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

Read on

 

April 27: Gardens and Tooth Temple

Morning, visit Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, the largest and finest garden in Sri Lanka, covering almost 150 acres and stuffed with a bewildering variety of local and foreign tree and plant species. The area around the entrance is largely given over to small- scale flora, including an orchid house, a spice garden and a tiny rather unimpressive Japanese Garden. Afternoon, visit Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Kandy, which is an object of veneration to Buddhists and the most important sacred relic in the country. Also do a city tour.

While I have tried to reduce the volume of this post by putting many images in special posts it is still pretty big.  Sorry (well not really, it is a lovely town).

After the drama of the previous day this one dawned most peacefully.  I think I had the best nights sleep of the trip so far.  Rob had a good enough kip that he went for a run, spotting our driver washing the van en route.  We went for breakfast in a rather plush area:

Some other photographs of the dining arrangements at the Citadel are on the food page.

Our replacement guide, Nandana – referred to, at his invitation, as Nanda – fronted at 9am to take us around the Kandy Botanic Gardens.  Before we got there we passed some wedding houses where the rich of Kandy were marrying off their kids.  This was pretty spectactular!  Most of the images are in a special page, but here is a taster

 I have little idea why all this stuff was going on at 9:30am on a Saturday - but it did mean mean we could pass on the evening cultural extravaganza, having seen the real deal.

The gardens are rather large – about 150 Ha – and seemed to be set up for a number of purposes .  Most of the specimens are well labelled (a major lesson for ANBG) and the colour of the label indicated key attributes (green being for medically important plants. Unfortunately when Nanda explained this I was distracted by the behaviour of a bunch of Middle Eastern Yoicks who were behaving like stereotyped yoicks who have escaped from the doctrinaire minders i.e. disgracefully (see below).

I questioned the labelling of a Queensland Kauri Pine, thinking it was a misprint of NZ Kauri.  Uncle Google assures me the Sri Lankans had got it right.  Various birds were heard and a few seen.  We also found a large colony of Flying Foxes which were the likely source of the flock seen flying up the river past the hotel.

I will confess to being very slack and not recording the full details of everything we saw.  I do know that the first two images are of the Cannonball tree - so named because the fruit from these flowers resemble those weapons.

This is the whole tree:

and here is a sign commemorating the planting of one.

Some other flowers were recorded:

as was a turtle (in life, its neck had pretty orange spots - these may be visible in an enlarged image)

The others went to a jewellery workshop while I stayed outside to photograph the chaos on the street.

 We then returned to the Hotel for a bit of R&R before heading out again for a City Tour to check the Tooth Shrine and various commercial establishments.  And the Kandy Cricket Ground.

The tooth shrine was quite excellent with many interesting statues and carvings.  Most of the images are in a special page.  It is also an active place of worship: at one point we got slightly muddled with the queue to go and view the casket in which the tooth is stored.  At the entrance Nanda pointed out how and where terrorists had reacted to that by using a lorry bomb in 1998.  While there were a few other tourists around the majority of the folk in the Temple seemed to be ordinary Sri Lankans doing their religious observances, or children being educated

which I see as making the place far more interesting than just an historic ruin.

Here are a few images to give an idea of the place.

 This third image shows the votive offerings left by people seeking the assistance of the Buddha (eg in recovering from illness) .

 There were animals around the place.  Some cute

while others such as the inhabitants of this wasps nest are neither cute nor welcome.

After spending the time there we headed off for the city tour.  I got things off on a reasonable footing by acquiring an extra pendrive since I had filled the 2Gb one I was using to back up my photographs.  I lost a few points with Nanda by paying too much for it (1500R rather than 1000R) but it was generally agreed that the shopkeeper could see that he was going to sell me one anyway so I was in a poor haggling position!

The next stop was a Batik factory and retail emporium.  A very nice young lady explained how batik is made and then conducted us to the showroom where we could buy some of the produce.  Frances obliged in a moderately large way (getting a special discount - ie the one given to everyone who doesn't actually beat up the employees of the place).

 Next door to this was a wood products factory in which we were shown the various types of wood used (most of which we had seen growing in the morning) were able to seen the craftsmen creating stuff and were then given a demonstration of the properties of rainbow wood.  Some wood was given a good rasping and the shavings treated with various liquids which changed colour dramatically.  Proving that everything is on the internet You-tube has a video of a similar demonstration plus text of the various things added.

 After acquiring some additional drinking water we visited another important site for Sri Lankans: the Kandy Cricket Ground at which test matches are played.  It is the home of the Old Trinitonians  (I think - it might have been the Old Trininians although the Upper Sixth were unfortunately not seen).  The ground was rather small - I think the capacity was 5,000 and for a Test the tickets cost $50 a head.  This was a strange visit as the entrance we used was a building site and I am sure we would not have wandered in without a local guide and Nanda would probably have been told to go away if he didn't have foreigners with him!  The action on the ground was training for the local hockey teams.

 Street cricket was also happening. Robs photo (1st)  and mine (2nd) capture the poetry in motion of the game.

According to the posters around town Rugby was also popular!

In the evening I decided that a bottle of refreshing beverage from the minibar would be in order.  Using the hotel wall mounted opener I managed to wrench the top off the bottle.  A call to the receptionist resulted in a man coming to inspect situation and another beng despatched with a replacement bottle.  The man with the replacement looked very dubiously at the opener and used it very carefully to avoida repeat.  All done very pleasantly and efficiently.

That evening as we were finishing our meal Nanda turned up at the table saying he had found a Collared Scops Owl in a tree outside the Hotel.  It would have been discourteous of me to not go to look, plus they are cute little birds!  He does everything he can to show us stuff.

Bird of the day:  Indian Shag

Other vertebrate of the day:  Flying Fox

Pattern of the day:  Tooth Temple generally

Bad taste of the day:  The behaviour of some middle-Eastern-ancestry yoicks at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens.


There were a couple of strong contenders who walked the red carpet in category 4.  These were:

• a pair of tennis shoes with 6" high soles seen at the Gardens and 
• the question - fortunately not heard by Nanda - "How long does a tooth last?"

Read on

May 1st: Last day

After breakfast transfer to International Airport. En route, visit Muthurajawela Marshes.

 Being fanatical runners, Rob and I went for another run this morning.  Just for a change we didn't go over the dam but turned right out of the gate.  This gave us a very pleasant jog along a minor road with Sri Lanka waking up around us.

After a relaxed breakfast packing was finished and Frances and I headed off towards the lobby to await the appearance of the van.  Even though the wheels of our cases made a loud rumbling, (which I thought of as the mating call of a porter) no bag-grabber appeared until we were within about 20m of the meeting point, so  we had won.  However, the staff at these resorts are very aware of who is who so worked out that Rob and Carol would be along soon and moved in for the 100R bill!

Before we headed off on the serious trip to Colombo Rob wanted to buy a couple of flags so was taken to a Buddhist shop in the main street of Dambulla.  

 While he was engaged in that Frances and I ignored the small shop next door 

and  went spice hunting in the nearby Cargill's Supermarket (the ground floor of Beer Central).

I noticed a series of bright red posters with yellow hammer and sickle emblems (plus a lot of Sinhala script).  This drew our attention to it being May Day and Rob and Carol remembered hearing a lot of info on the TV about where the various unions were rallying in Colombo.  As we set off various buses passed us decorated with banners about politicians and with blue tape out the windows: they were carrying folk down to the rallys and the occupants seemed to be having a good time, judging by the amount of drumming coming from a bus that passed while we were stopped at a rest room.

We didn't stop much on the way down, other than to scope out some ploughing, both modern ...

 ... and ancient, with buffalo.

Also a bunch of people de-husking a huge pile of coconuts.

The husks are used to make coir as well as the flesh of the nuts going in to copra.

Once at the city we swung into the Tamarind Tree Hotel where we had arranged to be day guests.  This meant we could have a swim and in the evening a meal in far nicer circumstances than would be available at the airport.  This was a very pleasant spot and being close to the airport would make a good first night spot if heading North (although it would not be as good as Villa Talangama).

In the afternoon Hettie turned up at the Hotel to say farewell.  He said that he was now fine, but I suspect had been far from fine for a day or two.  He said he did panic initially but realised he had to get back to the village so calmed down and organised himself.  He had realised on the brisk walk back that Rob and I had positioned ourselves to catch him if things went awkward.  This made us think of our late friend Milton who would probably have reacted in the same way (but definitely have had a dead snake to show the doctors).

Then we headed off to the Marshes.  As we got close we found a bunch of Catholic Youth putting up banners and a festive gate structure for their festival the following day.  Shortly after this it became apparent we were lost but after a few phone calls to Hetti and others (and enquiring of some puzzled locals) we got to our boat.

The boat trip was great as the volunteer guide and the boatman worked very well together and were experts in their jobs.  A number of good birds were seen with excellent views of Yellow Bittern

Little Egret

Brahminy Kite; and

a new bird for the trip, Striated Heron

A rather spiffy Water Monitor was also seen.

The canal went under a bridge, apparently built by the British about 100 years ago.  It was rather reassuring to note the modern concrete version on the far side of it.  I probably should, but cannot, resist titling this image "Trouble Bridge over waters".

Back at the Tamarind Tree Hotel there was also wildlife around.  A rat snake was keeping things under control in the garden

while a nicely coloured cockroach was on patrol indoors (note that this is not a criticism of the hotel: welcome to the tropics).

At 10pm Nanda and Bundulu loaded us into the van - another great effort in hanging around all evening while we ate and sat around in the hotel - and delivered us to the airport.  We battled through the check in queue and outwards emigration and settled down to wait until our flight took off at 1am.  There were a couple of interesting sights:

• the "dump your old currency here" box appeared to be funding housing for the security forces (but, optimistically, may have been a deal building houses for people displaced by the fighting); and
• the Sri Lankan Netball team heading off to Singapore.  They were mainly remarkable for the good looks of all the players but the stand-out was their captain who was very attractive and also 2.09m tall (ie 6'10").  Since many Sinhalese struggle to attain 5' she was very unusual looking.  I hope they won!

Bird of the Day:  Brahminy Kite
Other vertebrate of the Day:  Buffalo ploughing
Pattern of the Day: Wooden fringes to fascias
Bad taste of the day: no nominations.

Read on