So, Fred has just died, and Dobby earlier. I don't know if I can take any more death and destruction. It is also our last day in Sri Lanka. I can't say I'm not looking forward to returning to a place which is cooler outside than in, to giving my many bite scars a chance to heal, and also, believe it or not, to getting a bit of work done, but some unforgettable experiences have definitley been had (namely being snotted over by baby elephants in their search for food), and I'm sure time will edit out the small niggles from my memory and turn it into an adventure fit for Indianna Ford.

I am currently sitting in an Internet cafe in a small town called Negombo. It is on the west coast very close to the airport which we will depart for in the early hours of the morning. Heather has gone into town leaving me to write. She has taken the guide book with her and therefore I will be having wild stabs at the spellings of place names and perfectly normal, easy-to-spell words also. I'm sure you have gathered from my previous interweb bloggings that I don't plan things out before writing, this is entirely intentional and leads to enthralling articles of wit, humour and loathing for you, the reader. Here is another:

Elephants, that's right, and that was when we were staying in Kandy wasn't it? Yes, ok so after that I think we headed to a place called Sigiria which is further north and forms part of The Cultural Triangle, which seems to amusingly consist of far more than three places. Now, when we were staying at Adam's Peak we had a bit of difficulty booking a place to stay in Sigiria and I finally succumbed to letting one of the staff there book me into his friend's hotel. I had a quick look at their website and the photos of the place looked nice so I went ahead. Later on we got a phone call from the owner of this hotel who told us he was in Kandy on business and could give us a "free" lift with him to the hotel. Being this far into a Sri Lankan holiday we considered ourself now wise to this word "free" and realised that the two and a half hour journey would no-doubt be riddled with stops at museums and temples with small donations being lost into pockets along the way. We decided it was worth it for the air-conditioned car. We were picked up from outside our Kandy guest house at half eight and drove off. After turning down a couple of offers of stopping to look at temples we passed a Hindu temple that was, granted, very impressive looking, and we hopped out to have a look. We went inside and were told to leave almost immediately, I'm pretty sure it was my fault. We hopped back into the car and drove off. An hour in, Sampath (the name of the hotel owner) pulled in off the country road into a landscaped tree-filled garden with some buildings at the back of it. He exclaimed that he was here to get some tea at this renowned herbal medicine garden and that we could get out and have a look if we wanted, but of course we didn't have to if we didn't want to. We chose not to and remained in the car, wise to his plot.  About two minutes passed and two men came out under the premise of getting a bottle of water from the car for Sampath. The usual "where are you from?" and facts about his many friends in Nottingham swam into the car and then it came; the full blown sales pitch about herbal medicine and how we would undoubtedly die a horrible death if we did not get out of the car and have a look around his garden. Heather feigned car sickness and I got out and walked with a man around the garden as he showed me various plants and herbs. Some of it was actually quite interesting and I got to see what a cocaine plant looked like and how pineapples grow. Then I was lead into the shop where a more intrusive guy, a "doctor", talked me through all the medicines; from some gunk that could cure baldness to a small red bottle which guaranteed you and your partner's simultaneous orgasm during intercourse. Tempted by the small red bottle I bought a concoction of massage oil to avoid being thrown to the Tamils and left, after giving the man who showed me around the garden a tip, which I of course had the option of not giving.

A smug Sampath got back in the car, a nice commission surely on his mind, and we were off again. We pulled into the hotel an hour or so later and were shown our room. The room was nice and was part of an attractive building of four big bedrooms. As far as I could tell the hotel consited of two four-bedroom buildings and a restaurant building. Chatting to Sampath later I discovered he had grand plans for twelve more rooms and swimming pool. Sampath was the second former tour-guide that we have met who has saved up and built a hotel. Two tours should have done it.

That afternoon we were off to visit Sigiria (Heather edit: Sigiriya) Rock, a massive rock surrounded by ancient gardens, painted with ancient frescoes and topped with an ancient pleasure palace. Heather told me the story which involved two brothers, one of whom was very angry when the other was given the throne. He vented his anger by walling up his father and leaving him to die and forcing his brother into exile, then built an impenetrable fortress on top of a big rock. When his brother gathered an army and attacked he decided he would come down from his inpeneterable fortress with his army and fight them on a flat plane. He was clever one. The elephant he rode upon bolted and he ran away in shame and got a job in Tescos.

Sampath gave us a lift to the start of Sigiria Rock's gardens and gave us the choice of whether or not we wanted a guide. We really didn't and managed to shake a stubborn one from us eventually. Heather bought tickets which covered most attractions within the Cultural Triangle and weren't cheap, so we felt justified in not putting anything in any of the donation boxes seeing how we had probably just paid for a couple more hotels.

The Rock, I feel, was the most impressive man-made structure I have seen on this trip. I am referring to the stairs up it and the fortress on top, not the rock itself. I am always fascinated by the "nutter" urges humans have when they see a big mountain or a massive rock and think "I'm going to build something on that, it is big and high and must be somehow connected to God". We were forewarned that there had been some hornet attacks on tourists a couple of weeks prior, fatal I think, and so we were a little apprehensive about straying from main track. No hornets came our way though. Up a steep metal spiral staircase put in by the British were the remnants of paintings of topless woman. (Heather edit: the famous "Sigiriya damsels", which provide fodder for 99.6% of Sri Lankan souvenirs.) Very well-endowed topless women who would no doubt lead to much disappointment for teenage boys when they first managed to remove a girl's top.

Further up from the paintings were the remains of a giant lion which originally had a stone staircase leading through its mouth to the the top of the rock. The angry brother suffered from vertigo and had walls put in around the stairs when they were originally carved into the rock. Now, however, there were just flimsy metal railings. We climbed up and explored the top, which along with spectacular vistas consisted of many swimming pools (Heather edit: swimming pools?!) and ruined buildings.

That evening we did our usual trick of having dinner in a really fancy hotel and went to bed. The next cultural excursion was to a place called Polamanoora. (Heather edit: Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka's second great capital, which was at its peak around the 11th Century AD. ) Here were the remnants of many a temple. We were to hire bikes to cycle around, but first hopped on to a bus for a one-and-a-half hour journey there. We hired bikes from a small guest house. The bikes had seen better days. Mine was a couple of sizes to small and had over 60 gears; 59 of them did nothing and 1 stopped the bike from functioning. We cycled off along the main road for about 300m and hung a right into the park type place where all the ruins were. The roads in Sri Lanka are manic, to drive here you must master the art of beeping the horn as much as you can and overtaking anything regardless of what is coming the other way. If you spy danger you beep some more. We showed our tickets and cycled comically in. The paths were all sandy and uneven and the sun was beating down. The ruins were impressive, and to think that some were almost 1000 years old was thought-provoking. Giant decayed statues and vast ruined temples, all of which you took your shoes off at before you entered. This was fine except the stone of some of the floors was so hot I'm sure you could have fried a poppadom on them. Heather had grasped the concept of forward motion better than me and was airily cycling between the ruins. I was drenched and throwing jealous looks at people in air-conditioned taxis. Eventually the cycling in the heat up and down hills got the better of us and we had had our fill of ruins for the day. We returned our bikes, grabbed some lunch and got back on a bus.

Our bedroom smelt a bit musty, the bathroom was one of those wet-rooms, but the floor did not slope quite correctly so the water just gathered and stagnated in pools on the floor. There was also a pungent aroma of filth in the air, this emanated from the remains of that massage oil I bought which was one of the foulest substances I have smelt. I don't know why I feel the need to tell you this stuff. The next day we were off to a town called Dambulla. Dambulla was only a short tuk-tuk ride away and is home to some cave temples. Luckily a guy accosted us for tickets early (the cave temples were not included on our all-inclusive ticket) and we bought a couple before heading up the many steps to our destination. An important person in Sri Lankan history (Heather edit: King Valagamba) once hid out in these caves when he was overthrown, and then when he regained power he made the caves into temples by having them painted ornately inside.

The low hung ceilings of the varying sized caves covered many statues of Buddha - we'd been told that if a big Buddha is lying on his side and one of his feet is flush with the other foot then he is resting; if one of his feet is slightly below the other foot then he is dead. 

This Buddha is a dead Buddha, his feet tell me so.

We came back down from the caves and started back down the stairs, where we came across a French couple who hadn't been lucky enough to find the hidden ticket booth and faced having to climb all the way back down to get some tickets. We gave them ours in true Sri Lankan style.

That afternoon we did nothing, I read my book and whittled a small wooden elephant that I had bought in its rough form way back in Merissa. (Heather edit: Marissa.) Heather did some knitting and also read. Heather knitting has caused much fascination to Sri Lankans, especially to an army woman at one of the road side check-points.

This one is not my elephant, this is a photo from Heather's previous blog, when we went to that woodworking place. I deem it a more interesting photograph than ones of hills and things.

Off to our penultimate destination, Anahradapura. (Heather edit: close! Anuradapura.) We decided to take the bus again, and asked a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the bus station. He took us to an ordinary bus stop, which was highly annoying as it meant we would not get a seat. Heather joined a child on a fold down seat in the aisle and I sat on top of a pile of bags. As people filtered off along the journey we eventually got seats. An hour and half later we arrived in town and grabbed a tuk-tuk to our hotel. After a brief problem with the hotel not having our booking we were shown to a temporary room, and then to a more permanent room. This place was nice, we had a four poster bed each, carved out of a beautiful dark wood and even a separate room for our luggage. Heather had splashed out a bit for our last place of interest (not that Negombo isn't interesting, it does after all have an internet cafe). We chilled a bit after I performed my arriving-at-a-new place ritual of undressing down to my pants and turning the air-con up full blast. We went for a wander before tea amidst monkeys and dogs, around one of the big man-made lakes that the locals call tanks. Many people were bathing in the lakes and we felt a bit intrusive walking by. A Poya day, or moon day, had just passed, which is a day where people flock to a place of religious interest to celebrate something that Buddha did, I think this one was maybe the day he became enlightened. We were treated to the ever-familiar rice and curry in the evening and it was a very tasty version with some new exciting dishes.

I won't attempt to spell the name of the place we are staying in again but it was once home to an ancient city which now lies in ruin. (Heather edit: it was the first of Sri Lanka's ancient capitals, founded at some point between 10 and 5 BC.) We were to hire a couple more bikes and cycle around it. Learning from last time, we did it early in the morning to avoid the full heat of the sun, and the bikes we hired from our hotel were half decent; Heather's even had a basket. The hotel was slap bang in the middle of everything and we didn't have to cycle far before we came to the first point of interest. The roads were flatter here and the cycling pleasurable. The ruins of the city thousands of years old seemed in remarkable condition and the bathing pools looked as though they just needed a bit of clean before they could be used again. We walked through old monks' residences and around huge brick dagobas that would have originally been blazing white due to the plaster they would have been covered in. According to the guidebook one of the dagobas is the largest brick structure in the world and consists of enough bricks to build a three metre wall from London to Edinburgh. 

Ah ... I really am a twat.

We leisurely cycled back to the guest house and freshened up. We headed into town and got some lunch at a locally popular bakery come restaurant and treated ourselves to coconut cake and date cake for afters. We had a bit of a rest and then ate again back at the guest house. After photographing many monkeys we went to bed.

The trip from Anahrad..etc etc to Negombo was due to take four and half hours on the bus and would involve many changes. (Heather edit: one.) We thought, seeing how this was our last long journey, we would book a taxi for the trip. We bartered a price which I have no idea was fair or not and it picked us up at 8.30. This morning in fact. Nothing really of interest happened on the journey, it was a mix of rubbly rough road and decent coast road. We pulled into Negombo around lunch time and settled in, we will be awaking at 2am for airport fun.

Heather will be gallivanting off on yet another trip to Jordan in a few days with her Mum, and I will make sure that she keeps blogging about it, so please keep reading. I am a little travelled out and will be retiring back to Edinburgh and trying to make some money. I hope you have enjoyed reading our (I now realise) rather cynical blog postings about our Sri Lanka experiences and I hope also you will continue to read about any future selfless trips we plan.

Postcard worthy I feel, H took it on the drive back from Adam's Peak, thought it deserved a spot in the blog.