Sri Lanka is more beautiful than I imagined

No time to write something clever, but the people have made their demands for more photos. By "the people" I mean one anonymous comment on my last post which I suspect came from my husband, who was there when I took the photos.

Sila bodysurfing at Mirissa.


Mirissa Beach has a lot of hotels and bars.


Ram's Surfing Beach guest house, Midigama:


A green river in Colombo


Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Kandy. The tooth was reportedly recovered from the Buddha's funeral pyre in India and secretly taken to Sri Lanka because the Buddha had said Buddhism would be safe there. The tooth is under that good tooth there. The white/red building on the lake is actually the police station. And the little rectangular island was built by a king to house his harem.

The island in Matara where 4 monks live:

Buddhist +/- Hindu "devale" near the tooth relic

Terraced tea plantations seen from the train, near Nanu Oya. The Hill Country is a giant zen garden. The rows of tea bushes wrap around trees and boulders. The plantations are so ancient and contoured to the landscape that they seem to have always been there.


Train riders wave at me. We were in the last 2nd class car and behind us in the first 3rd class car the Tamil tea pickers were singing and drumming for hours across the Hill Country.

Best breakfast ever: roti and dahl with strong sweet milk tea in Ella.

Garnets and lots of them. It's a granulite-facies world up there. This is the ONLY fresh rock I observed during the entire trip.

Coconut plantations along the coast between Weligama and Midigama


Water buffalo preparing the rice paddies near Peradeniya Junction. The egrets always attend the buffalo.


Patient buffalo calf tied nearby:


Buddhist shrine at the train station in Ella, while Sila watches a dog eat hot curry out of a crumpled piece of newspaper

For some reason, Sila loves billboards in Sinhalese.


Street scene near the airport outside Colombo. Hop a ride anywhere in a tuk-tuk but negotiate your price BEFORE you get in.


Brahman calf checks the surf at Lazy Lefts, Ram's Surfing Beach, Midigama.


A silent monument to 2004 tsunami victims on the south coast



there will be MORE photos.