Baby elephant

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An Elephant

Sadly no leotard this afternoon on our first game drive. Spotted deer. Buffalo. Bunches of birds. Crocodiles. And elephants. Besides the ears,  one big difference between Asian elephants and African elephants is that female Asian elephants never have tusks and only a small percentage of male elephants do. We saw one of only five tuskers living in yala national park.  This is him. 

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Anniversary Toast

Today is not just our anniversary. It is also Adhi Poson Full Moon Poya, a public holiday celebrating the birth of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. A public holiday. Plus no beef or alcohol is to be sold. 

We asked our guide to stop yesterday so we could buy a bottle of wine for tonight.

This is all they had. There is a reason that the only time I drink beer is on holiday.

Cheers!

What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been

I am being metaphorical now...talking about a different trip entirely.

Today Michael and I are celebrating our 30th Wedding Anniversary here in the tea country of Nuwara eliya, Sri Lanka.

Thirty years married. Just shy of 33 years together. 

And they said it wouldn't last.

We showed them.

Happy Anniversary, Michael.

I love you, still.

We chose to come here for this special day because we loved visiting the tea country in Munnar, India and wanted to see those beautiful hills again. We have seen mountains of rice paddies and vineyards and lavender. But I think tea plantations are the most beautiful. 

So the following are a few photos of this area. It rained heavily before our arrival and was still forecast to rain during our stay but we have been most fortunate enjoying very little mist, fast moving clouds due to intermittent high winds (look at the trees on the top left of the one image), but also bits of sun (actual shadows in one pic).

Lucky in weather, lucky in love. We're so lucky.

You Say Po-TAY-to. I Say Po-TAH-to.

Let's talk dogs.

In Java, we pointed out to Jaeson that all of the dogs in places like this look pretty similar: that centuries of inbreeding that takes them all back to about 40 pounds with erect ears and curled tails. Mostly beige.

In Sulawesi, we didn't see as many dogs. Sadly our inquiries resulted in being informed that many people there still eat dogs and were cautioned not to venture out to visit the biggest local markets unless we were prepared to see evidence of the same.

Now in Sri Lanka, there are dogs EVERYWHERE. Litter-aly, EVERYWHERE. 

At home in Anguilla, we call them bush dogs.

Here they are street dogs. 

They are protected in as much as it is against the law to willfully kill one (though death by car does not count).

However, no one really helps them much, either.

There are apparently some attempts at catching and releasing them with rabies vaccination and/or spaying (just the females I gather), but that is really More to benefit the human population. The dogs all have mange and though I haven't googled it, I would suspect fleas and ticks and intestinal parasites and heartworm and tick fever. But they seem happy enough in spite of their plight. Perfectly calm. Not skittish. Generally very quiet.

Here is my montage:

STREET DOGS AT THE GATE

STREET DOG AT THE RUINS IN POLLONARUWA

STREET DOG IN THE ACTUAL STREET

STREET DOG AT THE TRAIN STATION

AND EVEN A STREET DOG TAKING IN THE VIEW FROM 1,200 STEPS UP ON TOP OF SIGIRYA

How totally insane is that? What in the world would make him walk to edge and look off?

This morning, we went for a stroll outside the hotel in search of the street peacocks, and I called out to the first street dog at the gate., "Hey, Street Dog, how ya doin'?"  And he proceeded to bark at me. And bark at me. And follow us down the road barking at me.

Apparently he wasn't keen on the name at all.

Perhaps, you can call him Po-tay-to or Po-tah-to or Ray or Johnson. But ya doesn't have to call him Street Dog.

Whew! That Was a Grueling Day

Ok, sitting on a train now between Kandy and Nuwara Eliya having paid the 12 dollars to upgrade to first class. Probably a bit more legroom and the seats actually spin around so the everyone can always be facing forward but I have to think that the bumping and the jolting is the same throughout. Safe to say, I think, that this is the roughest train we have ever been on even beating out the rickety old locomotive that took us from Cuzco to Macchu pichu.

But I digress....yesterday.

First stop was the palace/fortress on top of Sigirya (or the Lion Rock). I never bore you with tons of historical or archeological details. That is what google is for. Suffice it to say that some king a bunch of years ago knew that one of his relatives was off in a foreign land mustering forces to return and to stage a coup. So he found the granite plateau in the middle of a valley and built a fortified palace on top. Moats. Gardens. Pools. One queen. 500 concubines. 10,000 soldiers. That sort of thing.

The top of the rock is some 660ft up off the floor of the valley.

For our purposes, today, ascending to the very top involved 1,202 steps. I assume that is paces not stair steps (though there are mostly stair steps) and I suspect that does not include the walk from the car park to the first stair step. But you get the picture.

The steps are mostly what you would expect: irregular in surface and rise, sloped downward in front due to wear, built for much smaller feet than ours, and dusted with fine sand to add that extra touch of slipperiness. Not particularly fun for me and just ideal for a big guy like Michael with a bad back, occasional vertigo and awaiting knee replacement.

He decided that he would only climb so far as the cave with the few remaining frescoes of topless women. (Big surprise.). Even so that was probably two thirds of the way up, past the water garden, the boulder garden, the terrace garden and the sign that warns that if the bees swarm and attack (people have been killed) they would shut down the sight and we would not receive a refund for our tickets. Then up the spiral staircase to the little cave where you can't take pictures anyway. Then back down another staircase and along the mirror wall (where they polished to granite ridiculously smooth and shined it with egg whites, honey, and beeswax...though they don't do that anymore.

At that point, Michael followed his hat (that had blown off in the wind) down one level and then all the way down to wait for me at the bottom. My forced march had only just begun. Our guide, apparently buoyed by cutting his numbers in half, picked up speed. Aggravated and waving me on even when I paused to let a mother and child pass heading back down. When we got to the final staircase (sturdy and level man-made metal, thank god) I had to stop him and insist that I needed to at least take a photograph.

Then he got behind me and started pushing my back as I walked at a steady pace in a steady line of other visitors. Finally, I had to tell him that I was, after all, still nearly 60, that I would continue at my pace, that I promised not to fall but there would be NO PUSHING.

I made it to the top and then we ran around taking photos. The view towards Colombo. The view toward Pollonaruwa. The view toward our hotel. The swimming pool. The throne. The ancient walls. And the last two steps of the 1,202 that sit in the middle of the palace. A monument to the insanity of assuming anyone has ever counted them. Regardless, I did not step on them so I could tell Michael that I didn't go all the way to the top either. 

And then we were heading back down. Like a horse that has made the turn that he know takes him back to the barn, there was no stopping him now. Seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that coming down can be easier but potentially more treacherous than going up, he bounded back down. Breaking stride occasionally but never really stopping. By the time we caught up with Michael at the bottom I assumed he had been waiting for some time when he says that he might have been sitting for 10 maybe 15 minutes when the guide with him said, "look, there is your wife already".

TripAdvisor warned us that coming DOWN can take 60-90 minutes, and our driver predicted a 3 hour round trip. 

Even going up very slowly in the beginning, I had completed the circuit in just under 2 Hours! And the guide asked for a Tip!

Off we headed for our afternoon tour at the ruins at Pollonaruwa with a stop for lunch at a restaurant in the rice paddies for a buffet of local fare eaten off of lily pads.

where I ate way too much even though it didn't seem like much. So I was physically uncomfortable and already weary from the mountain when we stumbled from the car to tour those ruins. Mercifully, on the flat but a staircase here or there into and out of some maze of temples that are all now a blur complicated by the fact that our guide here was missing several teeth giving him quite a cumbersome lisp. In summary, ancient toilet, Buddha, Buddha, moonstone, Buddha, and frescoes interspersed with dizzy spells.

Then the drive home where Michael miraculously spotted the elephant.

Yes, quite a full day.

Wildlife

Just a quick blog. I am exhausted. We are exhausted. More on that later when I am not falling asleep with my fingers poised above my virtual iPad keyboard.

(In fact, I did fall asleep so it is morning here now.)

We haven't gone to a national park yet but in addition to the palm squirrel mentioned earlier we have already seen (first few photos are not my own):

A smaller squirrel, a giant squirrel, monitor lizards,

Spotted deer

Three different kinds of monkeys including the purple-faced version 

Black-headed ibis

And

A Common kingfisher

And on the way home last night, as Michael and I were both falling asleep in the car (we have a driver), out of the corner of his eye he spotted this on the side of the road in the middle of everywhere

Not bad.

More later.

 Really just had to get some sleep