Temples, Villages and Elephants...Whew!
We were at the bus at 6 am because we had a busy day ahead of us. After a quick picture of all of us sporting our reunion shirts, compliments of Jo and Don, we were on our way. We are so fortunate to have our bus driver Samon! Driving in Sri Lanka is crazy! There are no highways in this area, just two lane roads which drivers pretend are 3 lanes! When drivers pass, they just pull out and squeeze between the cars. It's kind of a continuous game of chicken! There are plenty of things to look at along the way. The scenery is beautiful with green hills and lush flora and fauna. We passed through many towns along the way so it was interesting to view the shops, homes, and people.
Our first stop was a city called Dambulla where we visited the golden temple. This is the largest and best preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka. There are 5 caves that have statues and paintings primarily of Buddha. When visiting a Buddhist temple, people are required to wear long pants or skirts which cover the knees and shoulders must be covered and no shoes. We didn't count but there were a total of 153 Buddha statues, 3 statues of Sri Lankan kings, and 4 statues of gods and goddesses. During this experience, we were introduced to our first Sri Lanka monkeys who ran around everywhere like squirrels do at home. There was a wire fence surrounding the temple to try to keep them out but I spotted a daredevil who did some slack lining across hanging flags to get in!
Sami placing flowers by a Buddha which is tradition.
Our next stop was to the village life experience. This is a fairly new tour put together by the locals which our tour guide Maleen highly recommended. We were greeted by a local and promptly taken down a dirt road to board a wooden cart pulled by oxen. It was a bumpy ride which made me thankful for the invention of rubber tires and it involved a lot of loud commands from the driver to the oxen who seem to not follow directions the first time they're asked! Along the route we passed many rice paddies being tended to. It looked to be very hard and muddy work. After disembarking from the cart, we loaded up into canoe-like boats and were paddled through a section of a man made reservoir to a little village home. The first structure we saw was a tree house and we had noticed other simple platforms in the trees on our short journey to this point. These are not for kids, as my American brain first thought, but are necessary to have above rice paddies for the workers to rest during the hottest part of the day and to stay in during the night to keep watch and prevent elephants and other animals from entering the fields. Fireworks are used to scare them away. It was fun to channel our inner child and climb up in one although I don't think I would ever sleep - I would be too afraid of falling out!
The simple village house has half walls made of mud and a thatched roof made from palm tree leaves. The floor is hardened mud and oxen dung. It was a hot day and the house was surprisingly cool. This was very significant for us to experience because my sister in law, Sani, raised her girls in a home similar to this until the oldest was six years old. I think the girls, now in their 20's, enjoyed sharing this part of their past with us and we enjoyed being able to experience it first hand. A village woman demonstrated how to shave coconut meat and prepare a bread called roti. All of the cooking is done over a wood fire in the back of the house. She also used a flat stone and stone rolling pin to crush the ingredients for a coconut relish called pol sambol ( coconut, onion, chilis, lime juice). They served this to us on a basket lined with a lotus leaf and herbal tea in a coconut shell. Delicious!
Into the boat we went again and rowed into a larger part of the reservoir where there were lily pads everywhere. The boat rower ( captain?) stopped and made hats out of the lotus leaves. Back on shore we walked to another village house where the women there demonstrated making pumpkin curry and then fed us a wonderful lunch with different native dishes. Again we ate on lotus leaves...no need for a dishwasher!
But the day was not over...oh no! Back on the bus we went but just down the road to our Jeep safari into Minneriya National Park. By this time it was about 4pm which was a perfect time to see "the gathering." During the dry season in this area, which is now, herds of elephants gather to eat the lush grass and drink the water in the man made reservoir. We were expecting to see a few elephants but ended up seeing about 100...up close and personal! Our jeep driver, along with several other jeeps, brought us right up next to these magnificent creatures! These were open jeeps so we could stand up and get a great view. There were a couple of times that a jeep would get a little too close to a baby, so the matriarch would posture herself as if to charge until the jeep backed away. There were quite a few babies and the littlest ones would walk underneath the mama and then the other elephants would surround the mom to protect the baby even more. The grass was the big attraction and they were very busy grazing. We noticed that they would pull up the grass with their trunk and then swish back and forth and back and forth before they put it in their mouths. They do this to dust off the dirt. Paige noticed that the babies were not very good at the swishing part and just tap their trunks a couple times on the ground to try to emulate their elders. Elephants have always been special to me, I guess because the females are the boss, they have awesome memories, and are admired for being big and wrinkly! This was definitely a wonderful, bucket list check off experience!
By now we are definitely very hot, tired and dusty so when we arrived at our hotel, we welcomed the traditional cool, cinnamon infused washcloths that were presented to us as we walked into the lobby. This was the Hotel Habarena Village which was part of the Cinnamon chain of hotels in Sri Lanka. Similar to a cruise ship, we had our own reserved table in the restaurant for the Oswell family (close enough) where they offered a delicious buffet of traditional Sri Lankan dishes, Asian dishes and a pasta bar(!) A perfect way to end a fabulous day! Needless to say, we were all exhausted!
Yes, the Oswells had to settle for our table (joking). This was a very BUSY day. We spent a bit more time at the morning tea stop and temple than Maleen and I had "anticipated" ... and of course, there was no "making up time" at the village. Fortunately, the jeeps for the safari were pretty much at our disposal, so our schedule had some "flex" to it.
ReplyDeleteThat was the first time I'd been on that safari ... in fact, I had not even been aware of it until I had bumped into Maleen and happened to ask about elephant safaris (which ultimately led to me using him to help plan this trip). We got much closer to the elephants here than we ever would have in Yala. :)
oh ... you have no idea how fortunate we were to have a responsible bus driver ... probably the best Sri Lankan driver I've ever had the pleasure to share a ride with ... not joking! :)
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