Kandy Weekend

Zoe & Violeta chilling by the train carriage
doorway as the jungle swishes by

Our camp site on the train floor

This weekend 15 of us were off to Kandy, the second biggest city in Sri Lanka. It is located in the hill country and is a bit chillier than the Colombo area. We got on an extremely busy train in Colombo on Friday afternoon that would take 4 hrs. People were literally hanging from the open doorways where you get on the train, while we were inside, trapped like sardines. After an hour it got better, we got some space and made a camp on the train floor outside the toilet (you get used to the smell..). We sat next to a really nice family who offered us sweet Sri Lankan fruit (forgotten name), another man in the doorway, and had a really enjoyable journey as the sunset illuminated the lush hill country that passed by swiftly.  

Bus view of the hill country

On Saturday the group split up, some rented a tuk tuk for the day, while 6 of us needed to save some money and utilised the local buses. Everyone were off to elephant orphanage (ut we managed to go to different ones in the end haha). The entrance fee was 2000 rs (around 12 quid), but Mark managed to claim that he was a resident as he had a 3 month visa and was the only one who brought his passport and only paid 100 rs (60p!). The first thing we saw when we came in was feeding of 2 elephant children, and it wasn’t a good first impression. They were chained to their legs  with hundreds of people around them snapping flash photos every split second, and the poor elephants seemed pretty distressed. On the side of them it was even worse, an old elephant was even more chained up, eating some bamboo and was actually crying. We started to fear that this place only was a big gold mine, a typical tourist trap.

Feeding baby elephants

We moved on quickly to the open area, and with a relief we saw that over 50 elephants were free to do whatever they liked. We stood and admired them for a while, especially one that was crippled with only 3 legs were working after it had stepped on a land mine some years ago. We followed them to the river where they took a long bath, and looked much happier. Me and Mark managed to get close enough (even if you weren’t allowed) to touch the trunks of two of them. They do not feel like you would expect them to feel!

House photo: Amy, me, Violeta & Robbie

Paper made from elephant poo can be bought here

Random caged plant

Riverside

On their way to the river

Blending in

Eating together is fun

Strange feeling when touching the trunk

In the evening we attended a Sri Lankan dance show, it was nice, but not worth the money in my opinion (500 rs), didn’t think they were much better than the ones we saw on the international youth day (for free). Later we went to a pub, but an early night was in order (not really, but they closed at 11 pm).

Sri Lankan dance

On Sunday the rain was roaming down. According to the locals it always rains on the day or the day before the Pehara (a 10 day festival with elephants parades and dances) to clean up the streets for the festival. It was going to start at 8 in the eveing, but people were already taking seats on the pavements at noon in order to get a good view! We headed to the tooth relic temple (supposedly Buddha’s tooth is in there), but me and Robbie couldn’t get in because we were wearing shorts and showing our shin bones (we thought knees covered would do work). Violeta joined us for some tea testing in a local shop until the others got out. The streets were getting more and more crowded, and the rain continued to pour down, so some of us decided to go back to Colombo on the bus a bit earlier than others. Well at home in our homestay, it was our youngest malli’s birthday, and he had loads of cousins (we guess) visiting. We spent some time with them, then collapsed on our beds for a good night’s sleep.  

Elephants on the streets of Kandy

Man-made lake in Kandy

Edit: Don't know what's going on with the picture positions in this post, but I've spent half an hour trying to fix it but it's not doing as I'm telling it to, ARGH! The perfectionist inside me is crying