Looking Closer

I’m sitting on the A/C bus from Dambulla, the hub of Sri Lanka, trying to cool down. A kind man from Kandy helps me with a hidden auxiliary seat and points the fan at me. Probably because I look like I’m about to liquefy.
We chat about my time in Sri Lanka and he reminds me that sometimes, like now, Sri Lanka finds you. But sometimes, like our time in Yala, you need to look a bit closer to see her.

Yala

It would be easy to be consumed by the fact the Safari had not brought us a Leopard or an Elephant. To feel cheated that nature did not perform for us on demand. So much so, that as we sat down for lunch deep within the 900 square kilometre park, we might have missed a pretty special place in the world.

 

By the lazily babbling river we ate an excellent curry and Daal cooked by our guide. It seemed like the water was the only sound there. But soon I realised that we ate to a captive audience of creatures of many sizes.

The smooth, warm rock between the tributaries was our table. The swarms of fist-sized fish ate our leftovers. The daring monkeys stole our bananas.

 

 

“This is a place you couldn’t come on your own.” Simon had said. Even with Bali our friendly 6-year veteran guide from the excellent Yala Safari Sri Lanka. I still needed thick layers of insect repellent, and gallons of water. When a tick landed on me as I tried to take a rest break I also needed a moment to silence that voice in my head telling me everything wanted to eat me.
It was all here in one small enclave. A true expression of creatures living in nature. Geckos creep between the cracks, giant cotton-winged butterflies circle you closely and still other unknown creatures bubble in the rock pools by your feet. Six humans are the novelty here. Guests in a home far removed from anything they know.
Later we saw at least some of those “big name” items on the safari checklist, but for me our lunch was the real experience.

Ella

 

Another place where Sri Lanka did not immediately reveal herself was Ella. I mean, you’d have to be blind not to notice the layers of tree or tea coated hills, ever reducing in shade from green to blue off into the infinite distance. But we’d arrived too late for a hike up Little Adam’s Peak so instead we watched the locals playing cricket from one of the crop of tourist bars popping up by the station.

 

 

 

 

The unending flow of tourists to this place soak the ground, pulling up the bars, shops and restaurants like some hardy grass not native to these lands. I don’t dislike the heady mix of friendly Sri Lankans, tasty food and familiar Western comforts. For example the 360° Ella’s acoustic legend who plays every night really made my night. However, none of this was what I came here to see and so in the morning we went searching for adventure down the railway line.

 

 

This, we found, was a totally different side to Ella. We had to dodge a train, and some tricky touts who have defaced the markings that used to show the way to Ella Rock. We had to use our gut and the excellent directions here. But with relatively little effort we arrived at the top of the world. A place where if you fell you might never reach the ground. A place to do little else, than look out and contemplate how small you are in the scheme of things. All this, hidden in a cutting we had to look a little closer to see.