Sri Lanka - Kandy, November 3

Wake up at 7:00 AM in Kandy at the Thilanka Hotel.

At sunrise we heard monkey racket. They were running on corrugated metal in front of, and over, our porch, but not in our room.

Breakfast at 7:45. Buffalo curd (basically a rich plain yogurt, tasting of sour cream), with a spoon of "bee honey". Passion fruit juice. Papaya. Mango. Tiny bananas, red and yellow. Ceylon tea with hot milk.

9:00 AM. We are on the road to the Peradeniya Botanical Garden. Established in the 1800's, it is vast. For one hour, a guide drove us, in a cart, past wonderful things. The largest coconut palms on the planet. A tree of the hardest wood in the world, from Mexico. The largest bamboo specimens. A tree called, Krishna's Cup, planted sixty years ago by Queen Elizabeth, with flowers dangling like little ladles. There was a tree in the distance, like a sprawling umbrella canopy, so large, the many people under it seem tiny. Another tree, so tall, you can hardly see it's top, with smooth bark in pastel colors. Do not sit under the "canon ball" tree. There are several long avenues. One with Cabbage Palms. Another has Palmyra Palms, planted in 1887. We met, also, the tree of brazil nuts and of teak. The teaks in this garden look ancient. They are massive and straight, no wonder they end up as planks.

Cannonball tree flower

Just before Sri Lanka declared independence from Britain, in the 1940's, Lord Mountbatten, had the park to himself. His lovely colonial cottage looks over a great lawn. Now, everyone is welcome. The garden is filled with lovely families of Sri Lankans. I say lovely, because when you make eye contact and smile, their face opens into a radiant lotus blossom of a smile.

Cannonball tree

For the rest of the day, we are driving on curvaceous

mountain roads. We stop for waterfall vistas. We stop for fruit; cherimoyas unlike their American relatives. Mangos, again, unlike our limited varieties at home. The fruit is cut up at the roadside hut. We eat it bare handed. The juice wets are fingers, hands, wrists.  The vendor pours water from a bottle over our sticky paws. In the trees, we can see nest like structures, bee hives. The area around Ramboda is known for their honey. We stop for honey. It is sold in old arrack bottles. Arrack is an island liquor made from coconut; like a coconut tequila. The honey tastes of tropical fruit.  Even the bees like it. They cluster on the sticky bottle caps.

The weather is turning from clear humid heat to dark stormy rainy heat. The mountain roads are verging on flood. New waterfalls cross the road. The rushing water is red, the color of the earth.

It slows us. Eventually, we arrive at the Saint Andrews Hotel in Nuwara Eliya, (pronounced new-o-rellia). The hotel began, as it sounds, as a Scottish property.  The gardens have shrubs snipped into large kettle and tea cup shapes. The public spaces have fire places, welcome on a stormy night. The dining room has about 150 years of age with ceiling panels of embossed copper.

Before dinner, we visited in the lobby with a friend of our travel companion. The visitor is very smart, articulate and took us, somewhat, under his wing.

Tomorrow, he has arranged, we will begin at a fairground, go to a pastry reception, visit a mountain peak, tour a tea plantation and visit his workplace for lunch.