The Lost Blog Post

The news back home is all about today’s full moon, blood moon, super moon, lunar eclipse. In Sri Lanka it’s more than an astronomical curiousity. In this Buddhist culture, every full moon day is a religious holiday. Most shops and businesses are closed, and the temples, shrines, and religious centers are busy.

For us, it’s a travel day, from Harbarana to Kandy. While a day sitting on the bus is more or less welcome after so much climbing and walking yesterday, we did not want to be completely sedentary. So after breakfast we took a walk around the hotel complex.

The place is spread out over a number of acres along a river, and the same company has a separate hotel featuring “luxury suites” adjacent to the cabins making up our hotel, so the paths go on for some distance. Along the river bank there are several platforms or tree houses where one can watch birds. We walked so far we got a bit turned around among the “suites” that we nearly didn’t get back in time to get our luggage out to be placed on the bus. But it was a good walk.

Along the way we made several brief stops to see things encountered by the road. One stop was a bodi tree shrine that was busy with pilgrims bringing water offerings for the full moon day. There we were entertained by some cute children, both human and monkey.

 

We also took photos, from ground level, of a Buddha statue high up on a mountain. A monk was preaching to crowds who were either preparing to climb up, or who had just returned (we couldn’t quite tell which). Again, this was associated with the full moon day.

At a roadside stand, our tour leader treated us to “king coconuts.” These are copper-colored and a bit larger than the brown coconuts one typically sees. The milk clearer and quite refreshing, but the meat has a texture more like jello.

Our lunch stop was at a spice emporium. A guided tour through a very tourist-oriented little garden ended with a pitch about how various spices, or combinations of spices, will prevent or cure all sorts of medical conditions — everything from dry skin to cancer. And a team showed up, literally out of the bushes, to massage spice oils into whatever body parts folks had bothering them. We declined, but most of our group got one sort of rub-down or another. Of course, hands were out for tips after the massages, and the exit was through the shop. The place did serve a good lunch, though.

Arriving in Kandy, our hotel was perched on a hillside overlooking the city. Sof after checking in we took a walk down to the lake. We were accosted multiple times by tuk-tuk taxi drivers, who apparently thought that any tourist on foot must be looking for a ride. But after the long bus ride, the walk felt good. We cut the walk short and returned, because our guide had arranged an optional ticket to a dance performance for late afternoon.

View from our hotel balcony at Kandy

On the way up hill, we stopped at a convenience store to get some snacks to eat in place of dinner, as we were feeling too full for an evening meal. Cost was all of 100 Rupees (about 65 cents US). When we reached the hall for the dance performance, we discovered that we had been standing right in front of it when we turned around to walk back up hill! Unfortunately, there was a mix-up with the reservations, so we will be coming back for the dance performance tomorrow.