“Sri Lanka” series of articles

2011

2011 Apr

(the first two articles in this series mention vomiting)

Throughout this series of articles, there are several phrases with the initials “IBIS”, alluding to my avian life-list, the Index of Birds I’ve Sensed, which I often added to whilst in Sri Lanka. The frequency of such phrases declines when I see fewer examples of new species. How many can you find? Some examples to start you off are:

Apr 09 Sat - 10 Sun

Holidays have now arrived. Therefore we boarded a plane. Economy Class. In front of every passenger’s seat was a personal touch-screen, part of a computer system called “ice” (information, communications, and entertainment). Every passenger received headphones as well. My touch-screen announced that it was Playing Up, because I’d chosen to watch a film called “Up”, which features prominently a flying house (I’ve seen a house fly?). Less appropriately on a flying plane, I then watched “The Fox and the Hound”, which features prominently a fox and a hound, and less prominently several other foxes and hounds.

Emirates being the air-line, we travelled via Dubai Airport, where we boarded a second plane, to Colombo this time, capital of Sri Lanka. Again, we had a touchscreen each. I watched “Dumbo”, which is about a flying elephant and mentions seeing a house fly. Elephants are very important to Sri Lankans, you know. Then I listened to some music, since “ice” provided every UK Number 1 since records (hee hee) began in 1953. I was shocked to discover that Don McLean’s “American Pie” never made it to Number 1! What an indictment on society! As Don McLean himself would say, I drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Or, as some modern twit would say, I got my personal computer system to show me the list of UK Number 1s but that was no good because it didn’t have my favourite song and I really wanted to hear my favourite song because it reminded me of my favourite song lol.

At Colombo, we met our friendly tour-guide and some beautiful crows. “House crows” are like a hybrid between British carrion crows and hooded crows, but a lot more numerous in Sri Lankan cities than either carrion or hooded crows in Britain. There were lots of crows. Another addition to my IBIS (initials bark it soon).

Then we lazed in beds (I slept) in a hotel, saw more crows, and other interesting birds in Sri Lanka which I’ll be identifying some time. Cats and canines are common in busy intense streets, in bustling internet shops, in boats, in swimming-pools... (scratch that last bit: it has fleas.) I brought into stomach supper. I beheld its subtle intensities, but I sick. Wretched and retching, I didn’t get much sleep.

Apr 11 Mon

I woke up, still with a head-ache. I heard birds, so I arose and drank tea, which I regurgitated back up again. I drank more tea, and puked again. I drank more water, and an anti-vomiting tablet, and the water was excreted via the oesophagus. I drank more water, which was orally expelled.

I had lunch; my head-ache subsided. Phew. Now I can concentrate on manufacturing acronyms for “IBIS”. Iridescent birds including sapphire-green somethings delighted in berry-eating, in swooping, in being intriguingly sparkly.

We were ferried across a river, where locals invariably bathed. I saw an impressive beast in shallow water - a monitor lizard! I’m blissful I sighted it before it swam off.

Rain fell and we saw a kingfisher. We walked through a jungle. What we saw included brilliant insects, centipedes, and, it being a rainy forest, leeches. About seven leeches latched onto my feet. Some fed successfully. Or unsuccessfully, depending on your viewpoint.

I’ven’t been ill since I bit into sandwiches at lunchtime!

I ate a cheese-burger for tea! With tomato catch-up [sic].

Apr 12 Tue

I breakfasted in side, ingesting bits of spaghettified rice called string-hoppers, which are very nice with curry. I know how true this is because I sensed it between itsy-bitsy string-hoppers.

In big inflatable sun-lit rafts we went white-water rafting. My family members, guides, and I became increasingly soaked. It became increasingly sunny. I’d brought into Sri Lanka a water-proof and transparent camera-case; I let my mum take photos of us white-water rafting. And indeed birds! I saw small black cormorants, not the species common in Britain. I sighted individuals born into several species.

I became in shallow water. I bathed. I swam. I boarded inflatable ship. I birded. I showered. I beclothed myself in sensible attire.

We re-entered the mini-bus. I bird-watched. I slept. Elephants! In a National Park! And an exclamational mark!

For lunch I ate an omelette. I admired crows - Indian jungle crows - on the restaurant roof.

Dinner, in a restaurant with several cute lizards, was, for me, Nasi Goreng (or “Nazi Goreng” as the menu called it!), an Indonesian dish featuring chicken satay and poppadoms and rice. Delectable.

Crickets are chirping like air-conditioning units. An irresistible banquet, I suppose. Into bats insects sped. An interesting bird is screeching as I write this - pea fowl! No foul pea.

Apr 13 Wed

At 5:30 (local time) we left our accommodation and a Jeep took us into an immense baking ing sanctuary called Yala National Park. Sky! Indigo blurring into silver! Ivory blending into sapphire sky at zenith!

I’ll backtrack into scientific nomenclature. Indeed, bee-eaters (II species) flocked and flew and fluttered around the Jeep. Cheep cheep. Leap leap. That was a monkey, no, several chunky monkeys, hopping on rocks. We saw several large mammals, including buffalo in sites near the road/track, and elephants, and wart-hogs with piglets. And little mongooses, reminding me of gooses.

Immenser birds included spoonbills, egrets, eaglets, eagles, lapwings, kingfishers, house sparrows, (immenser birds, I say!) and those Sri Lankan crows. It’s brilliant identifying so many cool species.

For lunch I had some tasty cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and lime-juice.

The cloud of clouds descended and the galaxy of we ascended a mountain called Little Adam’s Peak, in never-ending cloud. I, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, got quite wet. The view (chortle!) from LAP is normally superb, but in a cloud, we could only see a few metres around the summit. The experience was like being in a large white tent made of cotton-wool. It’ll be intermittently sunny tomorrow.

I dined in the evening when the whirled was chicken, and I dined on the sweet and the sour and the fun. I came down the mountain and I dined on the rice. At the hotel, my food was nice.

Apr 14 Thu

It’s been intermittently sunny today. In Horton Plains National Park (where polythene is banned if swallows could choke on it) we walked across mud and rocky formations. We heard frogs croaking very frequently (Dad has a sound file, I believe). In sight of Baker’s Falls (a colossal waterfall) we found a cute green lizard, and squirrels.

Just after we left the Park in our minibus, we saw a deer beside the road. It wanted food from tourists like us (we did not oblige) and stuck its head through my window three times - I have comical photos.

We arrived in the town where our next hotel was, and where a lot of rain was falling in a short amount of time. The roads became rivers; the streets became streams; we became wet, due to the addition of “t”.

Talking of t, tea was tasty. Pastries filled with sausages and vegetables. I tried some of my parents’ curry; I’m glad the waiter told me that sugar lessens the painful after-taste! Eat sugar after eating very spicy food!

Apr 15 Fri

We received guided tours around a tea factory (not my cup of tea) and a gem museum (which I didn’t think was beryl-liant, but it wasn’t opal-ling). I caught a brief glimpse of a snake-charmer outside the museum, when we finally left. Also, I met some beautiful butterflies.

I had fried eggs and fruit for breakfast, an omelette and “French-fried potatoes” for lunch, and grilled sea-food and “French-fried potatoes” for tea. The sea-food included calamari, tuna, crab (with its shell intact), and prawns.

That lunch of omelette was at the Royal Botanical Gardens near Kandy, in the café next to The Great Lawn (part of the Gardens). A large fig-tree resides at the centre of The Great Lawn, and several bats reside in nearby trees. Wild monkeys and myna-birds also frequent the gardens and were seen by us.

The gardens sit inside a meander of the Mahaweli Ganga, the longest river in Sri Lanka, and there’s a narrow suspension-bridge across that river. We walked half-way across the bridge then turned back because we didn’t want to cross the river and leave the gardens yet.

Apr 16 Sat

In the town of Pinnawala we saw more than fifty elephants, including one with three feet (the right fore-leg was a stump). We also watched Sri Lankan squirrels (Indian palm squirrels, Funambulus palmarum) which resemble chipmunks, and are sacred to Hindus because a god/lord/Lord stroked one, leaving marks on its back.

And we drank water.

Mum bought a nice batik for 1,500 rupees (£8·57) - cheap. (Batik is cloth dyed using wax to prevent the wrong areas from being dyed.)

Apr 17 Sat

Talking of batik, we received guided tours of a batik factory. Dad purchased a lovely blue batik shirt for me; it has depictions of elephants on it.

We also received a tour of “spice gardens”. To demonstrate how beneficial various herbs and creams are to one’s skin and sanity and sanitation, we each were massaged. Strange.

Lunch was a buffet at a restaurant, involving bird in spicy sauce (I chickened out of eating eggstravagant quantities of that; I didn’t want to over-birden my taste-buds), nice rice, okra (not orca), beans, curry, salad greens, and rice. Pudding included bananas in skins - those bananas were of the short small straight Sri Lankan sort, not the long big curved Caribbean bananas so loved by Western super-markets - and also included cakes.

Then we visited some Buddhist caves upon a sun-heated mountain. Interesting. But I’m supposed to refrain from describing the caves, because Buddha doesn’t like that (apparently). The mischievous hungry monkeys won’t mind me describing them though.

Tea was grilled fish. Or, at least, some-thing, which smelt fishy, to the tuna 400 rupees (£2.29); I’m not so coy (or koi) that I’m reluctant to denounce - with solefulness - the m-eel as a bony grey wad worse than school-dinners, and served with a reel-y small portion of smashed potato. (I decided to be herring on the side of caution.)

Okay (it wasn’t), I’ll finish carping, and plaice some Sri Lankan jokes below, courte-sea of our tour-guide.

Q. How did a person put an elephant in a fridge using only three steps?

Q. The king cobra was getting married and invited all sorts of animals in the kingdom to his wedding. He gave to every animal in the kingdom a sarong (like a skirt or kilt) to wear at the wedding. Only one animal in the kingdom refused to wear his sarong. Which animal and why?

Show answer to Joke 2

The bat, because the sarong would fall over his face when he hung upside-down.

Q. Only one animal in the kingdom didn’t turn up at the wedding. Which animal and why?

Apr 18 Sun

We climbed several stair-cases outside to get to Sigiriya Rock Fortress, an ancient king’s palace. Twelve hundred or so steps later, we arrived at the summit and drank more water. The views over jungle and lakes and gardens and buddhas were great. Then we descended before the rain descended. There was a snake-charmer near the base, and I was allowed to hold a python! It felt like plastic, but heavy.

Before the rain descended, we ascended into a metal crate on the back of an elephant who wasn’t in a fridge. The mahout however got me to step out of the crate and onto the elephant’s neck...

(That was based on a poem called “Up Down Steer” that I’d composed in 2006 whilst horse-riding. It’s not on Duncan’s Childhood Blog because it’s really bad.)

Lunch was coke and a delicious set of ham-and-pineapple sandwiches.

Then we went back to a hotel. And left some hours later to discover whether a different hotel would give us better food than was at least better than last night’s craziness (sick). Yes. I had devilled “cattle fish” (sic) from the “a-la cart” (sic) group of options. I’d have spelt them “cuttle-fish” and “à la carte”; oh well, hay-hoe, their ar sum wiered Inglish splelings inn plaices arrowaned hear, ass inn dat sine reeding “Mustered” at the spies-gardings of the 17th. Its knot harred two spel wurreds rung. Eny-weigh (eye sore “any” spelled “eny” onn ah lory’s back-sighed) the devilled cuttle-fish was delicious. It wasn’t spicy. Mum thought that it would be spicy, because “devilled” is like “Devil”, and the Devil apparently lives in Hell (I thought you had to be dead to go to Hell), and Hell is traditionally seen as hot...

I had chocolate ice-cream for pudding. Out of thirteen possible desserts, only two didn’t involve fruit, unless chocolate contains fruit (cocoa beans?).

Apr 19 Mon

Visited a silk-shop. Drank coke.
Drank water.

Visited Rose Quartz Mountain. Saw another buddha. Came down. Drank coke. Drank water. Visited the ruins of a monastery. Drank water. Came down. Wrote. Saw mating beetles.

Apr 20 Tue

Saw mating dragonflies. My hands became a photograph of the road. My legs became a palette. A tsunami struck eyes. Eyes became islands surrounded by skin surrounded by tuk-tuk.

As in 2007 Jun 17 [no longer on Duncan’s Childhood Blog], when I swam twenty-six metres underwater without breathing, today I twice took advantage of the hotel’s swimming-pool in that manner. I should have gone diagonally, to increase the distance swum.

Apr 21 Wed

I woke up at about 4 a.m. (the time is very approximate) and lay in bed until 7 a.m. (the time is not very approximate).

We visited some archaeological sacred stones (more temples! more people vying in train - and trying in vain - to sell stuff to us!). We only reached the coast at about 4 p.m., after a delicious lunch of club-sandwiches (i.e. quintuple-decked) and bird-watching.

We frolicked in our next hotel’s swim-pool, after applying miserly amounts of sun-lotion and losing the lid of said lotion to an entrepreneurial corvid, a mad scheming scientist who added the white plastic to its cocktail nest.

A bigger swimming-pool attracted us; it massaged and aroused adrenal glands after it waved greetings. It massaged our flesh and threw us like punch-bags. Shorts became sand-bags. Not trying and trying not to get too drunk on punch, we were forced to drink sodium-ions and to chlorinate our oesophagi. We turtles hurtled through positions and prepositions, briefly letting each apply. Then we showered, and scraped sand off skin.

Tea for me was an orange omelette with a hint of crab. “Lemonade” is an anagram of “demon ale” and “lead omen” and “mean dole”.

Apr 22 Thu

I love those crows. Black and blue, friendly and mischievous in harmony. Crows are not as invasive as the flies, and they are content to stay outside and caw as musically as rock-stars. And crows don’t carry malaria. Okay, neither do flies.

And neither does a dinner of flambé prawns, which weren’t à la carte. The menu spelt that “A LA CARTE”, which is correct if diacritics don’t have to be added if the letters are capital.

Apr 23 Good Fri

We packed; we travelled to an air-port.

Apr 24 Sat

We boarded a plane; we slept; I watched “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”, which is like “Mary Poppins”.

Apr 25 Mon

Mum thinks I’ve grown since going to Sri Lanka. I suppose that centrifugal force caused by the Earth’s rotation causes the Earth to have a bulge around the Equator. (It actually does.) Therefore land in the tropics (areas near the Equator) is further from the centre of the Earth. Sir Isaac Newton’s law declares that people in the tropics thus experience less gravity than people nearer the Poles (there are several Poles in Chester). So tropical human heads aren’t forced by gravity downwards as much as similar heads near the Poles. Therefore my height increased more during my holiday in Sri Lanka than in a similar period of time nearer the Poles. QED.

(In case you were puzzled by “QED”, it’s an abbreviation of “quod erat demonstrandum”, which is Latin for “that was what was supposed to be demonstrated”.)