The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
April 2006 - Sri Lanka (cont.)
Next morning we drove to the Elephant Orphanage at Pinnawala. The orphanage is home to over 80 abandoned or injured elephants. At 9am they are being fed and for a small tip you can bottle-feed a young elephant. Afterwards all the elephants proceed to the river for a mass bath, which is a funny spectacle to watch as some of the animals wander off to the far side of the river where they wallow in the mud (which I thought defeats the point of the bath, but never mind…)
After lunch we were “invited” to a genuine Ayurveda massage. For US$ 35 per head we were smothered in herbal oils, put in a steamy herbal sauna (rather weird when it is 36 degrees outdoors…) and put into coffin-like BBQ (steam bath), followed by a drip on our forehead which smelled like rotten gorgonzola cheese. Call me old-fashioned, but I much prefer a Swedish massage.
Kandy is a strange town, spread out across numerous hills and without much of a city center. The focal point is the Temple of the Tooth, where a tooth relict, stolen from the ashes of the cremated Buddha in 543 BC, is kept in a heavily-guarded pagoda. How the tooth got to Kandy is a long story that your guide will try and explain to you, but the way I understand it is that whoever had the tooth was in power. The capital of Sri Lanka moved nine times over the centuries as the tooth was taken from one place to another. Power by dentistry!
We visited the temple during the evening “puja” ceremony when pilgrims queue up to field past a window from which to catch a glimpse of the casket that supposedly contains the tooth. But it could also be just a replica inside with the real thing hidden somewhere else. Who knows…
The following day we decided to forego our jeep in favor of a good old train ride to our next destination in the highlands of the country, famous for its tea plantations. The Sri Lankan train system is vintage by any standards, straight from the British colonial days of the 1850s. The station outside Kandy, where we boarded our train, was built in 1867 by the British and still uses the same ‘technology’ today! The station master gave me a little demonstration of his equipment. Three large red boxes are connected by telegraph to the nearest three stations on the line. Through these boxes and a bunch of old-fashioned telephones he communicates with only those three stations and controls the signals in between. There is some sort of metal “chip” in the boxes, which he puts in a bag and hands it to the passing train. I haven’t figured out why, but that chip travels back and forth between his and the next station. All very high tech and well beyond the simple mind of a banker like myself.
The train ride in 3rd class (1st and 2nd class were full) is not to be missed as you finally get an opportunity to mingle with the “real” people, sitting on floors and in open doorways, buying nuts and popcorn from passing vendors and quietly enjoying the slow chugging upcountry as the scenery changes from tropical to fir trees and cooler temperatures.
2 ˝ hours later we arrived in Hatton in the midst of Sri Lanka’s famous tea plantations at an altitude of 1400m. We stayed at the Tientsin Tea Trails Bungalow, a classical colonial “bungalow” with only six rooms, all beautifully restored, nice gardens and an exquisite black-and-white-tiled front porch on which to enjoy breakfast, lunch, dinner and, of course, tea time. It doesn’t get more British than this – and we thoroughly enjoyed it. The food was superb, the drinks all included, the service impeccable and the atmosphere out of this world!
The bungalow is part of the Bogawantalawa tea estate and our stay included a tour of the tea factory. 5000 workers are plucking an average of 25,000kgs of tea daily, which overnight is withered (dried), crushed and fermented to produce some 9000kgs of tea. Samples of the daily production are then sent to the tea broker in Colombo who further distributes them to the main buyers (Lipton, Tetley’s, etc.). Once a week there is an auction in Colombo where the tea from the various estates is auctioned to the highest bidder. The buyer blends it, puts it in the tea bags and ships it off to your local supermarket. Interestingly, the biggest consumers of tea are Russia and the Middle East.
Another popular destination in the Hill Country is a trip to the aptly named World’s End on a 2000m high plateau, known as the Horton Plains. It’s a three hour drive followed by a one hour walk to World’s End, where the plateau abruptly ends and drops some 800 meters. You are supposed to get there early as the mist and clouds move in around 10am, obstructing the good views. We made it there just as the clouds came rolling in and, due to lack of signage, actually hiked beyond World’s End. As the trail gradually disappeared in the bush we decided to turn around, only to find a bunch of Swiss tourists at the proper World’s End. At least we can now rightfully claim to have been to the end of the world (and beyond) and back!
On the return journey we visited Nuwara Eliya, an old English hill station at 1889m. Complete with Tudor-style mansions, a race course and an 18-hole golf course, it looks like a misplaced English town stuck in the 19th century. The Grand Hotel is a magnificent building that used to be the private residence of the then governor, Sir Edward Barnes (1824-1831). Barnes was famous for his lavish parties and one of his guests with limited knowledge of English is quoted as saying in a toast to his host: “Your Excellency, I have attended many balls, but I must say that I have always observed that Your Excellency’s balls are the biggest.”
Back at the tea trail bungalow it was time for tea on the verandah, with scones, cakes and cucumber sandwiches.
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