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The end of the world....
Sri Lanka travelogue, part 6: Kandy and Nuwara Eliya
Ben van den Anker2006-05-02 01:54:41
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and many others fruits.
I leave my Golden View restaurant/hotel at 6.30, where I expected the bus isn't any bus at all. Someone points to another bus station, a bit out of the center and when I arrive I have to wait for ten minutes and the bus leaves. It seems the road doesn't end at all, it takes us higher and higher in the mountains. Slowly the woods take place for fields of tea, with the female workers in them.
In Nuwara Eliya, pronounced "nuREL-iya", I find a room in a Tamil hotel. It's drizzling, the town looks cold to me, some houses are apparently owned by the very wealthy. As I want to take a picture of an enormous villa, a man runs to me and shout "No, No. Noooo!!!" it's the house of "the general" whoever he might be. The post office looks British with it's pink and red colors, you probably won't find a more British Hill club like the one here. It's too much for me. I take a look at the paintings inside, an older gentleman is making a mobile telephone call. He's talking about his sailing trip before he came here.. I guess he's traveling in a different way then mine!
A taxi driver asks to bring me to a tea factory, half an hour later I follow the group through the building. The Sri Lankan woman speaks perfect English and German, she explains the long way the tea leaves have to follow till they end in our stomach. The woman that collect the leaves earn very small money, they earn sometimes more by getting some money from tourists that take pictures of them. They can bring a smile on their faces quicker than the tourist can get his camera.
At 1889 m I have to put blankets on my bed at night, it's even cold during daytime. The son of the owner tells me that he lived for two years in Colombo, he couldn't get used to the hot temperatures there. His father asked him to take over the business, he gladly accepted. In good months he could made like 600$, that's a mighty lot of money for Sri Lankan standards. Again I'm the only foreign guest, there are though two guests from Colombo that I didn't see. He tried to make the living room real “cosy”, lots of small chairs standing in a row, the rain hitting the windows, cold and no tourists, it made me run away quickly!
I tried an egg hopper, a small pancake with in the middle an egg, at the local market. I guess this must have been the cause of my stomach problems in the last days at the beach.
See photographs from:
Sri Lanka Gallery
