We had a long, unnecessary drive to our next destination today. Unnecessary because I realized an hour into our day trip yesterday that we could have done part of yesterday on the way to our destination today (the town of Polonnurawa), and the other part of yesterday on the way back in three days. Part of it was a lack of understanding of how exactly everyone gets around here, and part of it was just a stupid mistake. I haven't made too many on the trip, but I hate wasting time, especially when it's in a car.... with no A/C. Normally we listen for cues from people we share information with - seeing if locals raise their eyebrows at our plans or nod like its the way to go. When we explained the plan to our host, Razic, he didn't react so we assumed it was a good one. Turns out, as we got to know him more over dinner last night, he's less of a listener and more of a talker, so he would often kind of ignore what we were saying and continue on with his story. D'oh. Oh....well....
We said goodbye to our kind hosts and got back in Raja's van to take the trip back North.
We took a little detour on the way out of Kandy and took a look out over the lake part of the town. Nice.
When we got to the town of Matale, we stretched our legs with a quick visit of one of the biggest and most colourful Hindu temples I've seen.
There's something about the Hindu temples, with all the crazy colours and interesting characters all lumped on top of each other - if you'd described it to someone it may sound very cheesy, but strangely I find them beautiful.
The main tower above one of the side entrances had the tallest structure I'd seen in a Hindu temple - I'm guessing it rose 25 to 30 meters high.
The road between Matale and Dambulah is the heart of Ayurveda. For those not comfortable with hyper links, Ayurveda is essentially 5,000 year old medicine. It's very complicated but one component is treatment using herbs, roots, leaves, seeds and bark from various plants to treat certain ailments and shortcomings. The strip of road north of Matale is packed with spice gardens which all offer "free" tours, free Ayurvedic tea and of course "available shopping". Raja of course had a suggestion for a really good place, so we checked Lonely Planet and suggested we go to a different place.
Going through the process of touring the spice garden, learning about the various properties of different spices, having tea etc is listed in the guide books as one of the top twenty things to do in Sri Lanka (!). I was skeptical going in, but tried to keep an open mind. A young guide welcomed us and brought us inside the garden area. He started by explaining the miracle of Aloe, and for me, it went downhill from there.
I do believe that natural spices are good for you - as much as eating fresh healthy food is good for you. Yes, I'm sure ginger has some good properties, and cinnamon, and cardamon, but I'm quite sure they are semi complimentary at best to modern medicine. Reading a bit about Ayurveda, it seems a little like hocus pocus, but to each his own.
To me, the tour went on and on... "Have you ever heard of peppers?". "Yes". "This one is good for digestion, gas, diarrhea, boils." He kind of droned on and on. I was still thinking of the time wasted in the extra car ride! We eventually made it through the tour, and right after learning that cinnamon was also good for digestion and get this... flavouring in some foods!, we made our way to the store in front of the garden. We did see some products that were potentially of benefit to friends and family (you may know who you are....)...
....but in the end, we were "eager" to get back in the van and push on.
Other than a few snacks, we were not keen to go in "search mode" for a restaurant on the road with Raja, so there were zero complaints from the girls as I asked Raja to keep going all the way to Polonnurawa. We eventfully got to our hotel at 3:00pm. We were more than happy to get out of the van and get to our rooms and say goodbye to Raja and his van.
The place we are staying is run by a young family. It has five rooms, is in a quiet, convenient location and right away the owner gave us a feeling that we could trust him. We asked him to bring us some food and it was great. A few hours later, we got a knock on our door - dinner! We sat down to a big dinner with a bunch of curries that was quite good. We hadn't ordered anything but we were good with it.
Sri Lanka is still a bit of a mystery for us. It is a really interesting place with wonderful people, and we're all slowly discovering what makes the place, and the people, tick - so far, so good :-).
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