Kandyland

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Gampola to Kandy
Kilometres: 24      Elevation gain/loss: 214m/167m


Two roads lead out of Gampola towards Kandy, one slightly more direct, faster and infinitely uglier, chock-a-block with garages, hardware stores, roadside restaurants and shops selling everything from furniture and kitchenware to bicycles and cheap fashions. It's congested with traffic, speeding buses, screeching tri-shaws. The air is thick with exhaust fumes and dust, litter lines the curb, and aesthetically-challenged concrete boxes pass for architecture along the route. The allure and popularity of this road completely escapes me, but there you go...

The second road, ever-so-slightly longer and with a slightly more beat-up surface, is a quiet, small route, almost free of traffic, that winds through small villages and rice fields and emerges at the edge of the Peradeniya University grounds.

The campus is extensive, serene, with huge shade trees draping themselves luxuriantly from one side of the road to the other. The cool and rarefied atmosphere of the university grounds is so peaceful and green, it came as an ugly shock when I exited and was plunged into five congested kilometres of bumper to bumper, hot, impatient traffic, everyone jostling to be one extra car-length ahead of the next. Crowds walking on either side duck in and out of the oncoming stream of vehicles, further slowing things down and increasing the annoyance of both drivers and pedestrians. But there was no way around it; all roads into Kandy are equally horrid.

Kandy is centred around a man-made lake, edged with a cluster of colonial era buildings and crammed with hotels and guesthouses, with a warren of backstreets filled with seedy bars and equally seedy characters behind the picturesque lakefront. To understate things just a tad, Kandy has an abundance of accommodation, all because, primarily, of one very famous temple. Most Sri Lankan Buddhists believe a pilgrimage here is necessary at some point in life, and it would appear all foreign tourists to the country have it on their Must Do List.

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is perhaps the most important Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, housing (supposedly) the tooth of Lord Buddha himself, snatched from his funeral pyre by a disciple apparently not bothered by the macabre. Huge significance surrounds the ownership of the tooth, for with ownership follows the rightful rule of the country, or so the legend claims. The tooth never actually goes on display, but you can catch a glimpse of the box holding it twice a day. Actually, what you'll see is the box containing the box containing the box containing the box containing the box containing the box containing the tooth. Some say the Portuguese destroyed the original tooth; some claim they were fooled and instead burned a decoy. Some believe the tooth is actually inside the gilded casket; others think the real tooth has been scurried away to a more secure hiding place. Still others believe if there is a tooth, it could be anyone's but is probably not the Buddha's. This latter view is not exactly popular. Forensic dentistry aside, the temple is an icon and one of the lovelier examples of art and architecture to be found in the country, with a two-storied, gilt-roofed main shrine housing the relic, ornate decorations, intricately painted ceilings, and some beautiful statues of the Buddha.

A few more days to explore Kandy would have been ideal, but I was still only about half way along my route north wanted to get out of the bustle of the city and onto the back roads again. In the morning, I would wake before dawn and begin walking before the sun was up. Wattegama was calling.

Down, Down, Down

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Nuwara Eliya to Ramboda Falls to Pussellawa to Gampola
Kilometres: 63.5 Elevation gain/loss: 1186m/2659m


The route down from Nuwara Eliya promised spectacular views, stunning vistas over tea plantations and rippling mountains falling away below me as I walked. But promises are not always kept... As soon as I hit Toppass, a few kilometres out of town, I was enshrouded in thick - THICK - fog, the dense clouds sitting smack on my head, making it difficult to see the oncoming traffic and for them to see me, so I found myself diving into the roadside ditch on more than one occasion to avoid an unobservant truck.

For several hours little improved, with a complete whiteout hiding everything but the sight of my own feet in front of me. I reached a small rest house and was offered their finest room, the one with the huge windows looking out over the dramatic scenery. This was the view for the best part of the day:

Only by late afternoon had enough of the cloud lifted to offer a glimpse of all that I had been missing.

And by evening, the same clouds that had ruined my morning view put on a dramatic show.

The following morning I continued down to Ramboda, famed for its huge waterfalls. From the road, the public view of the falls is impressive, but the messy little town that the road passes through, with its profusion of tea stalls and greasy restaurants, the noisy families of picnickers bathing in the falls, the litter of discarded shampoo packets and empty water bottles, all detract from its beauty. It's a sad reality that many of Sri Lankas most picturesque spots are being ruined by a complete lack of environmental sensitivity, and I quickly moved on.

If you continue down the road a few hundred meters, on your left you will come to the Ramboda Falls Hotel, the town's one "expensive" hotel. The lower levels of the hotel and the viewing area of the restaurant offer unbeatable views of the bottom of the falls, which can't be seen from any other position along the road, and it's well worth a small detour here even if you don't plan to spend the night.

One need not worry too much about seeing this particular set of falls or another, for several unnamed, unfamous, but lovely little waterfalls tumble down along the route, each with its own charms and most ignored by the cars speeding past.

The cool damp climate is a tea grower's paradise, and the flanks of the hills are carpeted in the green of tea bushes. Huge plantations like that of Labookelie and Rothschild dominate for miles around. In between, where there are villages, gardens are awash with colour and young boys run alongside the road to flag down traffic and sell their bouquets of bright flowers.

As you descend further from Pussellawa, the temperatures noticeably rise, the clouds are left behind, and the sun comes out again. Fruit stands display their luscious wares, pomellos and avocados and cocoa, and roadside vendors offer up boiled corn.

Eventually, I hobbled into Gampolat at the base of the hills. Little more than a transit point out of the high country and into Kandy, it offers little for the tourist, but I had come 64 kilometres from Nuwara Eliya in two days and was knackered. Accommodation is extremely limited in Gampola, but I managed to find a humble yet adequate home-stay. My 84 year old hostess, a sweet old woman with the short-term memory of Dory (the blue tang fish in Finding Nemo), kept me amused. We had this conversation no less that seven times:

Will you have chicken for dinner?
No, I'm vegetarian.
Will you have sausages?
No, I'm vegetarian.
What do you want for dinner?
Vegetables.
Will you have some chicken?

I humoured her. Hell, with the semi-permeable, molten-cheese like excuse for a memory I have, it's a future I can look forward to myself.

Little England

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Pattipola to Nuwara Eliya
Kilometres: 20 Elevation gain/loss: 452m/476m

Leaving Pattipola, it's a few kilometers down before you come to charming, pastoral Ambewela farms, with its grassy hillocks and black 'n white cows happily munching to their hearts' content. On a clear day, or a clear moment when the fog lifts, you can even see the windmills that power their whole operation turning away. You'd think for a second you were in Devon.

The road continues on, through the Hakgala Strict Nature Reserve, a quiet and - from what I saw - largely unvisited forest, and past the Kande Ela Reservoir, its lonely boats abandoned at the side of the shore. Not a soul around.

Further along the road still, cross one hill and Shazaam! you are properly back in civilization. Well, not "civilization" per se, that would require a Starbucks, more like "cultivation". Cabbages are the first to carpet the landscape, quickly followed by cauliflowers, carrots and leeks. I was walking through - for a vegetarian such as myself - food paradise, every acre of land brimming with crunchy, roughage goodness. Terraced hillsides patchworked with dark green kales and yellow flowering beans make for stunning scenery, and it seemed most of the villagers were out harvesting their crops, bundling them into sacks and trucks, to be sent down to Dambulla, the central vegetable distribution point for the whole country. What was for sale at the roadside vendors were the scabby rejects, wilted and deformed, which hadn't made the quality control cut.

Here's one thing I just love about Sri Lanka - it has place names which go beyond the absurd, ridiculous sounding words, polysyllabic tongue twisters that make map reading so much fun. Down south, you have the almost-palindromic "Unawatuna". In the middle of the country there's the wrap-your-mouth-around "Maradankadawala". But here? Here I found my favourite village name in all of Sri Lanka, the sound of which just makes me hum. I had entered "Meepillimana". Go on... say it without smiling, I dare you.

After that, another seven or eight kilometres brought me into Nuwara Eliya, which has a decidedly English feel to it, helped not in small part by the Tudor houses and manicured gardens. There are wild roses adorning trellises and snap-dragons planted at the base of lamposts. There's a racetrack for the horses and pine trees line the roads. 

There are golf lawns and ponies trotting the streets. It's cool and cloudy, and often rains, and everyone carries a brolly, just in case. There are fancy hotels where you must dress elegantly for dinner or you won't be let in, and convent schools for the children. Oh and there's the tea... of course, the tea. So it tickled me no end to see this most-British of admonitions in the local park:

The road from Pattipola had undulated and for every few hundred meters I descended, around the bend I found I was climbing back up, so I hadn't lost much altitude in reaching Nuwara Eliya. To leave, I had just one final climb up to the Shantipura and aptly-named Toppass villages, the highest in the country, which sit at the edge of the forested Pidurutalagala mountain (at 2524m, the tallest in Sri Lanka), and after that, there would nothing but delicious, glorious downhill all the way into Kandy.

Fog and Cold on Horton Plains

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Horton Plains World's End/Baker's Falls Loop to Pattipola
Kilometres: 23 Elevation gain/loss: 603m/923m

Horton Plains offers scenery unlike anywhere else in Sri Lanka, a combination of windswept grassy moors, bogs and dense forests, more like what you would expect someplace in Scotland rather than on a tropical island 6 degrees from the equator. It's stark, bleak, the colours muted and the soil blackened. The kind of place you'd expect to find a tormented Heathcliff standing atop a crag, cape flapping in the wutheringness.

Scene from the movie

Horton Plains

I'm Canadian. From the Great White North. Land of blizzards and ice storms, igloos and the world's finest ice hockey teams. I'm supposed to be genetically able to handle the cold. My national identity demands it. But not so. Doubly not so when it's foggy, dark and windy. Horton Plains can serve up a bitter chill so by mid-afternoon we were happy to get indoors, although staying in the drafty, mist-swaddled Maha Eliya bungalow was anything but cosy. Hot, heaping servings of instant packet noodles (my grandmother's secret recipe) put a little heat in our tums, but we spent the night tucked under sleeping bags and four blankets each, still in our fleeces and fuzzy woolly hats.

By morning, most of the clouds and fog had lifted, promising clear (enough) views if we could get to the cliff edge early. After 9:00 or 10:00 a.m., the clouds will usually roll in again obscuring any view down below. From the Farr Inn (no longer an inn, now the information centre) at the centre of the park, it's about a 10-11 kilometre loop to World's End, the dramatic drop off which overlooks Belihul Oya some 1000 meters below, on to Baker's Falls, and back again. Circular, it's impossible to get lost on the route, which is well sign-posted at any junction, and in fact it's forbidden to walk off route to protect the fragile ecosystem. The beauty of Horton Plains, though, is not just the spots where everyone - and I do mean everyone - whips out their cameras and takes the mandatory shots (see pics below). The beauty is in the wide open spaces, the long, undulating grasslands, and the completely "other" feel it has. One thing you'll note, thanks again to the ever-guilty British, is the presence (infestation) of invasive, exotic species which are now near impossible to eradicate.

World's End

Baker's Falls

One joy of walking is that you make almost no noise, and so the wildlife doesn't take off running as you approach. You also go at a pace which allows you to really see, to look into the trees and find the bear monkeys, or get up close to a sambar, or watch a tiny lizard burying her eggs in the ground, things you can't do from inside a comfortable, speeding metal box. In the dim light of the foggy plains, it's easy to miss the wildlife, but it abounds. Horton Plains is unique in the country, the only national park you can actually walk through, and that alone is enough to earn it top marks.

From the exit gate of the park, it's a steady six kilometres downhill to Pattipola, the highest train station in the country, a pretty little depot that takes unusual pride in its display, with cheerful florals, and a dapper little station master who, quite obviously, daily polishes the antique-but-still-working-fine tablet machines. Unchanged from when the British first built the railroads into the hill country, key-like tablets are taken from and exchanged with each passing train to ensure there are no collision. The system has been used for hundreds of years, but hey, if it ain't broke...

Here in Pattipola, my friends departed home, and I spent a not uncomfortable night having rented a room in a local family home. There are no "proper" guest houses in Pattipola, so you take what you can get and are grateful for it. I had no complaints, but by morning - another long walk ahead of me - I was gone.

To the Top

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Haputale to Ohiya to Horton Plains
Kilometres: 29.5   Elevation gain/loss:  1014m/352m

A long stretch of being alone, walking alone, dining alone, dealing alone, was finally broken when my friend Priyanjan and his son decided they just couldn't pass up a good hike and joined in for the walk up to Horton Plains.

Setting out in the morning from Haputale, we walked along two quite different routes to reach Ohiya, the tiny railroad stop below Horton Plains to the south. Head from the town on the road leading up and to the west, towards the stone-block Adisham Benedictine Monastery, a landmark building once the home of British tea-planters, and you will find a small footpath trail that starts just to the immediate left of the gate entrance. It winds through the Thangamale Forest Sanctuary, through eucalyptus groves and dense jungle. Some attention is required to follow the trail, which at times becomes thin and indistinct, but then picks up easily a few meters ahead. Fast burning fires have charred some of the area, not damaging the trees badly but blackening sections of earth and clearing out the undergrowth.

After about nine kilometres, the trail then emerges just above the rail tracks at Idalgashinna station. Signs along the railroad, antiques from colonial times, still warn (in dire tones) of the unforgiving punishment that awaits anyone who walks along the track. Of course, the track is used by all local villagers as the main footpath between Idalgashinna and Ohiya, and the slow moving trains that pass offer ample warning and little danger.

The weather began to close in on us, heavy fog clouds completely obscuring the view, then suddenly blowing apart to reveal a stunning panoramic view far out to the mountains in the north. We marched on following the tracks for a further nine kilometres, along an easy gradient, passing through some 15 railway tunnels. It pays to know the train schedules, as getting caught in a long dark tunnel, with a locomotive bearing down on you, can ruin a good day. The guano on the tracks, fluttering overhead, and constant clicking noises would lead you to think these tunnels are home to colonies of bats, but surprisingly it is hundreds of swallows nesting on the ceiling that are causing all the commotion.

By late morning we had comfortably reached Ohiya, a village consisting of almost nothing, just a tiny smattering of a few buildings, apart from the railway station. The only place to stay (yes! there is a place to stay!) was the infinitely depressing, Egads-no!, only-in-case-of-desperation Suwarna Lelee Rest & Cafe. Basic? This place is a whole new level of basic! Cold, dark, dirty and gloomy, the night here did not promise to be even remotely passable. That said, and to be fair, the owner whipped out a comments book, glowing with warm reviews of the kind hospitality and food, if not the amenities.

We decided the comfort of a house with washed sheets, hot water, and the luxury of eating off of clean plates was too good to pass up, so hopped the train back down the hill, returning to spend the night at Priyanjan's family home. At 4:00 a.m., like a moose creeping on tip-toe into the room, our friend Neranjana arrived, and the party was complete for the next day's trek onwards from Ohiya up to Horton Plains.

Catching the early morning train back to Ohiya, we continued upwards along the 11 kilometres to the center of the national park. The well-paved road, although steep in places, is a straightforward route and you'd have to make a serious effort to lose your way. As the road climbs, the trees of the forest around become shorter and denser, the temperatures dramatically drop and the wind picks up fiercely. Suddenly out came the fleeces, jackets, hats, gloves and umbrellas, as one by one we all succumbed to the cold. 

(continued...)

Passion and Piercings

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Haputale to Diyaluma Falls
Kilometers: 5 Elevation gain/loss: 582/600

Haputale sits perched on the edge of steep tea plantations, tucked romantically in the fold of the ribboning mountainside, looking from a distance like a little Shangri-la. It's suddenly cooler, mistier, and decidedly unlike the tropical south. You notice immediately that the palm and banana trees have given way to exotic pine and eucalyptus, brought in (disastrously) by the British. Of course, now nothing else will grow in those forests, local flora unable to coexist, but hey... it seemed like a good idea at the time.

You also notice that the ubiquitous Buddhist temples of the Singhalese low-lands are fewer and farther between, and instead roadside Hindu temples to the gods Shiva and his son Murgan begin to dominate. At the base of convoluted and entwined fig trees, impromptu shrines with lingams and tridents are a clear sign that you are in an area heavily populated with Tamils.

Almost exclusively, the Tamil women work the tea fields, and the men the tea factories, all (relatively recent) arrivals from India who migrated under British colonial rule. These communities are distinct from the Tamils of Colombo and Jaffna, who have lived in - and once ruled - Sri Lanka for millennia.

Haputale demands a day trip or two, a walk through the tea estates blanketed in the curling mists, a tour of a tea factory, a photo taken where Mr. Synonymous-with-Tea Lipton used to sit to oversea his empire, and a side trip to the nearest waterfalls.

I headed to Diyaluma falls. From below, is a tall, skinny waterfall, the second highest in the country. You take a snapshot. You move on. From the top, for those willing to slog out the steep climb, it offers stunning and pristine pools, perfect for a quick swim to wash off the sweat of the hike. Always up for a stomp, I knew which way I was going.

To reach the top, head about 500 meters west, where a dirt road heads left, uphill, skirting the outside perimeter of a rubber tree plantation. The road slopes up gently for about a kilometer, to a small village where you will be met by any number of small boys, all keen to show you the way for a tip of few hundred rupees. Definitely let the kids lead you, as the route winds confusingly through the houses and behind a tiny rubber factory, where you can see sheets of raw rubber hanging out to dry, and then heads up the steep hills behind. No fools, these kids, they stop before the difficult part of the climb and point you to the top, to manage on your own.

I had trudged my way up to the top, enjoyed the lovely pools, and was coming back down when the day suddenly turned from scenic to fascinating. Passing through a tiny Hindu village, I stumbled across a festival under way. The entire population was out, colourfully dressed, horns blowing and drums pounding, and the energy of the crowd was completely electric. To the urging of the crowd, women began to sway and shake, driving themselves into trance, some fainting, and losing all normal sense of propriety. One by one, as their possession became more furious, men, women, even children, were grabbed by the hair by the priest and dragged into a small flowing stream. A cloth was then thrown over their heads to hide what was occurring, and they emerged tongue or cheeks skewered by metal rods, or backs pierced with hooks. All seemed unaffected by any pain, caught up in the intoxication and fervor of the ritual, and there was not a drop of blood.

With dozens thus impaled, a procession then lead to the Murgan temple, where the exhausted devotees, drenched with buckets of cooling water, collapsed from the emotional experience. Such powerful Hindu festivals stand in sharp contrast to the placid and controlled experience one has at the Buddhist festivals, where people calmly watch performers or privately complete their own quiet worship. Good old Shiva and sons, however, always put on an amazing show, full of theatre and drama and heavy doses of human passion.