Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/C3nFeaxD275CEJ467
Heading to Elephant Watch Hut - a very simple accommodation with an expectation of seeing a herd of wild elephants pass by your hut.
Stopped for roadside guava. Served with salt and chilli powder sprinkled on it - great combo. I recommend trying this on fruit.
My driver needed lunch (I was full from breakfast), so we stopped at a resorty place that needs to rethink their marketing. The staff wore shirts emblazoned with their logo, and the phrase ‘Nothing like a home’ below.
Went to Ritigala Archaeological Site & Strict Natural Reserve. An ancient Buddhist monastery ruin from 100 BC. Fascinating - embedded in the forest, with structures connected by winding forest stone paths going up the mountain - another few thousand steps in heat, and thunderstorm on the way down. Ruins of a massive tank or reservoir at the base. Yet another mystical experience, walking in the footsteps of monks 2000 years ago. A very meditative walk, where I meditated about my happiness I was not one of those monks.
I did a village walk nearby, accompanied by two villagers whose only form of communication with me was via Google Translate. Some of the translations were truly Pythonesque, of the ‘my hovercraft is full of eels’ variety. We came to a lovely little rocky grotto, with a pleasant pool fed by a stream, surrounded by lush vegetation - an enchanting, tranquil oasis designed to transport individuals away from the everyday world, combining rustic charm of a natural formation with a private pool.
I asked him (via Google) what the place was called. The reply was ‘rock with water in the middle’.
Later, at his house, with a house cat, I spoke into his device: ‘Does your cat eat mice?’. Google translated the text into English & Sinhalese. The English bit said: ‘When will your cat die?’ I tried again. Google: ‘Do you eat your cat?’
I cancelled that translation before showing it to him. I tried about four times to get the correct phrase to be translated. It must have looked comical as I spoke increasingly loudly and slowly each time, cancelling every translation, punctuated by ‘Oh, fuck’, and obvious frustration on my part. I gave up - did I really need to know if his cat ate mice? In hindsight it may be his phone was set with US English. I don’t normally have these issues.
On a tuk-tuk ride to the huts I saw a small herd of wild elephants. Wow! It’s very different seeing them a few metres away without a zoo fence. An experience more special than I imagined. Elephants here are quite a pest. Many properties are surrounded by barbed wire or electric fences to keep them out. Rice fields often have an elevated platform where someone stays overnight, and scares off elephants if they try to raid the fields, by making noises, and throwing firecrackers. No wonder elephants can get aggro. If some pipsqueak hit you with a taser, barbed wire and threw bombs at you, you’d definitely want to step on them.
The huts have solar powered led lights, no electricity, no hot water, only enclosed from the elements by a roof. I thought ‘tonight will be interesting’. I wondered if monkeys raided at night. Fortunately, the mosquito net worked a treat, I slept exposed to the jungle, and woke to more amazing forest sounds - the best alarm you can have.
The expected elephant herd never materialised, but I had seen some earlier in the day, so that’s fine. Enjoyed local village cuisine for dinner and breakfast - delicious. The breakfast, while under a hut, was in a thunderstorm, and regular gusts would blow rain into my coffee and soak my shirt. The weather hasn’t been kind. I’m spending much of this trip either drenched in sweat or rain.