Woke up early this morning and I did
some work, got dressed for our day of exploring, and met up with Ellie in the
lobby. Our driver/tour guide arrived exactly like he said he would, and we
introduced ourselves and were off by 7. Our first stop was the elephant
orphanage, about a three hour drive because of all the traffic
related to the mud slides. Driving around here is nuts. There are always,
everywhere, tuk tuks, little tri-wheel covered taxis, and I cannot believe we
didn't hit at least five during our trip today. Lots and lots of stop and
go on the roads. And in general - everything is dirty and partially
constructed. It's rainy season here, and mud is just everywhere. Also I have
noticed a lot of wedding shops, but I might just be more sensitive to those
things as of late...
Driving up to the elephant orphanage took us into
the beautiful hill country; we passed rubber trees, banana trees,
pineapple fields, and even some wild monkeys. Definitely not in Georgia
anymore.
The elephants were awesome! Definitely my favorite part of the
day. The oldest elephants at the orphanage are treated with the most respect;
we saw them first and got to feed them from a little raised hut structure.
So so cool. They would stuck their trunks anywhere and everywhere and both
Ellie and I got elephant dirt all over our shirts from our encounters. We then
got to see elephants in several other holding areas. My favorite was a young
two year old in a pen that was trying as hard as he could to reach with his
trunk and pick up grass clippings from a weedwacker. He would get down on this
front knees, stick his butt in the air, and stretch as far as he could to get
the grass. In the pin next to him was a little older elephant that was munching
on a tree trunk. To eat the meat from the truck, he would hold it with one foot
and kick it, hard, with the other foot. Then he would rip out the loosened
chunks with his trunk and eat away. At one point I stepped a little closer
to get a video of the interaction, and he turned toward me and threw some bark
my direction. Rude. Don't worry, I still got the video.
Our next stop was to be the city of Kandy, an older city and
former Capitol of Sri Lanka. And also, most famously, it is home if the Temple
of the Tooth. An actual tooth from an actual Buddha is housed here. What I
learned from visiting this site is that I don't know much at all about
Buddhism. We had to take our shoes off to enter the temple, which was a pretty
busy place because Buddhas birthday is this weekend. Lots of colorful flags and
flowers hanging everywhere. Apparently the tooth only gets displayed once every
five years on this weekend, and people travel from all over to see it. It was
strange to see such blatant idolatry in action.
From the temple we walked the streets of Kandy. It was
interesting to see the influence of the British architecture all around the
city. A lot of old, well-built stone structures, a nice contrast from the more
shotty construction we saw on the drive and in Colombo. We walked less than a
mile total, and that was plenty for me. Passing the food stands was almost
too much. The produce ones were fine, but the curry smell was overwhelming at
times. And then there were the dried fish shops. Basically anything that
you could catch in fresh or salt water was dried and then placed in big sacks
and packed into a tiny open-air store front. Oh the smell. Oh the smell. It
could have knocked me over. I have always considered myself very open minded
about trying new things, but I found my limit. I'm just not interested in dried
and oh so aromatic fish, thank you.
We went to lunch at a "normal and hygienic" place, as
our guide described it. A buffet with lots of curry and fish and produce. I had
to stay away from the fish based on my recent encounters....
We made a slight change of plans after lunch and decided to cut
out the tea field tour and head back to Colombo. It was taking longer than
planned to get anywhere because of all the mudslide traffic, and all the stop
and go had made Ellie pretty car sick.
And now four and a half hours later, we are still in the car
trying to get back to the hotel. I miss my traffic on 400. Such clean, orderly,
honking-free traffic. My plan tonight is to maybe eat some food from the
hotel and to definitely go to bed early. Not going to lie - I've slept a
lot in the car since lunch. I hope I haven't messed up my days and nights,
we'll see.
So glad I got to see the countryside today, what an experience.
Asia traveling is different than I anticipated: messier, more colorful,
and far fewer similarities with our world. Leaves me with lots of grateful
feelings for our country and our community.
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