Tuesday, March 2, 2010
We ride from the hotel after a filling breakfast with lots of fruit. We travel beside Kandalama tank, a large reservoir. Irrigation is important as this is Sri Lanka's main vegetable growing area. We pass lots of vegetable smallholdings. Sampath points out the platforms built up in the trees. People sleep there at night to guard their crops against foraging elephants. Locals don’t venture into the woods at night as wild elephants can be quite aggressive.
After about 30km we reach Sigiriya, a "fortress" built on a volcanic plug of rock. Experts now think that it was in fact a big temple complex with evidence of habitation going back 6000 yrs. Whatever it was, it is still spectacular and we spend 2hr there, climbing 300m to the top by narrow metal walkways in blistering heat.
We then have a buffet lunch in a local restaurant enjoying things like betel gourd salad and boiled okra as well as more usual fare Janice crosses a stream.
The afternoon ride takes us on good tracks beside irrigation canals and Sampath points out kingfishers, a turtle and a monitor lizard. When he stops to show us a tamarind tree. Janice struggles to disengage her cleat from her pedal and falls over. Happily no major damage and we finish the afternoon’s 30km ride by about 3pm in time for a soak and a swim. Beer in Sri Lanka is served in big 500ml bottles. The three of us get into the habit of ordering two bottles and three glasses when we arrive at hotels at the end of the day.
We had planned to break out of the Europeanised hotel restaurant scene tonight and try and find a local eaterie. Sampath was horrified. He painted a dire picture of the town being frequented by truck drivers and that the food was often reheated several times and would not be good for us. It was clearly a big concern to him so we stayed at the hotel and had a very pleasant evening. As Tom puts in in the Australian way: "you don't want to get crook."
No comments:
Post a Comment