mm, rambutans... He should be
called Riley, because he was certainly
living the life of.I used my zoom lens
to get a photo – just in case the wire
failed... there can’t be many other
places where you can get this close to
a wild elephant.
Further south, not far from
Hambantota, we passed enormous
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evaporates and the salt is collected
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a kind of shabby joviality, catering
mainly for European (including
Australian) surfers and divers. Our
hotel fronted the ocean and I sat at
a table outside my room with a drink
and tried to imagine what this place
would have looked like when the
tsunami roared ashore at Christmas
in 2004. We had a quiet evening...
Here’s a tip: beer bottles in Sri Lanka
come in two sizes. Choose the smaller
one, commonly called a “pint”. In the
big one, the beer will be warm before
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Retracing our route for a while we
continued north through more or less
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National Park, noted as elephant
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cleared up and much of the still
excellent Chinese-built road was
empty. There is a lot of wildlife here
and elsewhere in Sri Lanka, ranging
all the way down from elephants by
way of deer and wild pigs to monkeys
and small rodents, but you see littleTRAVEL
of it during the day.
“It’s not a good idea to ride
at night,” said Rohan, in the
understatement of the week. We
passed a pile of green, steaming
elephant dung in the middle of the
road which well and truly reminded
me just how big the tuskers can be.
Rohan was keen to make sure that
we didn’t linger... we did see a family
of the pachyderms in the distance,
feeding quietly.
Towards the end of the day we hit
a bit of drizzle as we climbed into
the mountains. We stopped at the
impressive Rawana Ella waterfall
for pictures despite the rain. This
is a special place, apart from being
beautiful to look at. It seems that one