Yala National Park in Sri Lanka’s south east corner is home to the world’s largest concentration of leopard. Surely, the odds were in our favour, right? So off we went, leaving behind beautiful Mirissa and bumpity-bumping our way across the south coast in a vintage minivan complete with, well, vintage driver.
It was hot, hot, hot in Yala. Our safari driver picked us up and it was a good hour before we made it through Tissa town and the gates of Yala. In the meantime, sitting in the rear, elevated seats of the open-air safari truck, we got a bird’s eye view of everyday life in semi-rural Sri Lanka. School children in their impossibly white uniforms giggling along the roads, snacking on corn on the cob and drinking their Milos. All the little street front markets selling their fruit and drinks, tuk-tuk drivers napping in their hammocks. We skirted lagoons and lakes where people were bathing and washing clothes, passed countless acrid little fires and watched water monitors trolling the ditches.
By the time we were through the Yala gates, we were rarin’ to spot our leopard(s). We weren’t the only ones. Wow. How very different from Africa. It was hectic. So many vehicles, all trying to pass each other in a race to bag the best sightings. The roads were absolute hell and I was sure that the 4×4 was going to roll over at any moment (of course, the kids thought it was a blast). My aching back. My aching neck. Potholes the size of Mini Coopers.
Yala is beautiful, no doubt about it, buttressed by the crashing Indian Ocean and jungle-y forest and open plain. It was badly damaged by the tsunami in 2004 and you can still see the devastation in certain areas. Despite the frenzy of safari-goers, we managed to spot a fair bit of game in only a few hours, but the driving was so intense that it felt c-c-crazy. Eagle-eye Tom spotted a honey bear and we saw quite a few elephant, tons of deer and buffalo, peacocks, eagles, bee-eaters, but alas…no leopard. Cats are sneaky. I always knew it.
Yala traffic jam
Yala was pretty, but we’ve been spoilt by Africa’s huge skies and humbling vastness. We met an Englishman at one of our guesthouses who opined that Sri Lanka does it all, but somewhere else does it all better. I’m not sure if I agree, but it’s certainly true where game viewing is concerned.
After a few days in Yala, we jumped into yet another dodgy-looking minivan and made our way up, up, up into the hill country, stopping for a few nights in Ella. Actually, ‘hill’ isn’t quite accurate. These are mountains – big, gloriously green, steep and ragged. So incredibly beautiful – it was like stepping into a fairy tale. After weeks of sweltering heat, we were so relieved to step out of the minivan into cooler climes – at least 10 degrees cooler than the coast and Yala.
We stayed at a great little guesthouse perched on the side of a hill (ahem…mountain) with incredible views. The guesthouse had a play area filled with toys, Legos, a mini trampoline etc. It wasn’t much, but we couldn’t drag the kids away from it. It occurred to us that our kids haven’t really played with any toys for nearly six months, aside from the toys at Blair Atholl in South Africa and the meagre collection of games and bouncy balls we carry with us. They loved the game corner and it gave us a much-needed respite to enjoy a few mojitos on the panoramic deck. Win/win all around.
We spent a couple of days in Ella and did little more than hike, eat and do homework. There are amazing trails and climbs to see, so we started with Little Adam’s Peak. It was a fairly easy hike, though it involved some bushwalking. The views from the top were amazing, but again, my knees buckled from the sheer drops and when the wind picked up, I was sure we were all goners.
We visited Finlays, a tea factory, and got to sample all sorts of delicious teas. This particular factory is more than 125 years old and was started by a Scotsman who settled in Ceylon. The grounds were beautiful, bursting with rose bushes and manicured lawns. It was such a contrast from the hurly burly of most of Sri Lanka, but yet another reminder of the British rule the country’s people lived under for so many years before it’s independence in 1948.
Tea. Everywhere tea.
We also made a ridiculously long and steep detour to gawk at what is apparently a famous and iconic landmark – the Nine Arches Bridge. We went, we saw, we took the requisite photo and then turned around and trudged up a huge steep hill with three hot, grumpy children. Seen one bridge, seen ’em all. Knocked it off the list, but that’s about all. And sometimes knocking something off an imaginary list is just nuts, plain and simple. We seem to have a hard time with this concept.
Hey look, kids! It’s a bridge. With nine arches.
A highlight in Ella was lunch at a beautiful hotel high in the hills called 98 Acres. We sprawled across bean bags and soaked up the 360 degree view and spent, as we do, an inordinate amount of time luxuriating in their pristine bathrooms. We also tried to figure out how to jump in the pool without raising eyebrows. Didn’t work. We were too grubby to belong there and we couldn’t pretend otherwise.
The next leg, from Ella to Kandy, was much anticipated because we were travelling by train. We have all discovered that we loooove trains. They’re chill, they have bathrooms, we can all read and I don’t annoy Mike by stomping on an imaginary brake every couple of minutes. Family harmony – priceless.
This particular route, from Ella to Kandy, winds through the hill towns and tea plantations of central Sri Lanka and is often described as one of the world’s most beautiful train journeys. No surprise. It was so, so, so old school – we felt like we’d stepped back a century or two. Even the train station in Ella was something out of a Rudyard Kipling story, with clerks handwriting our tickets and taking their sweet time as the lines snaked around the station and monkeys cavorted on the tracks.
And the trains themselves…Whoa, Nellie! We travelled just over 200kms in nearly 5 hours. No high-speed Japanese bullet trains in these parts. It didn’t matter because the scenery was so stunningly, blindingly green. Tea plantations, gardens, forests, hills, waterfalls, bridges, flowers, monkeys, villages. And all the while, you can hang off the train like crazy, death-wishy type people. It was exhilarating, if a little stressful. The kids thought it was the bee’s knees, but I can only pretend to be ‘cool mum’ for so long before I start imagining them tumbling off the train into the wild green yonder.
We finally arrived in Kandy (and yes, the kids agreed it was the best name ever for a city) and had to endure the painful routine of negotiating a rate to our guesthouse with every tuktuk driver from here to Tuktukville. Not my favourite part of travel. As it turns out, they were quoting Mike a pretty steep fare and I was starting to have a bit of a meltdown. “Oooh”, clucked said tuktuk drivers, “your guesthouse VERY, VERY far away”. Pffft, I think not.
I was convinced they were trying to scam us, but we couldn’t get them down to price that seemed reasonable. Tired and cranky, the boys and I climbed into a tuktuk feeling all miffed that we were being taken for a ride on our ride. Mike and Lucy shared another one. Not only were we being scammed, but we needed two tuktuks.
Well, guess what? Our guesthouse was very, VERY far away. Like, take-a-train far away. Like, two towns and a good hour away. In the middle of nowhere. Ooops. I had mistakenly booked it, thinking it was in Kandy. I should have known that it was too good to be true for the price we paid. But more than anything, it made me feel incredibly sheepish and shamefully cynical – these nice men (and they were nice) weren’t scamming us. In fact, by the time we’d pulled up to the guesthouse, I couldn’t believe how far they’d taken us for so little. Gah.
Despite the location fail, our far, far away Airbnb was gorgeous. Our experience with Airbnb’s so far has been very hit and miss. But remote location aside, this one smashed it out of the cricket pitch. We had an entire 3 bedroom villa, complete with discreet cook and caretaker, private infinity pool, and dinner and breakfast included for about the same price as a White Spot meal for five. We loved it. But it made it difficult to sightsee around Kandy the following day because none of us wanted to leave. And in yet another twist of small-world-itis, the villa overlooked the Victoria Dam, a watershed that the children’s step-grandfather, Evert, had helped build back in the 1980s. Evert had lived and worked just a few short kilometres from our far, far away villa.
Villa Marvelous notwithstanding, we did manage to make it back to Kandy for a very full day of sightseeing. We took in a tour of a medicinal herb garden called Spicy Garden and learned all about the Ayurvedic plants grown in Sri Lanka and their healing properties.
Lucy checking out the jackfruit
Caocao beans!
We toured another tea plantation and watched the entire process of tea production from start to finish (very involved – we’ll never look at a tea bag the same way again!).
the tour wasn’t Henry’s cup of tea. oh, bwahahaha.
eating candy in Kandy…had to do it…
Our last stop in Kandy was the Temple of the Tooth – a Buddhist temple right on Kandy Lake that is believed to house…you guessed it… Buddha’s tooth.
It was beautiful and interesting and our guide was awesome. I was really proud of the kids – they were still going strong, asking great questions and seemed very interested in the monks and temple and all of the history. Mike was similarly enthralled.
I, on the other hand, was done. Capital “D”. Between the monkey bangers gnawing at my nerves every few seconds, the heat and the crowds, I just wanted out. Sadly, my inner Zen garden was full of weeds. Not my finest hour.
On our final day in Sri Lanka, we woke up in Kandy and spent a lazy morning at the villa. We made our way to the train station in thenearly afternoon and climbed aboard the observation car that would take us, full circle, back to Colombo. Again, it was a beautiful (albeit much shorter) ride.
my favourite sign
On the train back to Colombo, Mike sat a few rows behind us and I could hear him chatting and laughing with his seat mate, an older Sri Lankan fellow. By the end of the three hour journey, Mike and the older gentleman had really hit it off. Mr. Sri Lankan had lived in Alberta for several years during his young adulthood, later moved to Denmark, married a Danish woman and now splits his time between his tea plantation in Sri Lanka and his wife’s native Denmark. His daughter married the captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team and now one of his hobbies involves travelling the world to attend his son-in-law’s matches. Pretty nice gig. These types of random conversations are one of my favourite parts of travel.
By the end of the train journey, Mr. Sri Lankan had arranged a driver to pick us up at the station to take us to the airport. And Colombo Fort train station is a zoo, so when we arrived, he walked us to the waiting vehicle to make sure we were safely on our way. One more example of the countless generosity of the Sri Lanka people. I hope that’s what our children will remember from this trip. That people, everywhere, are kind.
Despite my weedy Zen garden, I was feeling quite sad about leaving this country of smiling people, incredible scenery and delicious food. Sitting beside Henry on the train, he agreed that we were leaving too soon. It felt bittersweet in so many ways. Sri Lanka, if it hasn’t already, feels on the verge of busting out into the international ‘tourist scene’. If we ever go back, it will be very different. There might even be a Starbucks.
After 17 days, we were back at the Colombo airport. We all felt a bit bummed and spent our last rupees on wilted club sandwiches, Lion Lager and postcards. I blew a silent kiss to Vik, Mali and the ever-elusive Mr. Ondaatje and we stepped onto the plane that would take us to Cambodia.