Pourquoi pas?: Polonawura, Trincomalee & the Highlands

We arrived in Polonawura by tuk-tuk from Sigiriya. It wasn’t the best 45-minute drive we had ever had, but it certainly beat riding yet another jam-packed bus. The heat in Polo was intense. In the afternoon the power in the city is cut, as electricity in region is low due to a lack of rain. Most of the electricity is hydro based, and with no rain for over nine-months, there's less and less electricity to power the city. We took this in stride as we asked our guesthouse where we could find a pool and we headed there for the afternoon. In the evening we were fortunate enough to be invited by two vacationing Sri Lankan’s to join them as they went to watch the sunset over what remained of the lake (it was over 75% dried up). The view was amazing, and even though they couldn’t speak much English, it nice to hang out with the locals.

The next day we rented a couple of bicycles and explored the ruins that are scattered across the city. With the entire historical site covering a width of over 4kms, a bicycle is a must! There are temples, Buddha’s and stupas everywhere, with many dating back to the 10th century. Our personal highlight was the 14m long lying Buddha carved into the side of a giant rock. It is an impressive site to be seen.

After our short stay in Polo, we heeded the advise of a couple of locals and headed north to the beaches of Trincomalee. This meant we were now headed into Tamil territory for the first time in our Sri Lankan journey. Tamil people are mainly in the north and east of Sri Lanka. For decades a bloody civil war was fought between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the Sri Lankan army as the LTTE sought to separate parts of Sri Lanka to create an independent state. The war ended in 2009 when the Sri Lankan army destroyed the last of the LTTE in extremely bloody battles that used tactics that will likely one day be condemned as war crimes.

The four-hour train to from Polo to Trincomalee was nice, albeit quite slow. We noticed that one of the cabins of the train was a gift from Canada.

From the train station in Trincomalee we took a bus to Nilaveli, which had been recommended to us as one of the most beautiful beaches in Sri Lanka. The bus ride from Trincomalee to Nilaveli had us driving in front of a former UN Refugee camp and numerous military checkpoints. The camp was empty as were most of the checkpoints, but it was a sobering reminder of how recent 2009 is.

We arrived in town and searched for a guesthouse. With AJ’s birthday only a couple of days away, we splurged and got an expensive (read 55$ a night) hotel. Wow, were we disappointed! The AC didn’t work, the internet didn’t work, and apparently monkeys had eaten the hot water line, so we had no hot water. What a joke. After a couple of hours negotiating and changing rooms, we had the price dropped and realized we wouldn’t be staying here nearly as long as we planned.

We headed out to the beach, which was beautiful, except that it was 45 degrees outside and there was no shade on the beach; just 40m of perfect sand that was so hot you could barely walk on it. As we tried to walk down the beach we came to a military base that broke the beach in two. We were waved down by the military lookout post and informed that we couldn’t walk through this 150m stretch of sand, we would need to walk around the military camp by going through the village. What a mess!

Needless to say our plans to celebrate AJ’s birthday here and spend five nights in a nice hotel fell through. Two days later we would spend eight hours on three different busses as we made our way to tea country in the Sri Lankan highlands.

What a difference eight hours makes. We arrived in Nuwara Eliya, the highest point in Sri Lanka at nearly 2000M, and we were immediately taken back by the weather, cold, cloudy and rainy. In only eight hours we had gone from 40+ degrees to 8 degrees!

In Nuwara Eliya we would prove to be quite lucky. The best guesthouse in our guidebook happened to be at the bus station looking for tourists to fill its last rooms. We had been hoping to find a room in this place for AJ’s birthday, but figured it would be full. Instead, we got one of the best rooms in this old colonial house. The room came equipped with a fireplace, cable TV and internet, definitely a couple of luxuries we enjoyed on the rainy and cold days in Nuwara Eliya. We wouldn’t do much during our two days in Nuwara Eliya except eat, walk around and drink, but as we were celebrating a birthday, this was actually just perfect for us!

Our only special outing was for a day at an Ayurvedic spa for AJ’s birthday. Quite an experience to say the least. They started by asking us to take our clothes off (except our bottoms, but tops off) in front of them, and then they have you sit on a couple cold plastic chairs in a cold room while they pour a quarter cup of oil on your head and proceed to rub it into your hair. From there you lie on a “massage table” which consists of a piece of wood that is barely cushioned and they massage you for an hour. The massage was nice, albeit mine was a lot more painful than AJ’s (Special observation: In Sri Lanka, the masseuses massage women’s breasts). Finally, they finish with the steam bath. We each had our turn in this death chamber type of box. You lie in a box that looks like a coffin, except your head sticks out (kinda like a guillotine), and steam rises from the bottom of the box under your body. It worked pretty well; it’s just a little scary to climb into.

From Nuwara Eliya we hopped a train to Ella. This is the most scenic train ride in all of Sri Lanka, and also one of the busiest. With only 2^nd class tickets left by the time we got to the train station, we hoped we would be able to get a seat on the train (2^nd class doesn’t guarantee a seat). Boy were we wrong! When the train arrived there were so many people in the train you couldn’t even get into the door, let alone the main train cabin. Passengers had trouble getting out there were so many people, getting in was almost impossible. People were hanging out the doors, pushing to get into the main cabin, passing bags over everyone’s heads, it was nuts. We’d never seen anything like this before. We climbed down from the doorway of the 2^nd class cabin we had tried to force ourselves into and walked into the first class cabin. Lucky for us, we found a couple of empty seats and asked the kid working if we could pay the difference in our ticket prices so we could sit in the front. It worked! For 600 Rs (4.60$) each we were now in first class with leather seats, an onboard movie and wireless internet. It was like a completely different planet.

Ella was mildly warmer and very scenic with beautiful hikes to the various viewpoints around town. Unfortunately for me, I had fallen slightly ill over the last day and a half and my energy level was really low. Never the less we trekked on and hiked two hours up to the summit of Ella rock. I was drained and ended up having a 30 min nap on the top of the mountain… We then followed our guide back to his shack at the bottom of the rock and gave him a tip for showing us the way to the top. He seemed really pleased with our $10 tip, so pleased he brought out all kinds of sweets for us and gave us a small bottle of honey made from the local mountain bees. Not a bad tip for us either!

After a couple of relaxing days in Ella we hit up our last spot in the highlands, Haputale. This meant going back up slightly in altitude and heading back into the cold once again. Regardless, it was worth it. The view was epic and being surrounded by tea plantations on every side was amazing. We took a tour of a local tea factory, and headed up to Lipton’s seat. This viewpoint is where Sir Thomas Lipton (as in Lipton Ice Tea, etc.) would come and look over his estate when he was in Sri Lanka. Pretty amazing view!