The longest day of my life
Trip Start
Feb 19, 2011
1
15
Trip End
Ongoing
Negombo, Sri Lanka
Saturday, April 9, 2011
After a few days exploring the picturesque Nuwar Eliya (via the most incredibly train ride of my life from Kandy to Nanu Oya), doing some tea plantation touring (and successfully hitchhiking back to town with Sunny from California), entertaining fish vendors in the local bazaar with Ben and my shinanigans, and hiking through the incredible Horton Plains National Park (a beauty it was), Ben and I made our way to Adam's Peak (although not before enjoying the best street cuisine I have ever tasted). We took a bus and a tuk tuk to get there, and were exhausted from the 9km hike (on 4 hours of sleep) we had done that morning through Horton Plains. As we have come to discover over the course of the past month, sleep is indeed overrated if it means you get to do more in less time.
The base of Adam's Peak sits in the small town of Dalhousie (or Delhouse). When Ben and I arrived we directly checked into a small guesthouse for a couple of bucks a night -- it wasn't anything fancy - no toilet (a cemented hole in the "bathroom" ground sufficed) and an ice-cold shower. Normally I'm in heaven with cold showers when I travel, but in Dalhousie where the temperature drops to 10 or 15 degrees at night, it was a little iffy. We killed the time before our 1am wake-up call (the climb up Adam's Peak is done at night) by Ben sleeping, and I reading. Probably a poor choice on my part since my batteries were already running low from the short night before and hike that morning but I was reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and just could not put it down. I managed to finish it and give myself 2 hours to sleep before getting up.
Ben and I layered up in warm clothing that we had bought in Nuwar Eliya in preparation for the hike, stopped at a tea house for a cup of very hot, very sweet and very milky tea to fuel us for the journey. As we set off up the 5,500 stairs we passed small buddhist shrines where monks would bless you for a small donation. After the blessing they tied white, red and yellow strings around our wrists. The climb was amazing. Along the way we stopped and sipped sweet, milky tea and fuelled up on milo. It was cold -- a chilling 15 or 20 degrees (indeed it felt cold) and dark, and each step was unpredictable -- each a different height than the last. From short, shallow steps to tall, deep steps, it was taxing to say the least. About 1 hour from the top, the path became increasingly narrow and we had to squeeze by the slower pilgrams. Many of the pilgrims were old, many without shoes.One woman, who I called Grandma (probably in her 70s or 80s) was climbing shoeless, carrying two big bags with her to the top. She paused after each step, allowing her muscles a moment of respite. It broke my heart to see Grandma like this, so in my best attempt in communication, I offered to carry her bags to the top. After some hesitation she agreed, and I made the ascent with ben a few steps in front of me and the added baggage in hand. Ben and I reached the top, and customarily rang the pilgrim's bell at the top (once for every ascent one has made) before waiting for Grandma to reach the top. Afraid we would lose her in the crowd of 100+ people at the top, we climbed back down 50 or so steps to a coffee shop to wait for her. Sure enough, after about an hour and a half, as the sun had already started to rise, we returned her belongings safely to her and made our way back up to the summit. We hung out with some local teens we had met the previous afternoon while watching the sunrise and observing the hundreds of pilgrims who were milling around, lighting incense at the top. After a photoshoot with the kids, we sprinted down the 5500 steps in record time, stopping only once to grab a tetrapack of Milo.
Because we made the hike down way faster than as earlier expected Ben and I decided that we would attempt the great feat of getting to Unawatuna beach by night. After a quick shower and a breakfast that consisted of 5 pieces of toast each (and about a quarter cup of butter each as well) Ben and I set off in a 3-wheeled rickshaw feeling refreshed, bright-eyed and energetic. Not bad for a few hours of sleep and an intense hike through the night. Arriving after our 40km rickshaw ride to Hatton (keep in mind, we left at 10:00am), we were told that there was a possibility of catching a bus directly from Kandy to Unawatuna (South Coast) so we should go directly to Kandy instead of Colombo the capital (Colombo being on the South-West coast, Kandy being inland). Great! we thought, how easy (if you're reading this right now, you should stop and do a google maps search of Sri Lanka, so you can get a good idea of the distances we were travelling). Alas, as I found out that very day-- the same day that coincidentally (or not) became the longest day of my life --Sri Lanka does indeed have the worst transport system than any country I have ever, yes EVER, been to. Off to Kandy we set -- what was only 90kms ended up taking 3.hours, and we arrived to find out that a bus to our final destination was out of the question. At this point, I was running low on energy (sugar and sleep) and so we sat (and I refueled on coffee and sweetened-condensed milk) and sweat in the back of a small eatery while trying to come up with a game plan. We pondered the idea of staying in Kandy instead of taking the 4 hour bus to Colombo and then another 3 hour bus to Unawatuna, but the pull of the idea of waking up on a beach was too strong. We figured, what the heck -- waking up on a beach would be well worth spending a day completely exhausted and sweaty in the local busses. If we had known how packed, disorganized, and painfully slow the busses were going to be we may have opted for a night in Kandy.
The bus ride to Colombo sucked majorly (I'm stealing words from my childhood, here). Not only was it packed to the brim (what you get for paying a dollar to take you 4 hours), but halfway through just as Ben and I got comfy, all of the passengers (including us) were shuffled onto a second bus where Ben and I were forced to stand. It took a good 45 minutes of standing in the aisle, praying that there would be no hard braking or sharp turns, cursing our decision to leave Kandy, before I was able to spot an open seat towards the back between a couple of people. Our arrival in Colombo finally came as the sun was starting to set. We quickly rushed into a bus to Galle, the city nearest to our beach destination-- probably the most exciting part of our journey by road. It was the night of the Cricket World Cup finals and Sri Lanka was up against India for the title. The city was alive with parties, and as we left Colombo on bus number 4 of the day thousands of people were on the streets cheering and partying (it wasn't until later that the game would change pace and Sri Lanka would eventually lose to India). Though it was great to watch from the bus, Ben and I were both crashing and getting annoyed with the traffic jam that the people on the street had caused. As the bus continued along the coastal highway we picked up at least 30 people who squeezed into the bus and before long everyone had elbows in their ears and bums in their faces. Normally I live for these experiences, but on the longest day of my life my patience was running thin. Finally as the bus began to clear out (we had to stop every 3 minutes to let someone off), and things were looking up, we were herded like sheep onto yet another -- yes ANOTHER bus. Bus number 5! I was beyond my limits at this point. I made a snappy comment to the driver (it seemed like the only thing I could offer to the world at that point), and hauled my brick-filled bag off the bus. As I was walking away, the driver's assistant (the one who collects the fare from passengers) smiled at me (as he had been doing the entire time from Colombo), gave me an up-down stare, and proclaimed: "You are so beautiful!" I walked away from him laughing -- I have never felt so hot and sticky and just absolutely gross in my entire life. Oh Sri Lanka, how you satisfy the soul!
As it turned out, Ben and I would eventually make it to Unawatuna Beach, our last official stop in Sri Lanka. Though it took us one rapid rickshaw and 5 bumpy busses (and then another rickshaw from Galle to Unawatuna) the better part of 12 hours to travel between two cities that sit only 102 km apart, we did it! What we didn't know was that everything shuts down in Unawatuna before 10pm on a Sunday night, and had a bit of a challenge finding a place to sleep. We couldn't handle any more frustrations at that point and found a room for a price higher than our budget allowed us. After some quick negotiating (my sweet negogiating skills got us a 4,500 rupee room for 2,000 rupees), we each had the most deserving shower in all of history and fell asleep listening to the sound of waves crashing on the beach. What a day.
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We stayed at the pricey hotel for one night only and the next morning (well it was more like afternoon by the time we woke up) after breakfast found a great little place in a quiet garden only a 2 minute walk from the beach for only 800 rupees per night ($8). The rest of my stay in Sri Lanka was spent mostly on the beach soaking up the hot sun, and recovering from the longest day of my life. We celebrated Ben's birthday and it was an all-day affair, starting with free and delicious fruit juices over breakfast at our favourite chill spot -- Chili's. We drank beer and swam in the ocean, started a party at Chili's where I somehow managed to find Ben delicious chocolate cake in a nearby guesthouse. We met some Canadians and Brits, and had a great time partying all night long.
I said goodbye to Ben a few days later, as we left the beach and he headed back to Colombo to get ready for his late flight, and I continued on to Negombo. The trek up to Negombo was interesting - we boarded a train from Galle to Negombo with our new Canadian friends (one of them, Adam, works out of Negombo), but the train broke down an hour outside of Colombo. With Ben antsy to get back to Colombo before nightfall, we jumped off the train (literally in the middle of nowhere), and walked back until we found a main road. We managed to find an empty air-conditioned minibus and a handful of other tourists who had also decided to abandon the train and so we commissioned the car to take us the rest of the way. After dropping Ben and a couple of other people in Colombo, we continued up the coastal road to Negombo to Adam's house. I spent two days enjoying the sunshine in Negombo before going back to the Gomes' house in Colombo to be dropped at the airport on April 10th.
I do have to say, I love Sri Lanka. I love the charm, I love the smiles, I love the culture, the religion, and yes, there is something somehow a little endearing about the transport system. I think I just might have to go back some day :)
Comments
Good blog... Sounds terrible!
ps. I have read into thin air :)