April 25: Keilani Forest Reserve

After breakfast leave for Kithulgala Resthouse, Kithulgala for one night. Afternoon, cross the Kelani River in a dugout canoe and reach the Kelani Valley Forest Reserve, which is a lowland tropical rainforest rich in endemic fauna and flora. The Kelani Valley Forest Reserve is ideal for any missed lowland endemics such as Sri Lanka Myna, Green-billed Coucal, Spot-winged Thrush, Sri Lanka Blue Magpie, Sri Lanka Spurfowl, Brown-capped Babbler and Red-faced Malkoha.

Some comments about the St Andrews Hotel are in order, in part to balance what we see as unwarranted criticism on a website. We all quite liked the place as an echo of the Colonial period which seems to have been well maintained. Very Pukka. It included a billards room available at 200r for 30 minutes with a sign prohibiting beginners and noting that the first rip in the baize would cost 50000R!

The gardens around the hotel were very picturesque, especially the large bed of red salvias.

Breakfast was incredible with a vast array of diet-threatening tucker. I ordered a cooked-while-you-watch omelette and was intrigued to watch the performance as the chilis were fried first then the egg added and finally cheese (this bit was unique to St Andrews: in other places everything was cooked together as I usually do it). The whole deal was flipped about 4 times.

After leaving we drove through an area in which the local vegetable entrepreneurs flogged their wares beside the road.

We then got into a tea growing area.  In many places the pickers (by tradition, nearly all Tamil women) were at work

while in other areas the visible rock suggested that the soil wasn't really deep in this area.

Eventually we got to a tea factory which we took a look at and an explanatory tour.  The process seemed to have quite a lot of manual labour about it (as we were told, machinery is imported and expensive and labour is cheap).

My favourite element in this image is the big old ledger book on the table.  I am sure that the role of the book could be fulfilled by a 14 year old with a cell phone, but am personally pleased the old traditions continue.  We were told a lot about the different styles of tea, summarised in this poster (click on it to make the words legible).

In addition to the different processes there are different qualities according to the altitude at which the tea is grown.  Nuwara Eliya is High Altitude (the best quality) above 1200m.  Other divisions are Medium Altitude 600m to 1200m and Low Altitude (below 600m).  We were given a free taste of the Orage Pekoe tea. A considerable quantity of tea was acquired plus one nice polo shirt.

We didn't buy any tea pots!

The road onwards was a new route since the traditional way is subject to road works and very muddy so takes longer even though shorter. We were able to resolve one of human society's major problems , namely "How do you transport a long bit of downpipe?"

 I think it was the passenger, rather than the driver who was holding the pipe!
The by-pass was very twisty, which in conjunction with two cups of Orange Pekoe meant that I had to be counselled with about 45 minutes to go. The advice could be summarised as “Tie a knot in it and man up”. That I managed to achieve until we got to the Kithulgala Guest House.

After putting our stuff in our rooms we started to bird around the compound. Within a few minutes we had ticked off Alexandrine Parakeet and Layards Parakeet. The latter gave very good views of their backs as they played on a tree about 30m away.As  well as seeing the birds we also watched the antics of a group of Indian tourists. Apart from their flaunty posing it was interesting to watch them wandering the leech infested grass in bare feet. Fortunately they soon hopped on their bus and departed.
To my surprise the Hotel TV system had access to Channel Australia.  This meant that we were able to watch the last quarter of the Essendon -Collingwood AFL game on TV.

The game was very exciting and until 1 minute to go looked as though there could be a good result.  Unfortunately the forces of evil triumphed.  In despair that such things are allowed to happen I wandered outside to watch a load of school kids being ferried across the river to their village.

We then went to an area near the Kithulgala Police Station to look for Hornbills and Chestnut-backed Owlet. The main place was a bloke's house and tea plot. Neither of these targets were found but a Spot-winged Thrush turned up and walked around under a tea bush about 2m from me. Rather excellent, and despite my history proximity to a nick did not result in me being arrested.  At some point here our first Green Forest lizard was photographed.

It then started to rain so we retired to the Guest House where the view across the river was rather murky. 

As it got dark, and the rain having stopped, I headed up to the main street to see if I could find an illuminated Buddha. To my surprise there was one in the grounds of the Guest House: a bit difficult to capture the lighting but I ended with a reasonable shot.

There was another shrine by the main bridge and on investigating that it turned out to be Hindu, rather than Buddhist.

It was also accompanied by

• loud recorded chanting as well as flashing lights; and
• some local youth who seemed keen on getting to know me better- or at least better than I wished to know them!

So I headed back to get ready for tea only pausing to snap the strange edifice at the gate to the Guest House.  Hettie advised the next morning that this was a disused clock tower.

It appeared that we were the only people in the Hotel even though a few of the tables had reserved signs on them. We wondered what implications this would have for events and it all started to get weird when Rob tried to order some wine for the meal. Despite a reasonably long wine list it turned out they had no wine! I wandered over to a display near the entrance and although there were wine bottles stacked artistically there it emerged that they were all empties! The only beer they had was Lion Lager!  The food filled a void, but wasn't that flash.

Returning to our room we noticed that the reason for the musty smell was the quantity of salt damp in the walls. The place is really run down.

Bird of the day: Lesser Yellownape

Other vertebrate of the day: Green Forest lizard

Pattern of the day: Sarong worn by owner of the birding site

Bad taste of the day: Indian tourists

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