Sri Lanka: the train

Train travel in Sri Lanka is hard to book, but well worth the booking. 

Between bumps, you'll see monkeys, jungles....

...tea plantations, and mountains.

Sri Lanka: the safari

We saw ancestors of the modern chicken, a leopard lounging in a distant tree, sunset over the wilderness, elephants at arm's length, munching casually on thorn bushes, eagles, eagles eating monitor lizards, monitor lizards, mongooses, rabbits aplenty, wild hogs, and wild buffalo.

It was tremendous. And bumpy. And splashy. A few other park-goers sported cameras that looked more like rifles. For you, our faithful readers, these regular-camera photos will have to suffice.

Sri Lanka: Ella and Little Adam's Peak

After conquering Adam's Peak, we were off to Ella, a sweet little town surrounded by tea plantations, monkeys and mind-blowing lushness.

Having hiked Adam's Peak the day (if you can call 2 am day) before, we felt somehow compelled to climb Ella's Little Adam's Peak. We ran up during a warm morning shower, our first run in the rain since our January runs in Washington.

The pathway up Little Adam's Peak is tranquil, with scarcely a few dozen stairs near the top.  Like its namesake, it boasts staggering views from the top.

Afterwards, we had a Sri Lankan specialty, kothu roti, roti bread chopped into tiny pieces and stir-fried with vegetables (and meat or egg or anything you can think of).  It didn't sound too special in our pre-trip reading, but as our friend put it after his first bite, drenched in the local spicy sauce, "I could eat only this."

Sri Lanka: Adam's Peak

No one knows whose idea it was. We can all agree that 5.30 am found us on top of Adam's Peak, craning our necks in the cold, just before dawn, struggling to see the sun rise through the clouds. 

We had been climbing since 2 am -- pulling ourselves up steep stairs, past little old ladies climbing barefoot, past giant teddy bears for sale (to locals, we think), climbing up and up and up until we reached Adam's Peak's needle-like top, where the climbing began in earnest, and where we felt as if we were perched precarious on the world's edge.

The world's edge happened to be a little cloudy. And a little cold. Poor Nick was especially cold.

So despite our dutiful climb up for sunrise, we have to say that the views on the way down were far more exciting than our glimpse of dawn at the top.

To top it off, there were monkeys! 

We watched for a while...

...but we couldn't stay to chat. A well-deserved breakfast was waiting. 

After-India, Pre-Sri Lanka Syllabus

We're back from India, and we're behind on our reading. City of Djinns by William Dalrymple got us hooked on all things Delhi, Mughal, or otherwise tinged with red stones and political intrigue. The stack of books worth reading keeps growing. Here's our list so far.

India
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, William Dalrymple.
    Dalrymple chronicles a year in Delhi, as he pieces together the history of the buildings and world       around him. (Also on our long-term list, Dalyrmple's White Mughals and The Last Mughal.)

Slowly Down the Ganges, Eric Newby.
     A wonderfully comic account of a boat trip down the Ganges River, a long-time dream of ex-              fashion-designer Newby. Margaret has been going slowly through the book -- it's fun to pick up  
     every few months to watch Newby inch through India, one scraped boat-bottom at a time.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo.
     Boo spent three years in a slum in Mumbai to research & write her non-fictional account. It's
     beloved by book clubs the world over, and -- better still -- friends recommended it. We haven't
     started yet, but soon....

And fiction, you ask? We should reread Rushdie, try out some more V.S. Naipaul, and crack open Amitav Ghosh's lightly fictionalized account of an Indian slave in the Middle East in the twelfth century, In an Antique Land. Nick should probably finish Gora. We'll get to it. But we're also headed to Sri Lanka soon....


Sri LankaRunning in the Family, Michael Ondaatje.
   Ondaatje visits Sri Lanka, and traces his Dutch-Celanese heritage.

A History of  Sri Lanka, K.M. de Silva.
   The standard history of Sri Lanka. At 780+ pages, we might skip around.

The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Gordon Weiss.
   An account of the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict, lauded by the Economist as "scrupulously fair." We're      halfway through, and it's a tough and sad read.