We are so similar yet so dissimilar. Contradictory, I know. But the landscape, SL history, culture, (
we saw a lot of influence of India on their culture) the Kandyan dance, the fire show, the skin-colour, the general disposition of people: no one can tell a difference. Buddhism and Hinduism have lot in common as religion. But I guess the similarity ends here.
There are no major industries in Sri Lanka apart from the agriculture, tourism and fabric industry. The population is just about 20 million and the literacy rate is quite high too. I was totally impressed with how clean even the smaller towns were. We later came to know that the cleanliness drive has been very recent. The enormous fine that is imposed on people littering has taken the country's cleanliness levels to greater heights in the past one year. The traffic moves in a disciplined manner too. No one honks unless absolutely necessary. And wonders of wonder, at least for me, was the fact that at any Zebra crossing across the major towns (it is called yellow crossing over there since the lines are yellow in colour), the vehicles, irrespective of the speed they are coming at, slow down or stop to allow the pedestrians to cross.
After visiting the temple of the tooth the previous evening, we walked for a short while by and around the lake and set to explore some veggie food outside of the hotel we were put up at. Vegetarian meals in SL are pretty much rice, dal, some curry or fried rice or veg. noodles. They do not have much wheat around the southern parts. Whatever little wheat production the country has, is in the northern side. Only Colombo offers some respite with plenty of Indian restaurants, esp. south Indian outlets serving snacks like the Idly, Dosa or the regular meals variety. A regular breakfast feature, though, is Aappam (popularly known as String hoppers) with some masoor dal fry as side dish in all the parts of Lanka that we visited.
Day 3, we left Kandy around 9.30 a.m, did a quick round of the Bogambara lake, sneaked into a artifacts shop that supposedly sold trinkets for a good deal, grabbed a few items as souvenirs and gifts and started the climb up higher altitudes towards Nuwara Eliya.
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| Bogambara lake |
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| A closer view of the lake |
At this point I have to mention this particular incident. On our way, a road-side vendor was selling this fruit called
Durian.
Do read the link to be able to empathize well. Mr. shirley, our guide-cum-driver, very enthusiastically began to enumerate its rich taste and goodness and implored us to taste the fruit. It resembled a jackfruit from the outside and we thought it might taste similarly. We parked a little away from the vendor. I was feeling a little lazy and also uninterested to disembark from the vehicle and asked the men to try it first. Mr. Shirley wouldn't give up. He came up to the car with half a Durian for me to try the fruit. The aroma sent nauseatic waves down my body. Yet, I didn't wish to be impolite and bit on the pulp. I have no words to describe how I felt. I didn't want to make a bad face and at the same time I couldn't pretend to like it and eat it up. I made an excuse of needing to wash my hands and got down to join the husband who looked quite distraught after having eaten one third of the entire fruit. We mumbled some excuses and offered the remaining to Mr. Shirley. He looked a little puzzled at our expression but thankfully didn't read too much into it. The winding roads uphill added more misery to the hubby who had endured more. After what seemed an eternity, we made a stop en route at a tea factory. A flavoured and aromatic cup of tea without milk was like soothing balm. We swore never ever to even mention that dreaded fruit's name and joked that we should highly recommend this fruit to people on our non-favourite list.
There were tea plantations all along our way to the top. Some pictures:
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| Mackwoods-the largest tea estate |
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| Glenloch- The tea factory we stopped by |
