sasri2016 – Walking to the Wellawaya town

I started to feel, that my back needs some walking. My back needs to get relaxed, after the hard tuk-tuk drive to Ruwana Falls, Ella and Nine Arched Bridge.

So I decided to take a walk from hotel to Wellawaya town. Of course it's hot here... so walking 4 – 5 kilometers isn't actually a walk in the park, when temperature is something between 33 – 35C. Local kids always started to yell “Hello”, “Hi”, “Where are you from?” (the typical sentences, when you have nothing else to say, or you don't know anything else in English). Kids were alright, but dogs and some people weren't as good. Two guys, in about thirties, started to follow me on the other side of street. Then other one asked, if I want to take a photo. I asked about what? His reply was: “take a photo of me!”. I started laughing. Couldn't help it. Soon after this they stopped and went somewhere.

When I did finally get to the Wellawaya town, I immediatelly stopped for a lunch in a local restaurant, full of local people. It just made me smile, when everybody stared me, like I would have landed from outer space (or into the Star Wars Cafe, where a human is the stranger). Food was actually quite good. Sadly one of the curries was spiciest dish I have had here and I simply couldn't eat it. It just was too much and I knew, my stomach would be happy about choosing not to eat it.

Sweat started to flow so badly, when I finally started to cool down in restaurant. And eating a spicy food doesn't actually help, when you are sweating like a pig to be slaughtered. After I had finished and I started to feel better, I moved on to walk inside Wellawaya town. Towns are very different to what you experience in tourist areas. Most people notice you, some smile at you, some give you bad glazes, but it's hard to see anyone, who wouldn't notice you somehow. All children stare at you. Well, maybe I look so strange by looks in general, as some kids back home stare at me too, so maybe it's not totally because of my westerner/white looks.

I walked around the city. Asked for those blades in couple stalls in town, that I saw being used for slicing food for Kottu (see my earlier post about Ella for link to video) - and I found out they were named “Kottu blades” - logical! But none of the stalls had them.

One of my objectives for this town visit was to get into photo studio, to print couple of my photos. When I asked advice from couple of shops, I did get some information and finally one help did able me to find one photo studio. They didn't much talk English, while two ladies were very much trying to help me. But the owner guy, didn't talk to me at all and didn't look too positive about my presence. Some Sri Lankan people are very helpful and kind. This is the most part, but there always seems to be the other side, that either just gives you bad looks - but they still might end up smiling to you - but then there are those whose hate you can easily sense. These last ones you meet only in towns. My experience is limited, as my experience is limited to Colombo, Wellawaya and Badulla.

Back to the story... owner of that photo studio didn't talk to me, but left off. Then I looked to ladies and asked what is going on and they told me to just wait. Owner went to get me a tuk-tuk and told me to go to another shop. So then we went... like 200 meters with tuk-tuk. ;)

There I was now in another photo studio. This one could print my photos, if I donwloaded them to their machine. I did this and then they started to print. Well their big printer machine failed and started giving - just too familiar beebing sound. I waited and there came an annoying guy, who tried to ask me where I am from and what language I speak and sort of stuff. I was already a bit down from waiting those photos and from starting to understand that this wouldn't work and that I had walked into the town for nothing. (Well nothing is not right way to say it, because it did good to my tired back). I gave up and argued with tuk-tuk driver about taking me to my hotel. He was probably the most annoying being that I have met in this island so far. Trying to agree the price for tuk-tuk to my hotel and he just said, “okay” and kept waving his head.

I have came to think, that head waving does mean like “okay”, but to tourist it mostly means trouble. They do that when they don't want to say something or when something is wrong, or they just want to accept thing as it is. Price for way back to hotel wasn't that bad 300 rupies for 4 -5 kilometers is not that bad (I think official tuk-tuk price is like 50 rupies per kilometer). I do tip people a lot, specially concerning that I am travelling with a budget, but this guy just was too annoying for me give any tip. It felt like wasted day.

sasri2016 - Day trip to Ella from Wellawaya by tuk-tuk

Today was time to take a tuk-tuk and drive to Ella, from Wellawaya.
I wanted to see Ruwana Falls, Nine Arched Bridge and Ella as a city.

To my surprise, Ella wasn't actually a city. It was totally a tourist location, on a hilly spot. So first we went up a long way, with the tuk-tuk and then we came a lot down, when getting back to Wellawaya. ;)

In between we stopped to Ruwana Falls. This is a nice place, if you want to get a refreshing moment, or just your feet wet. I didn't go to water, because hadn't really prepared for anything like that.

When we got to Ella, did some shopping and driver asked for directions to Nine Arched Bridge. I think the visit to Nine Arched Bridge was worth the effort, but it did actually require some effort. I don't know if my driver was just given bad directions from locals, but our route wasn't too comfortable and he didn't dare to drive the tuk-tuk all the way (well you even can't drive it to the very end, but one tuk-tuk came past me, when I was getting back higher to the point where he was left).
Ella is at the altitude of 1041 meters. The old tuk-tuk was having quite a time with the ascending road. Sometimes going was so slow, that I could have slept there at the back seat (could you imagine sleeping in a normal tuk-tuk drive at these chaotic roads?).

About shopping - old truth came up again - try to find a local shop/market place, where locals do their shopping and buy things from other shops only after that. I forget this almost on every trip and when I found a good local, common market (like Tesco's Big-C in Phuket) I start to remember this. But anyway, some things were like half the price, that they would have been elsewhere. Though it's a bit annoying, that everyone starts to stare at you in the market place, because they are not used to tourists in those places. Cashier girls, in the market place, were school age. That seems as odd to me, as seeing someone older than my grandparents, serving food at Wendy's in Florida. (Well, my grandparents are dead, but I don't mean that Wendy's has undead serving food.)

We stopped for a lunch at Ella. There are not too many places and couple restaurants seemed better than others. I ate Kottu (was spelled Kohthtu here) with Chicken and cheese again. I couldn't even eat it all. My body has probably got used to these smaller dishes, which are also much lighter, than food back home. And Kottu is actually quite heavy. Gladly this didn't have potatos in it.
I got a video of making my Kottu dinner. Asked from waiter, if it's okay to take a video of chef making the food and he said it's totally fine.


Next I am going to have a dinner at hotel's restaurant. They have a'la carte -list also, so I think I am going with that, as chef's menu didn't seem that much appealing to me (and price is over 2400 rupies for that menu, well this is a splurge hotel, so it comes with the territory). A'la carte dinners were more like 1000 rupies, which is pretty much what upper scale dinners here should cost. Like in Tissamaharama and Mirissa's beach restaurants, in better restaurants dinners and lunch costed about 700 - 1000 rupies, depending on the type of food that you order.

sasri2016 - At Wellawaya (Ella)

I arrived to Wellawaya yesterday.

Everybody has been saying that Ella is beautiful and oh, yes it is!

This is stranger place by climate, because you have hot days but cooler nights. So it's not that hard to sleep during the night (by temperature).

I stay in Jetwing Kaduruketha hotel. This is most expensive hotel in my trip, but it currently has 61% seasonal sale, so I took it.

This is a chalets kind of hotel. These are like better versions of bungalows.

Last night was a bit too much of a jungle for me. I needed to change chalet, because roof was leaking to the floor (gladly not to bed). So staff moved my stuff to another room and now this hasn't been used for a little time, because spiders were living by the toilet seat, bugs running around and so many beings at ceiling of the building. I have an araknophobia, so it's really not that great, to see too many spiders.
    When I started to get to bed, I saw a praying mantis in the space, between ceiling and wall (where they have no protecting net, to stop insects, bugs or critters to crawl into the room). It was exciting to see such a creature, going to hunting position in your own room, but at the same time, it's too big crawling thing, to have in your room. I don't remember what they eat, but I hope they eat spiders.
   There were some nice gekkos in both of these rooms (more in the original, leaking room), which I really love. Also some really small ants invaded a small place of the floor and they cleaned one bug's carcass so effectively, that it's hard to imagine anything like that.
There were so many noises here, that it was hard to get to sleep. Crickets, toads and all kind of creatures making the sounds of jungle together.
It's very clear that you can't sleep without mosquito net in here. And net needs to be on all the time.

This morning was really nice, when I got up. Went to balcony and a cow is feeding there and it's buddy egrets was there with it (once was standing on the cow's back). A lot of green parrots flying around. Saw some beautiful and big butterflys passing by. Peackocks also showed them finally; I heard them all night yesterday, but couldn't see them.
I also saw a some kind of long tailed "weasel" to go in the trees. It wasn't like a monkey, but it moved like one. It had a long and furry tail. Got some - not so good - pictures of this thing.

Now I go to shower and then I go to breakfast.