Psychos on the Road

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Deiyandara to Warapitiya Wewa to Urubokka
Kilometers:   23      Elevation gain/loss:   631m/314m

Patchy cloud as I set out from my homestay in Deiyandara, down a tiny road that doesn't show up on Google Earth towards Warapitiya Lake. It would drizzle and then suddenly burst into gorgeous light, illuminating the green around me into a whole new shade I have yet to find the name for, and then again threaten dark and ominous.

It's a 10 kilometer walk through rice paddies, fields and tiny villages to get to Warapitiya Wewa (Lake), mostly flat or low rolling hills, and I tried to make good time covering it, as I knew after reaching the reservoir it would be mercilessly up from there on in.

As I reached the lake, the clouds cleared and suddenly the sun was fully out. I was about half way up the grueling 600meter hill from Warapitiya to Heegoda,  slowed by the heat, the sun, the weight of my pack and the relentless steep climb, when a half-naked man came running up to me. As it turned out, this was the village's raving schizophrenic. Oh joy... He touched my feet and threw himself on the ground in front of me, but not in the respectful way you would do to some Himalayan yogi master, more in that "Hail! the Overlords from Planet Zorgon have descended!" kind of way. Disquieting to say the least. I skirted around him,  kept going and forgot about it until suddenly he was back, coconuts in hand, smashing them to smithereens at my feet (obviously, the due tribute Overlords require!), rolling on the ground, grabbing at my legs and blathering incomprehensibly. Hel-lo! Call the white van NOW! I was rescued by about 15 local men who came running to pull him off of me, everyone explaining reassuringly that he was indeed insane. Shaken, I doubled my speed and got the Hell outta there. Sorry, no pictures of the event... I was too busy hightailing it.

As you ascend, the views into the valleys down below become increasingly impressive, and by the time you reach Hulankanda things are starting to look seriously gorgeous. By then, the hills level out enough to allow you to look up from your feet, unbend the stooped-over posture the climb has demanded, and notice what a beautiful part of the world you're in.

The views lasted only a few kilometers before, once again, the skies opened and I was hiding under the big red tarp and umbrella the remainder of the way to Urubokka. There I passed the night at the family home of a friend, and went to sleep listening to the sound of rain drumming on the roof.

Drought and Rain

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Kirinda Puhulwella to Deiyandara
Kilometers: 18   Elevation gain/loss: 401m/373m

Most of Sri Lanka enjoys rolling power cuts for several hours a day. A country-wide drought has dried up the flow at the hydro-power plants that generate the majority of the island's electricity. You would not think there is a dfought to look at all the lush greenery which cloaks this part of the world, certainly not here in the south-west, where occasional sprinkles have deceptively kept everything looking verdant and tropical and fertile. Go east a few kilometers, or north, and the cracked earth, withered crops and empty riverbeds tell the real story. Monsoon has failed, barely smattering the country with a fraction of the usual rainfall and everyone is feeling the effects.

Now, after months of clear skies, and perfectly timed to the start of my walk, the weather has turned. Forecasts for the next 10 days say rain, rain and more rain. So much rain I thought the websites I was checking were having technical difficulties. But no. Satellite pictures showed huge swathes of cloud over the island, and report after report confirmed it would be a wet week ahead. As I bid my hosts goodbye and set out for Deiyandara, the morning mist turned to drizzle, drizzle to showers, and showers to proper, pissing-down storm. A fine sight I must have been walking along the road, a lone foreigner, hiding a Quasimodo hunchback (the Marquise de Sade backpack) under a giant red tarp poncho, soaking wet head of hair, feet sloshing in rivers of road runoff... Vanity has been completely abandoned on this walk!

The day was spent walking, then sheltering under overhanging roofs -- sometimes just diving, unannounced and uninvited, through a random stranger's front door to avoid the at-times horizontal rain -- and then plodding on again. I have since decided to coin a new term, a modification on "downpour". I am adding "sidepour" to my lexicon. Once you're wet though, you cannot get any wetter, and as my mother used to tell me, "You're not made of soap. You won't melt in the rain!"

Minutes before I had to stow my camera away from the deluge, I did happen upon one remarkable sight. A few kilometers just north of Hakmana, turn west at a small unmarked road from Denagama toward Deiyandara. The road curves around a picturesque, small dammed lake. By its shore, and spanning both sides of the road with its enourmous canopy, is a huge and amazing tree.

In its branches hundreds -- perhaps a thousand -- flying foxes, amassed in a giant swarm, more plentiful than the leaves of the tree itself, all hanging like ripe, brown, furry fruit, as the following close-ups will attest.

I know everyone expects the wildlife in Sri Lanka to be all about elephants and leopards, the poster children of the wildlife tourism department, but this was truly an unusual and impressive thing to behold. Perhaps it's not for you if you're the squeamish type, or have seen too many episodes of the Vampire Diaries, or don't relish the idea (or smell) of walking through guano, but if you're a lover of all nature and not just the cuddly kind, make your way here. And if you do go -- bonus -- you'll be the only one there.