I saw that one pup had fallen in the drainage ditch and his siblings were crying by the edge. Deciding that it didn't seem like they had rabies (in my professional opinion), I plucked the puppy up and put him down on the ground. As I started to walk away the puppies started following me. I picked up the pace a bit and they broke into a run. Now, my legs were still sore, so my running was more of a hobble, and the puppies were closing fast down the road. As a car passed I stopped and let the pups catch up so they would get off the road. Pulling one out of the ditch just to have all three get squished wasn't really an appealing prospect. When they got to me, they were barking and "yipping" and tumbling over my shoes, and trying to climb my legs. As cute as they were I couldn't take them in, so I opted to run again. (I passed on the fleeting thought to drop all three into the drainage ditch) They were persistent but we eventually lost them, though Reuben swears he heard them the next morning. I'm guessing the dog that guarded our place scared them away. I guess the point of this aside was that I was chased by a pack of dogs. Filthy, tiny, doe-eyed dogs.

During the day in Kandy we went the temple of the tooth that I mentioned the last time I was here. Here's a panoramic photo stitched together of the lake across from the temple.

And here's a shot of some of the homeless in city.

Sri Lanka