You know you've arrived in Sri Lanka when you walk into the arrival hall of the airport and every man and his son are sat around a TV watching the cricket. After an obligatory score check we were on a bus to Kandy, crammed in with the rest of Sri Lanka.
An 8.8% Sri Lankan stout in a dingy locals' bar was in order to wash away three days of travel and two nights in airports.
We hung around in Kandy for a few nights coming to terms with a part of Asia that we haven't ventured into before. SE Asia feels like home now but this was a whole new kettle of fish. Super smiley friendly people, delicious food and animals running around everywhere meant we were pretty happy with our surroundings.
Kandy is positioned around a beautiful lake that's teeming with wildlife despite its proximity to traffic and its fumes and tourists and their selfie sticks.
Tortoises, monitor lizards, funky birds, fruit bats, spotted catfish things... Hours of viewing pleasure.
Tortoises, monitor lizards, funky birds, fruit bats, spotted catfish things... Hours of viewing pleasure.
You can also find moneys down at the lake. The friends of those monkeys could be found running amok near our guesthouse. A common theme throughout this trip has been me being woken up to Nicola fretting that something was in our room. Not once has anything actually entered our room. (Note from Nicola - this statement is not true) (Note from me - maybe we've had the odd giant gecko, skink, massive spider, strange insect, cat, dog, mouse, hermit crab in our room)
This time however we both woke to a bang on the roof and then Nix saw our curtain billow and in a daze sat up and looked to the floor to see a monkey staring back with a look of shock that mirrored hers. "Oh no... Brim! There's a f*cking monkey in the room!!" Once I'd been called to action Nix hid under the blanket whilst I waved my arms and did my meanest kkkkssssss to get him out. He bolted out the window and grabbed some rubbish from the bin on the way out as as a keep sake. These particular monkeys have a geeky looking centre part that managed to make the ordeal even more comical than it already was. Funny little bastards...
Keeping on with the wildlife/nature theme we hopped on a bus to the Royal Botanic Gardens which are famed throughout not just Sri Lanka but the region. They were OK. The palm lined boulevards were nice,
the cannonball tree was a cool new discovery,
and I finally got to continue my love affair with sleeping in parks but the highlight was the fruit bats. Tree upon tree filled with thousands of bats that were very active given it was three in the afternoon. We'd read that Sri Lanka was going to be wild - it was living up to its billing.
The following day we had a Tea-rrific time at the Ceylon Tea Museum. Seeing the machinery and learning about withering and drying and such. Wow, what a roller coaster of emotions.
The tour culminated in, you guessed it, a cup of tea.
The tour culminated in, you guessed it, a cup of tea.
In all honesty it was a decent tour and provided a good platform for a month of drinking the stuff by the gallon and actually learning how you go from leaf to cup.
Food and drink - you didn't think you were getting away that easily did you?
Faluda (a super sweet rose syrup/vanilla icecream dessert) and buffalo curd with treacle (buffalOMG - he knows who he is).
Woodapple juice (like a fizzy tamarind juice with off blue cheese blended through it - actually really good).
Red rice with curry.
And so much other stuff that we shoved down too quickly to get photos of. Hoppers, string hoppers and simple things like dhal curry and sambols have us falling head over heels for Sri Lankan cuisine.
We're off to a cracking start, we really hope this place keeps it up.
