05.09.18 Sri Lanka Tour day 2.

After a relatively good nights sleep, I was up early for a light breakfast of tea and a small banana, mush to the disappointment of the hotel staff who kept trying to offer me eggs, more fruit, bread, yogurt!

As we had arrived the night before in the dark I hadn’t really seen the view, it was fabulous. The hotel is on the banks of the largest river in Sri Lanka the Mahaweli, which starts up in the hills by a large mountain called Adams Peak and runs all the way to Trincomalee on the east coast. I stood and watched the river and birds for a while, I saw several Kingfishers, an eagle, a cormorant, swimming under water! Egrets, it was very peaceful.

Buddi and I headed into Kandy at 8am to visit one of the most important temples in Sri Lanka The Temple of the Tooth, which holds a sacred relic of  Buddhas tooth. We took an offering of some flowers. The Temple is amazing and very busy. The tooth relic is guarded very well. Wothin the grounds there were some statues, one of which is of a young prince who was killed by the British. He was held by them and they threatened to kill him if his father the king didn’t give himself up, the Prince said he would rather die than for his father to be captured, so they killed him. Horrid.

After the Temple Buddi and I started the longish drive towards another Temple called Dambulla. Dambulla is a series of temples within caves within a huge rock. We arrived there at Noon, I climbed the 700 odd steps up to the Temple in the 33degree heat!! Mad dogs and even madder bloody English women!! (Buddi rather sensibly stayed in the air conditioned car!) You have to leave your shoes outside with a shoe man then scald your already boiling feet walking on the rock floor! Thank goodness the caves were a little cooler. It is an impressive sight and the views were awesome, you can see another major attraction; Sigiryia, from the top. After having a look at the temples, I decided to head down, that’s when I realised that my purse was in the car and I had no £ on me and I needed to pay 25 rupees  (like 10p) to collect my shoes!! I had to ask a very bemused German lad if he could give me the money, luckily he agreed, I collected my shoes and began the rather steep descent, helped by watching the families of monkeys all around. It took me at least an hour or more to cool down after this!

Over lunch Buddi told me that the next morning we were due to visit and climb Sigiriya. Just to explain Dambulla had 700 wide and spacious steps, Sigiriya has 1200 narrow, steep, people going both ways on the same stairs, steps! Which take up to 3 hours to climb! I told Buddi that whilst it might be nice to see there was no bloody way I was going up to the top, so we visited it after lunch and I had a nice slow walk part way round the base, by the lovely ponds looking up,at the huge rock feeling relieved 😅

After this we picked up Jeep for our Safari in Minneriya & Kaudulla National Park. The Park is home to lots of Elephants. As we drove through the park, we were on a winding dirt track and as we came round a corner we came face to face with a large Bull Elephant!! It’s mating season at the moment and this can make the elephants aggressive, this one did not look happy to see us!! We started backing up, which was not easy as there were Jeeps behind us, the elephant just kept coming, getting more and more agitated, I have to say, whilst it was very exciting it was also a little scary! We finally managed to move away and drove further in Tom the park, we saw lots of Black faced Langur monkeys, peacocks, and other wild birds then we came out of the bush onto the lake area and there was a huge herd of elephants eating and playing by the lake. It was amazing. So many elephants and also lots of young ones, and some really young, possibly 2 months old! We stayed for ages just watching them eat, play, interact. At one water buffalo came running round the lake and seem to,scare the elephants to bits  all apart from one large female who charged them. On the lake there were also Pelicans, Storks, egrets and flying above several large eagles. I had the most fantastic time, truly awesome.

Agter the epic Safari we drove to our hotel, thankfully just a short ride away, we had a well earned ice cold beer and jumped into the pool! Bliss.

Day 2. Epic

Author: hereandthereclaire

Hi, my name is Claire and I am 60 years young, welcome to my blog. I am new to the whole travel and blog writing world, so no judging! I recently made some big life changes, leaving my job in education and moving myself and my younger children to Newquay in Cornwall, I then started a business with some fantastic friends #coffeeonthecornernewquay. And now I am about to embark on my first big travel adventure...I would love to share this with you. Since starting this blog in 2018 I have made more changes, and now in 2024 I will be traveling full time for the next year! Please join me in sharing my Big Adventure! ❤️ View all posts by hereandthereclaire