A very flattering and gratifying thing to hear. The first time. And perhaps the second time. By the time it's been said by just about everyone in the village where I spent a year nearly 10 years ago, two things cross my mind.
1) Just how fat and ugly was I??
2) Stop piling more food on my plate. That's how it happened last time...
My overall feelings about the Sri Lankan part of our trip are very mixed - filled with nostalgia but tinged with a strange feeling of it no longer being home. I'm very glad we started our trip there, but it's only now that we are in India that the adventure really begins for me.
After a few days at the beach, we made our way to Kandy - one of my favourite parts of Sri Lanka. We did the usual tourist things - visiting the temple of the tooth , watching traditional dancing, visiting the botanical gardens (how I missed my residents visa and the local prices it gave me - multiplied by 10 for the tourist trade). After Kandy we spent some time staying with an old friend of mine, Darshi, who had been an English teacher in my village school, seeing and riding elephants, climbing over rocks and visiting numerous members of hers and her husbands family and friends. Each of these visits, of course, involving cups of tea, cakes, biscuits, bananas...
On our final day with Darshi, we were driven by her husband to the villages where I used to live. Now, the roads and driving in Sri Lanka have to be seen (and heard) to be believed - ng overtaking any way possible and horns beeping all over the place . But Rohitha's driving took it to new levels for me. It's all very well overtaking and generally taking over the roads if you are confident the driver can drive... but a little more concerning when you're convinced he can't. Never have I met such an impatient driver. Not helped by the long tales of the last two times he crashed his car. Or by the stop on the way by the roadside to look over the edge to a sheer drop where a car had gone over just the day before. After a few very near missed head on collisions, we arrived in the village to a special 25 year anniversary celebration of the opening of my old school. Where the exclamations of my beauty and thinness began and my plate was piled higher and higher with food....
We were unable to stay in the temple that had been my home for the next few days as they were busy with celebrations and overun with monks from the local area, so we headed to Nuwara Eliya (Little England) from where we made our way to Adams Peak. They say that you are a fool if you don't climb Adam's Peak once, but you are an even bigger fool if you climb it twice. Well, Kev was determined to climb it, and I was determined I wasn't. But still I found myself, for the second time, gasping for breath and forcing my legs to keep moving as I climbed stair after stair after stair. 3 hours of climbing up stairs at 3am with no sleep. The sunrise at the top was magnificent and as we sat of a rooftop watching the colours spread across the sky s thesun appeared between peaks, I was glad I had been an even bigger fool. Less glad once we started the slow, painful descent!
We made our way back to Thispane and the monks, and spent 3 days being fed endless plates of rice and curry and scrutinised at every meal to ensure we had eaten enough and that our technique eating with our hands was good enough. We went out for meals at friends houses, and more food was piled on our plates, and by the end of 3 days I was in no doubt at all that any longer and I would certainly no longer be 'thin and beautiful'. Kev was delighted to have his hair cut by Somananda, the 'second in command' monk before we left.
So, now we have made it to India. Currently we are in Kerala and I am relishing the choice of food and especially the array of seafood which is laid out in front of the restaurants at night for customers to make their choice and choose their style of cooking. I loved Varkala, the beach area where we are staying at first sight. A long straggling row of restaurants, guesthouses and shops full of beautiful, colourful clothes and jewelry on a high cliff top overlooking the beach - I can easily see how you could forget to leave.
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