Sri Lanka

Hellllo from Sri Lanka!I am in Nuwara Eliya right, a mountain town, where we spent the day visiting tea plantations and hiking up to see the lovers leap water fall. Sri Lanka is great. It is similar to India in a lot of ways, but much calmer, a lot less crowded, and the people are much friendlier. So let's see what's happened since I've written last…. After leaving Varkala we took the train to Kochi. Kochi is an old fort town, and its nice, but the town is filled with mostly older English travelers, so it wasn't really our scene. We rented bicycles and rode around town, visited a strange museum and by strange coincidence ran into my roommate from Jaipur and her boyfriend traveling- small world. After Kochi, we took a train to Chennai. The train was supposed to take 13 hours and arrive at 4 am, just in time for us to catch our flight to Sri Lanka at 7. I have ridden dozens of Indian Trains and have never been more than 15 minutes late, even on really long trains. But of course….our train was 2.5 hours late. We didn't arrive in Chennai until 6, raced out of the station, hopped into a taxi while it was still moving, zoomed to the airport and arrived in 30 minutes (all the drivers wanted to charge us quadruple the price and swore you couldn't make it to the airport in under 50 min) We arrived at the airport and were sooo upset because we missed our flight. We made it to the airport with only a half an hour before our international flight… I don't blame them for not letting us on, but its still very frustrating. This was already the second flight we had to buy, which was more expensive, because the original flight we had booked was canceled a week before. Plus we were originally supposed to leave out of Triavndrum, 2 hours away from Varkala but instead had to go to Chennai, 13 hours away from our new flight. So we are in the Chennai airport and we are screwed. We check with the airlines of our flight and al the other companies and all the flights for today are booked. All the flights for the next 5 days are booked- just our luck.. there is a festival happening in Colombo and apparently all of India is flying there so there are no seats. After pleading and bargaining with the airline, we finally found 2 seats on Jet Airways. The flight was over 3 times as much as we had paid for our original flight, on top of the cost of the flight we had lost- so it turned out to be mighty expensive. But we made it to Sri Lanka (woo hooo!) so its all good. Actually the flight was quite delightful. When you get on the plane, they served you cool towels to wipe your hands and face. Once in the air, they serve complimentary heinkens (bonus!) and a full meal. Not bad for an hour and a half flight.

So we arrived safely and took a couple of local buses to the costal town of Negombo. We found a place for 8 dollars a night right off the beach and were happy. The next day we walked an hour and a half into town to see the "Dutch fort" which really wasn't a fort at all but a crappy old clock where the fort used to be. We then walked for a couple of more hours, stopping on the way to buy ice cream and pineapples and arrived at a huge Buddha statue and old underground temple. The Buddha statue is massive, and has a giant lion under it with an open mouth which happen to have a little kitty sleeping in the middle (so cute…) We were the only ones there, so we got a personal tour from some dude walking around and then were led next door to the temple spice gardens. The "doctor" as he is called, showed us around, explained all the funky herbs and plants and what they were used for. One was a hair tonic, another used for dry skin, another for runny nose and the ones used for "women's troubles" or "mans special needs" we were referred to a piece of paper, as it would have been to crude for the doctor to read out loud. After our tour, the doctor insisted we get a facial massage with a sandalwood oil, aloe vera, something mixture.

"No thank you sir, my skin is very sensitive"

"No no you really must try. It is healthful for skin"

"No, no thank you, I don't want.""Oh yes yes, it is very nice. You must try" (Then he grabs a glob for a jar and smears it on my face and massages into my cheeks and forehead…I broke out an hour later...haha)

The next day we left early morning for Colombo (which is a mere 45 min away) long story short we took 5 local buses and 2 rickshaws to finally make it to where we wanted to go. We got our money back from the office of the flight company who canceled our first flight then hopped on a train to Kandy. We were lucky, (once in Sri Lanka our luck changed for the better in almost every case) the tourist board guy at the train station owned a beautiful hotel in Kandy, was going to give us a discount, and would arrange for a car to pick us up at the train station when we arrive, as it would almost 10 at night. The train was much nice then Indian trains, but just as cheap. A dollar and twenty cents for a 3.5 hour ride. Its amazing, there are guys who cant fit inside and don't want to pay the fare so they actually hang on outside the door. Not just one guy…like 40. 7 or 8 hang out each one. Its amazing! We were seated at the end so we chatted with them out the window as they clung for their lives, barely noticing the zooming trains passing by. We were picked up in a large new van (much better then a rickshaw) driven to a beautiful place up in the hills with a great view, we were the only ones there so they upgraded us to the second level, and the bathroom had hot water…ahhh, paradise.

The next day we visited the famous temple of the tooth, where the Buddha's left canine tooth is enshrined. We took a walk up into the hills and took in the gorgeous views and then caught a traditional Sri Lankan cultural show at night. The show was actually quite bad, traditional sri Lankan music is terrible and all the dancers were off beat and not fully in sync with one another. The only cool part was when they started walking on hot coals and blowing fire. The next morning we took a bus to the elephant orphanage. It's a haven for about 60 young and abandoned elephants. Oh it was sooo cool! We got to watch them feed and bath in the river. We even got to touch and play with the baby elephants. I loved it! After returning back to Kandy we packed our bags and headed for the bus station. Unfortunately we arrived literally 1 minute late for the last bus (I saw it pulling away as we pulled up) and then scrambled to find another option. Somehow Buddha (Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country of course) sent us a guardian angel in the form of a short little gray haired Sri Lankan man. He happened to be going in our direction and adopted us as his foreign children and asked around to about 30 different people until he found a solution. We could take a bus to a junction about 8 km away where a bus from Colombo going where we needed to go would probably pass. We hopped on a bus with the old dude, arrived at the junction in the pitch black and waited for over in hour in the rain for our bus. But our little gray haired dude delivered on his promise, we finally got a bus and made it to Nuwara Eliya- the town we are at now. It is quite chilly here; I slept last night with all my clothes on, including my fleece and a very warm blanket. But, it is stunningly beautiful.

Tomorrow we leave on a 7 hour bus to the south to head back to the sun and beach, soaking up every ray possible before heading to snowy and freeeeezing Nepal. I hope all is well at home. I love you guys!