Travels with Kathryn

I am writing this sat beside a pool (in the shade obviously) in our hotel in Dambulla, which is within the national park. Sounds idyllic, yes? No quite, the hotel has two pools, the pool outside our rooms has been invaded by a private party of the owners party complete with loud speaker so I am by the other pool, along with the rest of the hotel including some quite screechy small girls… I shall not let it distract me from the important task of getting up to date on my blog.

Yesterday we travelled from Trincomalee to Dambula. I have written extensively about the food, but I am also getting the strong sense that Sri Lankans are a nation of feeders. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. On our 3 our drive we had two food stops, the first for what was described as curd with treacle (pronounced by our guide as trekle which I shall be adopting from now on). This is a set buffalo’s milk yogurt served with a treacle made from the fish tail palm tree. An excellent breakfast/mid morning snack. In case we were weakening, about an hour later, I had an early lunch of kottu (which is swiftly becoming my snack of choice)

We have been heading back in-land to central (Singhala speaking) Sri Lanka and it was very obviously we were back in the well trodden tourist path as suddenly they’re everywhere! We had sort of got used to being more of a novelty.

This area has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites (the Dambulla caves and Sigriya) and three national parks. We were starting in the Dambulla Cave Temple. These date back to the 2nd century BC and were built by Valagamba of Anuradhapura to thank the people and the monks after his 14 years in hiding amongst them before reclaiming his throne. Some of the artwork dates back to these times, all the way up to 11th century. These would have originally been home to some 80 monks, but today there are 5 caves the largest of which includes the largest wall mural of Buddha in Sri Lanka. As a whole, this is the largest and best-preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka. I should probably start by saying this was my first climb of this holiday, call it a test run for tomorrow, of 160m up around 40 stairs and quite a lot of uphilling as the caves are (as always) at the top of a hill. I was fine, a bit glowy (readers of my blog know that ladies never sweat, we merely glow) but no crying meltdowns. Huzzah.

As this is a Buddhist temple it was no shoes allowed and note that the first climb coincided with the first sunny day so we were also wearing “temple socks” to protect from the burning floors.

From my time in China,  I consider myself something of a buddhist cave aficionado, and although there were some similarities in the artwork itself (as both depict the life of Buddha) these caves were far larger. I was also somewhat surprised that there were no restrictions on photo taking and no controls on the numbers of people allowed into the caves at any time. However, this does mean I have photos.

Our guide was also very keen that we understand the drip ledge (pictured below). This dates back over 2000 and was cut into the rock to ensure that rather than water dripping into the cave, it would be diverted and collected to be used within the temple.

I even survived getting myself down the hill (I am very impressive), and then it was back in the bus. On route to the hotel, we had our first elephant sighting. Four in fact! I was very excited.

After checking in we headed off to transfer to jeeps for an afternoon safari around the national park. I had understood that one was pretty much guaranteed to see elephants this time of year, and I was most encouraged by those on the road, however, as we headed out, I started to get nervous that these were some kind of marketing elephants strategicaly placed to sell jeep tours. I started to make a list of what we had seen in readiness to be disappinted: a butterfly, a bird, some fresh elephant dung, a water buffalo and then ALL THE ELEPHANTS!

They seemed completely unbothered by being surrounded by a number of jeeps and by how close they were. I hoped to see maybe an elephant in the distance and having to stand and have it pointed out. There was a group of 14 elephants including two 6 month old babies and I would say I got within 1m.

Sri Lankan elephants are the largest of the Asian elephants. Very few males actually have tusks, only around 5% and we did see one in the group which had tusks. These elephants can roam 70km a day and have to eat 150kg of vegetation a day – given we saw them munching on grass you can see why they need so much to keep them going… The herds are only female and males up to the age of 13, after 13 males become loners and leave their family.

After elephants, I couldn’t get that excited about the other sightings, although some in our group did enjoy the Changeable Hawk Eagle. It was nice. but no elephant.

You have to be out of the national park by 6pm/when it goes dark (or else there is a significant fine for the jeep driver) so we were slightly excelerrating towards the endwhich allowed me to find my sea (jeep!) legs and only got bashed in the head a couple of time by passing branches. As dusk was falling, the heavens opened, and there was a mad panic to unroll the roof on the jeep and on leaving the park we were greeted by Roy to escort us to the bus with an umbrella. I shall miss this kind of service when I get home!

It was quite late by this point, and as we had just been informed that we would be leaving the hotel at 5.15am tomorrow morning, we decided on a hotel buffet for dinner and then an early night. Many of the same options that we are becoming used to seeing, but I went for a really natural looking and health conscious desert selection plate.

Tomorrow I climb the mountain. I may die (spoiler alert, I didn’t or this post would not have been written.).