One Way Ticket

Kandy is over 6000 feet above the Sri Lankan shores. The gardens there produce vegetables which are exported. Wholesale market buyers bid to secure their wares at the major marketplace. Locals wear jackets. Their bodies say it is cold in the mornings. We tourists feel the cool dry refreshing air as a welcomed change.

The mountain scenery is captivating as the constantly curving road reveals water courses, tea and rubber tree plantations, and terraced mountain slopes. At one point on the drive to the south coast during a series of extremely sharp switchbacks, which caused the bus to negotiate the turns in lowest gear, gave an opportunity for a man selling flowers to run up the hillside, cutting out the road switchbacks and arriving ahead of the bus to offer flowers for sale. After doing this about six times, we in the bus wanted to reward this Olympian sprinter. The bus stopped. He came aboard and sold his flowers.

At lower elevations where elephants live, and the vegetation is tangled and sustains them, the air feels thick with warm moisture as we step out of the dry air conditioned hotel room each morning. The contrast between these two different environments creates a feeling that we are stepping from 2025 into the Jurassic. The outside warm moist world is fully alive with bird sounds, exotic looking plants (at least to Midwestern eyes), monkey sounds, insects, lizards, and colors which the flowering trees, shrubs and vines offer our eyes.

Twice our bodies have enjoyed the caresses of warm Indian Ocean waves. At Negomba the waves knocked us over, over and over. Our bathing attire accumulated enough sand to threaten exposure. Here at Weligame the surf is gentle, warm and uplifting as we bob luxuriously in the sunshine with salt on our lips.

Yesterday we visited a Buddhist monastic community and had an audience with the head monk who has created an orphanage school. Today we visited Galle, which is a small city within a fortification. It was first started as a small trading fortress by the Portuguese in the early 1500s. Later this was expanded by the Dutch and then expanded further by the British. It is a small city within a fortress and is a UNESCO world heritage site.