from Sri Lanka w* ♥

 ~ āyubūvan ~   

2012 has been the most crucial year of my life... lots of mostly unexpected things happened to me and unfortunately they were not always good ones. Whatever it was, having a total roller-coaster year, I made up my mind that it had to with elephants, the creatures that I absolutely love and adore, who were around on my ups and downs, who were the symbol of lots of unexpected good changes of my life...

I'm not trying to get too emotional here, so back to business ;)

With this on my mind my husband and I started planning a trip to Asia and eventually ended up with choosing Sri Lanka as the new year 2012-2013 destination. 

I feel it's gonna be a looong article, but anyways :) 

We were fling by FlyDubai which means we had to wait for a loo~ong 9-11 hours while  in the Dubai Airport terminal 2 which was... mmm not to say quite bad, not the most pleasant place to be or thing to do ... It's an international transit zone but the airport doesn't quite look  international. Men  in white and women in black... then the "Namaz" time came up and people started their prayer... The first couple of hours I was very happy seeing/being in such a  different culture among such different people but then the hygiene issues arose and I completely forgot about the cultural diversity and just couldn't wait but go to Sri Lanka or somewhere... anywhere just a place far away from that airport :) 

Dubai itself is breathtaking, and you realize it when you are flying over the Dubai, it's literally sand and desert and right in the middle of the desert they built the city with skyscrapers, tower, fountains and lots of green :) Dubai has a very specific sandy-watery smell in the air :)
Will definitely go back to Dubai to explore the dessert city 

We arrived in Colombo somewhere around 4 am and I did know we were going to a warm tropical country but in Yerevan even in the hottest summers there is a mild chilly wind blowing at night, we went out of airport and the heat full of humid blew right on my face and I entered into the summer I don't think I ever experienced before :)

We met out guide Koleampur something-something, we called him Kolé and our driver Mr. Buddika :) the nicest thing to happen after the 17 hours flight is to meet nice people who can take you to the hotel for you to sleep !!! We were speaking with them in Russian. Our guide studied in Kazan during the USSR period and he kind of thought that we were from USSR! and he would be right if we had gone to LK 22 years earlier ;) So the first thing he asked was: 

Kolé: So how is Soviet Union? 
Me: Mmm... I don't really want to disappoint you but it kind of collapsed and there  is no Soviet Union any more ;) 
Kolé: ehhh... I used to have a girlfriend there :) 

He is a lovely man :)


We woke up in the hotel couple of hours later opened the window and saw the beautiful vast ocean right in front of me, palm trees, tuk-tuks... the feelings were actually so mixed, and it was all about living the moment, that's why this is the only trip we have so~ few picture compared to our other trips :)

view from the window

We took a city walk and got familiar with the king coconut that you can actually drink the juice inside but the regular hairy coconut that you can only cook with.

Hello King Coconut :)

Yes! I did mention that the feelings were quite mixed, happy, excited, scared and very very unknown... no traffic lights, totally self controllable traffic, happy smiling people, offering you this and that every now and then.
We took a short walk along the beach  and I got a little into the environment :)

first shots in LK, first beach walk

Later that evening we met our acquaintances, beautiful Armenian-Sri Lankan family with 2 beautiful girls speaking Sinhalese, English and Armenian living in the most tropical house I've ever seen : 3 floored house with the half of the roof covered for the purpose of natural ventilation... and when it rains there is a small river place right in the living room, a nice balcony with banana, coconut tree and a regular visit place of local squirrels, monkeys and other animals... oh and we drove right into the lobby of the house.

The next day to moved on to our trips and visited the Pinnavela, the famous elephants orphanage of Sri Lanka. For me this trip was completely dedicated to elephants, so you can imagine me meeting them for the first time seeing the bathing elephants. I jumped and screamed and ran down to the river from the tourists' balcony to meet, talk, hug, caress them all. 

elephants at bath time :)

The local elephant guide saw me and came to take to down to take to to the elephants. and we met the biggest elephant in the orphanage we was so big that we had to stand on the rock in order to caress him :)
He was the most adorable creature on earth I caressed him for a while, talked to him and he raise his trunk I thought he is responding back and hugged the trucked and he gave me such a wild blow with his truck that the my hair got stuck up :) I take it as an elephant way of welcoming people :D

the wind blow on my face :)

some elephants talk to each other, others talk to people

hey gorgeous

we took a long walk in the Pinnavela met the rest of the elephants, enjoyed their company a little bit more their company after the bath time :)

cutie playing around

pupush~pupush

bath time is over now it's time for breakfast

rushing beauty

:)

wild one... you don't want to mess with her

that's me trying to get an excited profile pic :D fail!!!

The next stop was Dambulla. We took a walk in the Cave temple to see lots of Buddha statues, sleeping, in nirvana, sitting, praying and a lot of other poses together with a local monk who was accompanying us around telling stories... beautiful and breathtaking place.

Buddha temple newly constructed front

Buddha cave temple

Buddha

The worse part for me about visiting Buddha places is that you have to walk distances barefoot. 

... and of course I had an "santavik" incident

back of the temple! monk statues

Mr. M* I guess a regular visitor of the temple

The special thing for me particularly in the cave temple was the monk who came up to me, took my hand and said that I had a good karma, and he is right :) I do have a good Karma!!! Tik, my husband thought that he said so just because of the tip, I like thinking that my good Karma is just sooo~ good that it's that obvious for monk's naked eye :P :)  

The next stop was Sigiriya 350 m high rock fortress with a big beautiful royal palace on the top of it.When I first saw it was scary huge like 12 times taller than my parents' 9 floor building... oh and guess what we had to climb up and down by stairs and oops an awkward moment, I just remembered that after vampires, Dracula, ghosts I'm stair-phobic - if there is such a word, but yes, I'm scared of stairs (for me it's something very~very uncontrollable for my height and every time I go up and down I have the feeling that I'm about to fall down)... I went up and down without falling down, shouting, crying or having a heart attack and had my well deserved feeling of triumph. The place itself is breathtaking with beautiful beautiful view. We saw the royal palace on the top. took a walk around and you know what?! that king had 500 wives, can you imagine?

I know I burnt the sky, but it doesn't Sigiriya less high :) S* & her surrounding royal gardens

steps were marbled & it had rained the day before, so they were wet and slippery 

doggy chilling out on the height of 250 m

wall paintings with natural colors

half way through

& we made it to the top

I still couldn't believe I did that!

I look excited but in fact the only thing that was going on in my mind was:
"how on earth am I going to climb down..."

the royal pool for wives of the king, he seemed to like sitting on this thrown
& watching them swim

I mean... look at the stair, if you looked down all you could think of would be
 "I really-really don't want to die"

Later on we rode ~Mutto~ actually, before going to Sri Lanka I had doubts whether it's good to ride elephants or not, I researched a little bit... some forums would say that it's OK, other would disagree... but anyways I love elephants and I never ever in my life would want to hurt them. So we went to  visit elephants and I very very reluctant to ride Mutto, as I was convinced that it's bad for them, but local elephant men told me that I shouldn't worry about that cause it wouldn't hurt them but of course I didn't want to believe just like that until my logic switched up: a regular 18-20 year old elephant weighing 4 tons each 200 kg food per day which basically means that my husband and I weigh less then he eats, would be really feel us, and would it really hurt?! what about horses and donkey... they weigh much less and people still ride them... and also "does our Hrant eat 200 kg a day?"

Good or bed I set on the Mutto and she took us for a short walk :)

walk with Mutto :)

Mutto in the river

in the middle of the walk the elephant suddenly stopped, I asked the guide
what happened, he said : "kaka Madam... &...tsunami" :D

thanking Mutto for a nice ride

p.s. did you know that in Sri Lanka people recycle elephants excrement and make a recycled paper. I saw couple lovely note books and wanted to buy for some of my friends as a souvenir, then I thought "OK how do I present the souvenir, hey I got you something special, it's a beautiful notebook for you to write/draw in... oh and by the way, it's made out of elephant excrement" :D
Should have bought couple of them, at least now I would know what the reaction would be :))

When we went to history museum and visited another Buddha ancient temple!!

remainings of the Buddha temple

former parliament building

Tik in the parliament standing in the place of one of the ministers

famous moon stone

biggest stone book

Tik coming out of one of the Buddha temple :))

Buddha in nirvana

and last but not the least :) One of the most interesting Gods I ever came across :)

God of fertility and sex :D in old times when a woman could get pregnant,
she would come to this status pour some milk on it and get pregnant :)

One the way back to the hotel we met this wild cutie coming out of the tropical forest :) Our driver was terrified but I was excited~

Wild cutie on highway :)

Then we moved on to Kandy where we visited the the Relic of the tooth of the Buddha . It was a big, beautiful place, you know another "perfect place" to walk barefoot on a rainy day :)

the temple

Inside of the temple

panorama ;)

Then we went to see national singing and dancing performances, honestly I wasn't impressed by the technical or vocal abilities of the performers but they did have very colorful and beautiful costumes it's all just a very entertaining to watch once or twice :)

funny costume

Then we reached the tea land. We went to see tea plantations and also took a  tour in the tea factory where a very nice guide who actually was the first person who knew what Armenia was and where it was :) We got to know to the technologies of making the black, green, white teas both in leaves and bags. And I gave a little hand to the local women working in the factory! so the next time you take English Breakfast, remember me, cause I might have help in the making-of process :) 

tea lady posing for a pic at the plantations

OK, I'll get a pic as well :)

big waterfall near the plantations

Then we visited the botanic garden, I call it a paradise for biologists. Tons of tree, plant and greenery variety, beautifully and carefully preserved. I'm took a walk only on around the important areas of the garden cause walking and getting to know to the entire territory of the garden would take around 3 days.

Tik and Kole at botanic garden

this is not a decorated tree, it just grows like this

the yellow thing down there, it's me :) yes!
this tree was thaaaat huge!

unless I'm mistaken it's one of those walking tree: wherever the brunch touched
a tree grows and one tree can make a whole forest

& my favorite DRUNK trees :))

each fruit could fit 2-3 coconuts inside :)

In between we tried the national costumes and had a wonderful Sri-Lankan massage (no pics from massage, of course ;) :)

Then we ended a trip at the beautiful beach on the south west of the island and spend 6 days on the beach, did nothing but swimming, drinking king coconut, then swimming again then sleeping long hours :)

sunset 

Tik on holiday

me on holiday

happy-mappy

beach photos censored ;) 

During this trip we visited around 12 cities, got to know to the culture and the people. I came to realize that people can be kind to each other, smiling and happy and appreciating what they have rather than complaining about what they don't, at least that's what I saw in people here during my short trip :) I'm not saying everything was perfect, and tip request at anything was annoying, something that would make you feel mean every time you refused to give a tip but I still wouldn't put the "happy madam? tip madam!" stereotype on the whole country and all the people. I lost my favorite earrings, but I don't want to complain about that... little something I gave in return to all the emotions I got from LK :) 

This trip taught me to be patient, positive and most importantly grateful for what you have. I so am... and also his trip made me realize how close people can live with nature, how close they can be with animal & that made me hate Zoos as place for caged animals even more now :-/

My father always told me that I should travel a lot and make the world a smaller place for you to be in and I'm so totally going to do that :) 

p.s. next stop ~Cuba~