After a few days relaxing at the beach we went back into history and religions. In Anuradhapura for the first time since we are in Sri Lanka we’ve found a dishonest person, who took us around the archaeological site, but only where he wanted, saying that the rest wasn’t interesting and after a few hours brought us back in town, saying that he was hungry. Well, never mind, it wasn’t anyway as nice as the other one we’ve seen, more than ruins it had many religious sites still in use today, especially The Mahavihara, near the oldest tree of Sri Lanka, brought and planted by Buddha himself; this whole area was full of local people praying and donating flowers and food.
We’ve decided to risk another safari, it turned out to be a good idea, soon as we got in to Wilpattu National Park we’ve seen a sloth bear, which was just amazing; for the whole day the driver tried to find a leopard, no good luck, but we were able to see many other animals: two different deer, peacocks, many different birds, wolves, crocodiles, monkeys, boars, iguanas and elephants. We then went to Kandy where in a temple we’ve seen the sacred tooth of the Buddha, or better, the golden casket shaped like a Stupa where the tooth is safely kept. Sad was to see tourists jumping in front of believers just to take a good picture of it. From this religious city we took a wonderful long and slow journey by train to Ella, the scenery through hills, valleys, tea plantations and forests was beautiful the whole way. The ambience on the train was interesting and funny, even if we didn’t find a seat and stood for 6 hours, we’ve enjoyed chatting, laughing, looking out of the window and listening to local people singing and playing music. We met a couple from Switzerland with whom we’ve spent our first two days in Ella discovering improvised guest houses and a bar owned by a very friendly young guy and his father near the Nine Arch Bridge, we had something to drink and waited for the train to pass over it.
We had fun with Fran and Roman, talking about travels and our lovely country while drinking some very deserved beer, quite hard to find in this country. The last few days in this village we’ve spent them walking to the Little Adam’s Peek, to admire the beautiful view of the valley and visiting the very informative Uva Halpewatte Ceylon Tea Factory.
Staying in a very welcoming guest house, where the lady that owns it even offered us a dinner for free, just because I helped her getting into Tripadvisor, we’ve finally found the time to update for good our blog, editing a few things like the check list, the baggage and the advices. Back to Negombo, where our adventure in this wonderful country started, we are ready to say goodbye to it and fly back to Bangkok to start our trip around Southeast Asia.
tramping the world 