After 3 days of sea, sky and on board diversions, getting off in Columbo felt as though every sense was being reawakened - the very green tropical landscape, banana plantations, rice, coconut palms, busy streets and traffic jams, the sound of car and bus horns, school children in crisp looking, bright white uniforms asking us our names and cheekily saying "hiya" to everyone passing, beautiful traditional dress, three wheeler tuk tuks, shacks and palaces, and then the highlight of our excursion - Pinawala Elephant Orphanage. This is where we got up close and personal with several babies and were able to watch them, feed them bananas and see the younger babies being bottle fed formula. I have only ever been in a crowd once that ran forward at an event - it was at the 1976 Reading festival, and the reason for the stampede was in fact Hawkwind.
Today I was quite surprised to have a flashback to that great night when the space in front of us was filled by rows and rows of people who wanted to see the baby elephants as much as we did. We had been sitting really patiently before this, really believing we were on the front row in a first come first served sort of way! Luckily I didn't need to climb on Khachik's shoulders, but did have to resort to standing up to get a look in!
In between the elephant activities we had lunch, lots of choice, local food only, and the most spicy lunch ever. That's what you get when you mistake a chilli for a ladies finger. My mouth was on fire for some time. It was all lovely food though, and all freshly cooked.
Then we headed back to the ship in our coach and during the journey had an excellent Sri Lankan history and geography lesson from our tour guide. Things I've learned today:Sri Lanka is 75% Buddhist, and the other 25% roughly shared between Islamic, Christian and Hindu faiths. The Tamil minority, the Islamic faith and the Singalese majority are all recognised on the flag, as are the Buddhist 4 noble truths of kindness, compassion, happiness and equanimity (the 4 leaves on the flag) History has a recurrent theme about spice and tea wars, Dutch and British colonies, majorities and minorities fighting with India and bloodshed right up until 2009. This makes me want to learn more about the history, and I'm sure I will. We also learned not to refer to the two kinds of elephants as African and Indian, but African and Asian. We learned about the many uses and re-uses of the coconut tree and fruit, and that Sri Lankan coconuts are a distinctive orange colour. And oh yes, that Sri lanka's national sport is Volleyball.
We have another 3 sea days coming up, next stop Port Victoria in the Seychelles, so again I won't be able to put up any of the lovely photos Khachik has taken today or spend much time on line because of the restricted satellite wi-fi. I promise to catch up properly in Port Victoria, wi-fi permitting. Bye for now xx
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