Once I has seen the statue of the Buddha entering into Nirvana, I did not want to see anything more at Pollunurwa. I walked back to the car in tears and it took me sometime to recover. However, because my camera had not functioned I hoped to get some postcards back at the museum. We drove back to where we had bought the permit for me to enter Pollonaruwa and strode into the museum. A dog was lying in the entrance panting in the hot sun. It urinated as it lay there but did not bother to move. There was something reassuring about this commonplace sight that brought me back to earth after the ecstasy of the statues. The museum was cool and had very good displays- by far the best that I had seen in Sri Lankan museums up to that point. There was an overall plan of the Pollonaruwa sight which was very helpful in putting what I had seen in geographical perspective. There was also a wonderful imagined facsimile of the round ruined temple that i had seen whch gave one some idea of the majesty and beauty of Pollonaruwa in its heyday.
Alas, there were no postcards of the statues of the Buddha and the only definitive guidebook that was in my price range was in French. The people who served in the shop were having their lunch in a back room, sharing rice and curry from newspaper, rather in the same way as we would eat fish and chips. They were very reluctant to get up and serve us (it did look a delicious meal!) but eventually did so on the request of our driver and even took the dvd of the site that I bought out of its case and tested it for me.
Then it was back to the hotel for dinner and much digestion of the past day.
The following morning we were off again, early, to drive up to the hill country where we would be staying in a planter's bungalow on a tea plantation. Tania my hostess was brought up on a tea plantation as her father was a planter in the days of British rule and beyond. Many of the cooks who had served the British went to work for the Sri Lankan planters and kept the recipes that had been given to them by their British mistresses, closely guarded secrets. Tania says they kept the practice of wearing livery and would serve them lovely desserts like butterscotch, creme caramel or bread and butter pudding. It sounds as if she had an idyllic childhood and was very happy in the cool hills of the tea plantations.
Before we left, we drove around the Siguria rock and saw the great moats that had been built around the base of the rock. Some of these in the dry season were now empty of water but filled with plants and monkeys.
On the way, Tania suggested that we might drive through Kandy so that I could catch sight of some of its famous landmarks. I was very happy about this as i had hoped that we might be able to visit Kandy. However I was not prepared for the quantity of traffic and pollution. This medieval town, which was once the capital of Sri lanka is built on a hill and in order to reach the main centre you have to spiral up the hillside along with tuk, tuks, buses, lorries and all the other traffic which is belching out its exhaust. it is rather like a vortex sucking the pollution into its centre, which is a shame because up at the top, the city is quite beautiful, there is a temple with a golden roof by a lovely lake ( which has some macabre tale of chopped up bodies thrown in it) and the feel of a city in the sky- if it wasn't so polluted.
Nevertheless, I was glad we had made a detour in order to visit the place and also because we saw the stadium where Tehani and Tiasha had competed when they were at school. One was an excellent runner and the other a very good swimmer.
As we drove on Tania began to describe the plants and trees to me. We passed plantations of cocoa and pepper. The pepper vines often curling round the trees in the foreground. We saw paddy fields that were still being harvested and swathes of rice growing. There were ebony trees and more teak and roadsides where the shops were selling wooden furniture beautifully carved. There was coffee growing which was the principle beverage in Sri Lanka before the tea plantations were established in the late 18th, early 19th century.
As the roads climbed higher the air was becoming pleasanter and cooler and I felt that, at last, I was no longer under seige to the heat, although the car was air conditioned, it could still be very hot for me, at least.
Tomorrow, I will describe the plantations and my visit to the Faitrade tea factory.
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