Trekking in the highland of Sri Lanka

Sunday March 30th

We left Kandy on a train at 9 in the morning. Destination for the day is Bandarawela up in the highland of Sri Lanka, all sourunded by tea plantations going steep up the hillsides. The trainride that take us there is pleasent, expect that the seat is made of some plastic materiale, which make it very hot to sit on it. Since we are in a car with reserved seats, it is not more people there than it is suppose to be, windows and doors are open on all of the ride. The area we ride trough is beutyful, green and hilly, and on some places is the train following the top edge of a rim, with steep hills going down on both sides. We arrive Bandarawela around 15.00, and get picked up by to vans that takes us to our guesthouse, a new one, very nice located up in a hill with great veiw over the valley.

Dinner this night, will we have after a cooking demonstration, which meen that we help in preparing the food, and get some insight of how to prepare a Sri Lankan curry. It is a good demonstration, and we make a lot of dishes over open fire, and it taste awsome.
Take and early night, since we are getting up early for a 2 day treck in the highland. Well, going to bed early and gettiong up early is kind of the normal thing, so it is not a big thing really. Prepare a hiking back pack, and the rest of the luggage will be transported to the place we end up after the treck.
Monday March 31st and Tuesday April 1st.

Manage to get up this day to, have had a pretty good sleep. Getting a good breakfast at 6:15, and half an hour later are we on the way to the trainstation. We are back tracking a bit on the train, and leave the train on a tiny place where we can go straight into the woods. Todays hike take us up, we start at around 1600 meter above sea-level, and are on the highest point at around 1900/2000 meter, before we go back down to around 1700. The path goes between tall pine trees, into pretty tight vegetation on narrow pats and then again onto simple country roads made for transport of the the tea, passing true poor villages for the tea pickers and their family.

We come across a brown snake just after we have started, not poisenes according the the trekking leader, and we also saccrefice and pray for a safe hike to a hindu good. The hike is not very hard and long, we walk slowly and use around 4 hours for the hike into where we spend the night. Since we are at the trekking cabin at around 13:00 are we having a very nice and long relaxing day, outside in the shade of the sun, talking reading and drinking some beers, great day. Strugling a bit with my eyes at the eveing, they burn - and I think it is just because I have gotten sun screen lotion into them, wich is a bad match with the contacts. Lunch and dinner is curry as always, but the food is good. Our trekking guides and the owner of the cabin is entertaining us with some singing after dinner, and they have very good voices and it sound very nice, right music for the right place. It have, I think, the best day I have had in Sri Lanka.
Sleeping is dorm, pretty ok, only some snoring, but get a pretty good night of sleeping.

Wake up at 5, and leave the bed a bit after 6, even is breakfast isn't before 7:15. Everyone is up a long time before that, and we get the breakfast a bit earlier. Good Sri Lankan breakfast, with sweet rice, some kind of panecake with potato curry and tea, since the coffee is to weak to drink. We are back on the trek at 7:30, and we have to get going up again to get out of the valley that we are in, and when we are on the top it is all downhill for a long way. We are walking on road all the way. Not sure if it really can be called road all the way, since it is in very bad condition. It is not many cars in the area, one truck for transporting tea, one ambulance, one tractor and one tuktuk. Well, they are at the moment working on upgrading the road. The hike of the day, takes trough more plantations and gives us a look into the tea workers life, as we see how the live and work - and it is hard work, since the tea plants are growing on steep hills. We learned the other night, that it is almost only women that pick the tea, they do a good jobb and pick quality tea leaf, but the men pick fast, and only think about picking as fast and much as possible, and the quality on the tea leaf is low, so they do not get to pick that often. We also stopped by a daycare centre for the pickers and said hi to the kids and took and showed them the pickture we took of them, to lots of pleasure for them and us.

At the end of todays hike we reach the highest waterfall in Sri Lanka, not much water coming down now in the dry season, but it is a nice shower and a culp to swim in under it, and so we do. :) An other good day, even if I have to admit that it was good to get out of my hiking boots, and into the flipflops, it was hard for the tow with all the down hill on road today.
After a lunch, 2 vans take us to Haputale, and here will we stay till tomorrow, when we set out to the ocean by Mirissa.

Posted with Blogsy