We had arranged to meet Rammuni at the front of the hotel at four in the afternoon. Right bang on time a landrover type of jeep swept into the drive with Rammuni and the local guide/driver whose name for the moment escapes me.
We drove for maybe twenty minutes on the main road and then turned of into the forest. Hurulu Eco Park.
Almost immediately we were seeing lots of wildlife. A beautiful eagle perched in a tree less than twenty yards away, a herd of buffalo, some very large squirrels and lots and lots of unusual birds. It was great.
We weren’t really on a track though it was clear other vehicles had travelled this way before. We crossed a small river that looked to be too deep for the jeep, but we crossed without getting wet. The driver stopped the jeep, climbed onto the bonnet and surveyed all around us. When we started up again, we left the ‘track’ and drove into some fairly dense vegetation for ten minutes or so then stopped and the engine was turned off. Wonderful…..only the sounds of the forest. And then less than twenty yards away…..a lone elephant. We watched him feeding for a while completely mesmerised.
We set off again back on to the vague ‘track’. For around half an hour we were driving and seeing much wildlife but no more elephants. I was quite relaxed about it all, we had seen an elephant in the wild, loads of other stuff, we were really enjoying ourselves……..mission accomplished!
The driver stopped again, climbed onto the bonnet and did his sweep of the surrounding land. When he started driving again we headed into very dense vegetation, very rough ground with the jeep often at 45 degrees or more. Then we stopped, engine off and both Rammuni and the driver climbed in the back with us. Our driver put his finger to his lips indicating that we should be quiet and pointed to an area just fifteen yards away. Nothing but long grass and a few boulders. Then one of the big grey rocks moved….yes, it was an elephant. As it moved backwards this tiny little thing was walking by its side. A baby, not much more than a week old according to the driver. We were thrilled! As we stood watching, more and more elephants appeared. In the end maybe around ten or twelve. We had found a whole family. It was just magical, fantastic, unbelievable, an absolute thrill. A memory that will stay with me forever. Watching this family with just the sounds of the forest. The noises of the elephants ripping up the grass and munching away. I can’t find the words to describe it…….just gobsmacking!!!
After maybe half an hour the driver whispered to us ‘we must go now. Look they are trying to surround us. They don’t like us here because of the baby’. As I looked around it was clear that they were indeed starting to surround us. So we made our way back to the track speechless. Lynda and I just looking at each other hardly believing what we had just seen.
We saw another larger herd on the way out of the park. We also had a little scare when we got stuck in some heavy mud.
This was a day to remember. Whatever came after this……our trip to Sri Lanka was already a huge success.

Awesome event! And your words are perfect! I can read right thru them and picture you and Lynda, speechless, with what you were viewing.

Keep it coming.

Arriving back at the hotel, time for a quick shower and off to dinner. The lure of the cool room dragged us to the main restaurant and once again a decent buffet. When we left Rammuni earlier we told him that we wanted to do nothing the next day, so he and Mano could have a day off and could they pick us up the following day for the move on to Kandy. So for our lazy day, we just wandered around the huge grounds, visited the pool on and off and generally relaxed. The hotel has a huge fruit and veg garden which was nice to walk around. They also keep bees and use the honey they provide in the restaurant. For our last night, once again we took a la carte at the Verandah restaurant.

A summary of Cinnamon Lodge………Booked through Agoda……four nights in a deluxe room cost us £487.00.
The room was lovely and spotlessly clean with a separate living area. Huge bathroom with bathtub and separate shower. Large veranda with table and chairs. Food was excellent and staff were attentive, polite and efficient. All in all…..a first class hotel.

Next stop…Kandy.

hotel sounds like a steal...

off to europe tomorrow... i hope to follow along from there

Off to Europe Bob. Are you visiting London at all?

Keep it coming. I want to hear about all the critters

You had much better luck with elephants than I did!

Femi, I'm sorry to hear you didn't hit lucky with elephants. I think we were just so so incredibly lucky, particularly with the small family that we found. And then the very large herd right at the end. Yes we were very fortunate.
I hope to have the elephant photos available by later tonight. There is also some short video footage. I wont delete any of the pics but some are not too good.

we will only be at heathrow this time as transit passengers...

What were the problems you had with the transit in India?

Great storywriting Leigh, wonderful to read of your experience. Hope you have a great time in Kandy too and if you visit the botanical gardens do make sure to see the orchid house which is just 5 mins walk from the entrance. Will you be stopping by Pinnawela enroute to kandy or will you go directly via the Matale route? Since you liked the elephants Pinnawela sounds just up your street. Spice gardens can be seen on both routes.

Pity it seems to be raining a little again, most unusual weather for Feb indeed.

Have fun and keep posting.

Femi, the problems were as follows.
Whilst wating to go through security, we were seperated into lines for women and lines for men. O.K. no problem so far.
I was compelled to place all hand baggage, my wallet and my watch in a tray for it to go through the usual type of scanner. I then had to join another line to go through the body scanner. My property was then out of view on the other side. Now feeling quite nevous....cash, credit cards, expensive watch, cameras etc. etc. completely out of sight. The mens queue was now split into two...one for nationals and one for foreigners. The nationals went through at the rate of about ten for every one of my line. It took at least ten minutes before I was re-united with my belongings and as I have previously said....nothing was missing. So it ended O.K.
However, Lyndas side had come to a stop. One poor woman was really blasting off because her purse had gone missing during this terrible process. The main security guy was very unsympathetic, insisting that she must have left it somewhere else and that she must respect his uniform and his authority !!! It was all very surreal actually. Eventually Lynda got through and off we went.
The process was very similar in Delhi, but I was able to keep a visual on my property at all times.

Mohammed,
You're one step ahead of me. Most of what you mention was on our itenary. More to come soon.

Some photos of our time at Hurulu. Not edited yet and some are pretty rough. First lot are my photos and second covering same visit are Lyndas. Link below.

http://leightravel.smugmug.com/Anima...03708247_aBnnY

Yes, the security screening that you describe was the same in Bangalore, and I also remember being anxious at having my valuables out of my sight for an extended period of time.

This is the first time I've heard of Hurulu. Your pics prove it was well worth the visit, especially for elephants.

I just loved watching the bee eaters sandbathe at Yala, they seemed to revel in it. Look like the same was happening in Hurulu.

I was only able to look at a few of your photos as I'm somewhere with a sloooooow internet connection. The photos I saw look great! I'm looking forward to being able to see all of them when I get home.

On to day five heading for Kandy and the Amaya Hills Hotel.
After we had confirmed our booking with Rammuni back in 2010, he sent us a list of potential places of interest close to the hotels we had booked. Dambulla Rock Cave Temple was of course on our list and that’s where we were headed for now, enroute to Kandy. A herb and spice garden was also on our way to Amaya Hills.
Whilst we were driving we discussed the rest of our itenary. Rammuni had said all along that our plan was quite a good one covering a variety of what Sri Lanka has to offer. Great, we thought.
However, this morning he mentioned that our move from Nuwara Eliya to Galle, was going to be a very long day involving a ten hour drive! Ouch! I hadn’t seen that coming. During our planning I’d used a map in a guide book and using a pair of dividers and a ruler I was roughly calculating distances. I knew the drive from Colombo to Habarana would be around 4.5 hrs and the distance from Nuwara Eliya to Galle looked about the same, so I thought that too would be around 4.5 hrs. Oh no. I’ve learned that maps don’t always tell the whole story. More about that later.

There’s quite a climb involved in getting to the Cave Temple but after Sigiriya, it was nothing.

Before talking about the temple just a quick word about beggars.
Some years ago during a trip to Marrakech, where we hired a driver for many of our days out, something made a big impression on me. There are lots of people begging in and around Marrakech, but I noticed that our driver always gave something to nearly every beggar he encountered. Eventually I asked him about it. Do you always give to beggars? And he replied yes. Only a very small amount but yes, always something. It’s little to me, and if many people give a little to these people it makes a big difference to them. Somehow this made a big impact on me, and since then, when I’m travelling, I rarely pass by without making a small gift to anyone who appears genuinely to be in difficulty. We didn’t encounter many beggars in Sri Lanka, but recalling the Cave Temple, I’m reminded of a couple of people we passed on the steps who were clearly very needy. So rather than buying flowers or other offerings to take to the temple, we provided some assistance to these people.

Shoes need to be removed before entering the temple and there is a stall just at the entrance where there they will look after them for a nominal fee. Socks are allowed and if it’s a very hot day…..they are quite useful. We took a local guide to show us around who was very informative and provided us with much information. This was a very worthwhile visit which we really enjoyed.

Back to the mini-van, next stop herb and spice garden.
At this point I should say that we don’t do factory shops etc. etc.
Don’t know what we were expecting but this garden was a rather tatty affair with an attempted hard sell at the end. And to be quite honest, the staff were rather rude to us when we didn’t buy anything. We did look in their shop; nothing was priced up and when we asked for a price, back would come some exorbitant figure which was immediately reduced to half when we said no thank you. We couldn’t wait to get out of the place.

After this, we just wanted to get on to our hotel at Kandy.
During our planning time, we really struggled to find a hotel that jumped out at us for Kandy. You know, one that said ‘come and stay here’. But in the end we settled for Amaya Hills. Check in was fine and we were soon in our second floor room. Nice size, great balcony with a wonderful view…..all seemed fine. I started unpacking the essentials and Lynda went to take a shower. She emerged from the bathroom clutching a towel and said look at this. The towel was blood- stained….fresh…unwashed, blood stained. Only this one towel is like this she said. All the rest are fine.
So we let it go and thought no more of it. We shouldn’t have….it was a warning!!!

Whilst Lynda was showering, I sat on the balcony, having a glass of whiskey and a cigarette. There was a large bush just a few yards away with loads of large trumpet like yellow flowers. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted what at first I thought was a large dragonfly, but no, it was a Humming Bird. Beautiful! I watched it going from flower to flower, hovering at each one, drinking the nectar. It was amazing. The variety and abundance of wildlife in this country is quite staggering.
As I went to get my camera, my cell phone started ringing. I looked at the screen…..oh shit…..it’s work.
I’m employed as a maintenance engineer for a manufacturing company. It was the works manager. A particularly crucial piece of plant had broken down and they were unable to find the fault. Could I provide instructions for faultfinding this particular machine. I spent the next hour writing out a faultfinding guide for work which I later faxed to the factory. My Humming Bird photo opportunity had of course passed. I never saw it again.
Dinner was buffet style here, with several live cooking stations. We had a very nice meal and after a lovely walk around the grounds, we headed off to bed.
As Lynda pulled back the sheets, she flatly stated ‘I’m not sleeping in this!!’
It was clear that the sheets were not fresh and had been slept in.
Tired and ready for a sleep, I really could have done without this.
I trudged off down to reception and requested the manager who appeared within a couple of minutes. We both then went off to the room. He appeared to be quite horrified when he saw the sheets. We also showed him the stained towel and some other issues in the bathroom which Lynda had spotted earlier but had kept to herself.
He immediately offered to move us to another room and to upgrade us to a suite, but Lynda said no. Please just have all the bedding changed so that we can get to bed. A small army of staff very quickly appeared and with pleasant smiles on there faces changed all the bedding and the towels whilst checking other aspects of the room. A satisfactory outcome.
More than that. The following day we were out from early till around 6.00p.m., and when we returned, the room had had a super clean and makeover. There were fresh flowers, a bowl of fruit, a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates. All complimentary. A very nice touch, good customer service.

So getting back, once the bed had been sorted out we hit the sack knowing that we had a very full day ahead of us.
Coming up next, Pinnawela, Kandy City centre, the culture show and Temple Of Tooth.

We wisely gave the spice garden a miss and your experience confirms why we did. We sure could have used socks at Dambulla - that rock that you walk on outside the caves is very hot!

the joys of travel..

We had a similar spice garden experience. I told our driver we wanted to buy some vanilla beans, so he called ahead to several spice gardens and found one that said they had vanilla beans. It turned out they did not. They had a single vanilla vine. We didn't like the hard sell either, and they did get rude when we didn't buy. Our driver was very unhappy with them and told them so.

So day six, first stop Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage.
An elephant orphanage? Yes I know…..we visited one in Thailand years ago and were not over impressed. Lynda had been keen to visit Pinnawela so I just went along with it. But during the drive there, Rammuni was talking about it and I realised that this was a place I had seen in a BBC programme some time ago. Their write up for it spoke about it being the only town in the world, where the main street is closed twice a day, to allow a herd of elephants access to a river and I remembered being enthralled watching the programme. All of a sudden, I was rather looking forward to this visit, and I wasn’t disappointed.
We arrived there about ten and made our way straight to the area where the elephants spend most of their time. A huge park area. 24 acres. Now I know that this place divides opinion, but from what we saw, the animals appeared healthy and happy and generally well cared for. We spent around three hours here including our lunchtime in the restaurant overlooking the river with the elephants bathing. Rammuni somehow managed to get us the best table in the house.
Our photos from Pinnewala are at link below

http://leightravel.smugmug.com/Anima...05278031_yUYc9