Kandy, Danbulla and Sigiriya

The largest buddhist festival, called Esala Perehara, lasts for two weeks, with parades down the streets, lasting  a few hours everyday. I went for the last friday and saturday nights and it was incredible. I have never seen anything quite like it in my life. There were thousands of people dressed up performing different acts, such as fire throwing, plate balancing and incredible dancing, as well as about 30 elephants, all dressed up in marvelous outfits, parading down the streets.

Elephants parading with the famous 'tooth relic'

On the first night I went there were monsoon showers, and even though we borrowed two umbrellas from the guesthouse we were staying in, we were drenched byt the time we came home.

It was very very wet!

We ran around and followed the festival down the streets and managed to get some amazing photos close up to the parade.

Close up of the festival!

When the festival was over, we were walking down an alley and just bumped into one of the performing elephants having a rest and eating. It was a complete shock but was amazing to be able to touch it. Although I was pretty scared at first, as I had read that elephants can kill humans easily by standing on them!

On saturday, I went to pinnawela and millenium elephant orphanages and had an elephant shower and rode o top of it. At millenium orphange the elephants were kept in really horrible conditions and you could tell from their swaying and repetitive movements they had actually turned crazy from living in such a small environment and being controlled by humans.

Elephant shower!

On the way back from the elephant orphanges I went to a spice garden and found out about a lot of ayuverdu medicines. I managed to get a free head massage. I had a headche and said I was interested in buying this 'headache oil' you have to massage onto your head, so they massaged it into my head for me for about twenty minutes, and yes my headche actually went away (probably just due to the massage, as I dont really believe in non-medical miracle cures!)


On Sunday, I travelled to Danbulla and saw the golden temple and the temple caves. They were very interesting and the caves were really peaceful. On the walk up to the caves, there were loads of monkeys and little puppies. I made the mistake of giving a chocolate finger to one of the monkeys and the others saw and came running over, so we did a run for it!

Budda displayed in the temple caves

Later in the day we travelled to Sigiriya, but they had no cash points so unfortunately we couldn't pay entry! However, we walked around the lake and came across many different animals. I filmed a group of dogs and monkeys fighting. Fortunately I left just before two other volunteers got stuck in a tree of bees! At the end of the nature trail we came across a temple and met a monk, who talked to us about the temple.

On monday we visited another temple and had an introductory meditation class from the high priest of the temple. We had to walk around in a circle, very slowly, and concentrate on our stepping and breathing, without letting our minds think about anything else. We chatted and drank tea with the monks.

The weekend was amazing, I learnt a lot about Buddhism and find it a very interesting and humble religion. It was also the first weekend I wasn't ill which is a great relief, as i thought my body would never adapt to the differences in food and lifestyle.

Unawatuna Beach

Unawantuna is a costal village in Galle. It is famous for its beautiful beaches and corals.

Many independent travellers and backpackers visit Unawantuna beach, including a lot of Germans and Australians.

I went for a ride in a glass bottom boat and went snorkelling in the waters above the famous corals, but I only managed to see three fish!

Sitting on a glass bottomed boat

Snorkelling as the sun sets

I cut my foot on a coral and it was bleeding a lot, and as I was told there were sharks in the bay, I panicked and thought I was going to get eaten by a shark. So, I got back on the boat as soon as possible to avoid the inevitable shark attack.

We took a visit to Hikkaduwa, which is about half an hour away. As we were wating at the bus stop, the buses never stopped for us. Their was a tuk-tuk driver trying to get us to have a lift from him, but we wanted to travel on the bus to save money and for a better experience of Sri Lankan culture. After half anhour of all the buses near;ly stopping, then shooting off at the last minute we became very suspisious. Then, we saw that the tuk-tuk driver was shooing all the buses away, because he thought then we would give in and get a tuk-tuk with him! So we told him we would never get a tuk-tuk with him even if it was free and when the next buses came we jumped in front of him to block him from shooing the buses away. We eventually got a bus and the journey was along the beautiful coast line.

Hiding the tuk-tuk driver, as we wait for a bus!

We had to get off the bus in  a hurry because one of the volunteers was so desperate for the toilet she couldn't wait and we were in the middle of nowhere! We wondered around trying to find somwehere and everyone was staring at us, as if they had never seen white people! Thankfully, a kind lady let us use her outside toilet, and we carryed on our journey.

When we readed Hikkaduwa a storm was brewing and it was almost like  ghost town. We walked around trying to find a guest house to stay in but things kept creeping us out! There was a frog in one of the rooms, which a volunteer is really scared off, and then another volunteer fell down the stairs. We decided it was too creepy to stay, so we jumped on the first tuk-tuk back to Unawantuna!

Back on Unawantuna beach in the storm

There are hundreds of abandoned dogs in Sri Lanka, especially on the beach, so we made some dog friends, and they slept under our sunbeds!

The second weekend I visited Unawantuna, we went to Colombo Fort train station and got a train to Galle. At Colombo there was a massive market and managed to barter from 8000 rupees to 1500 rupees for a bag. They try and rip off all the tourists. There were dodgy people hanging around following us and I knew they were watching for the ideal time to pick pocket us so i put my bag on my front and stared at them, to let him know that I knew what he was thinking. They soon went away!


The train station is absoloutly crazy1 We got 3rd class tickets (1st class was recommended for tourists, so were slumming it a bit). We noticed that as the train arrives at the platform people jump on as it is moving for the only chance to get a seat. People even stand in the train tracks so they can jump on from the other side! I didn't want to be cramped and uncomfortable for the four hour journey, so as the train came to the paltform I took a running jump and rolled onto the train. I manged to save seats for people, and even though it was so busy I was quite comfortable, and enjoyed the beach views on the journey. As we got nearer our destination the train became very spacious and we sat in the doors and admired the amazing beach views. We even saw a load of slums, which was very interesting!

Sitting in the train door, admiring the views.

The guest houses are quite cheap, about 800 rupees (about 4.80) for a double room. Here is a picture of us outside our guest house, waiting for a monsoon shower to end.

The Jungle

This was our first weekend outing and was a way to get to know all the other volunteers so we could help and support each other during the the challenging projects we had.We stayed in massive tents, sleeping 8 people.  There were many 'team building' activities on Saturday (starting at 6am!), including falling off a high platform and being caught by the rest of the team, jumping into a lake from a 20 or 30 feet platform and zip wiring across a lake.

Unfortuantely I was really ill and had to go to the doctors in the morning because I had a fever and major stomach cramps, which I  think was caused by drinking the local water. At the doctors, he didn't speak very good English and then gave me 6 different pills to take and gave me no description as to what the were. Apparently it is common in Sri Lanka for doctors to give out loads of medication to people without really knowing whats wrong with them. They think the more the better!

The dozens of pills given to me

I felt dosed up all day on too many medications, but I managed to get myself up and jump off the 30 foot platform into the lake. I felt like I was still asleep when I did it, but it definately woke me up!

In the evening, everyone was drinking the local alcohol of sri lanka, called arrak, and we had a barbeque with the Sri Lankan red cross society. I couldn't drink because I was still ill from my stomach infection. However,  I had a great evening dancing and watching performances from the Sri Lankan.

A dramatic performance by a group of Sri lankans

They asked us to perform something to them, but we had nothing prepared, so we just stood up and sang 'my heart will go on'. It was awkward because not many off us could sing or knew all the words, but I think they enjoyed it.

Dancing with the locals

I had a dance-off with one of the locals, which was so much fun. I found it hard keeping up with his energy because Sri Lankan dancing is really fast, but I think I was a pretty good competitor. I wanted to introduce the Sri Lankans to some British songs, especially some genres they probably have never heard before, such as techno or drum and bass. We danced for them and they tryed to copy our dancing.

On Sunday, I was still felling ill but I didn't want to miss out on anything else so I went on the trek up a really high mountain in the rainforest. It was amazing and the views were so good.

We did some climbing with harnesses and swam in some beautiful waterfalls.

Here I am underneath a waterfall

 There must have been a forest fire at some point, because on the climb down the other side of the mountain, a large part of the forest was largely empty and my hands were black from touching the trees.

Although I was ill and couldn't take part in many of the activities, I had an amazing experience.

Teaching at Orphanages

I teach English to three different orphanages in the afternoons. As I teach them when they are home from school I try to make the classes as fun as possible.

Rukemale orphange is a girls orphange with children ranging from 4 to 19. We teach them in three different classes, so their English abilities within a class are more even. We play a variety of English activity games with the younger children and mainly have conversations and chat in English with the older children.

Here are a few of the younger children at Rukemale orphanage

After our first teaching session the matron of the orphanage said we were great teachers and the children loved us. The children call me Rose, because apparently I look like Rose from titanic! They call another volunteer Angelina Jolie! One eighteen year old girl came for a chat with us at the end and was really enthusiatic about us being there and couldn't wait for us to help her with her english essaes and CV and letter writing. She hopes that with extra English help from us she will be able to leave the orphange and get a good job.

Some of the older kids took me for a walk of their grounds, which is about 2 acres and full of fruit trees. There are monkeys that swing from their trees at 5pm every day, which I'm very excited about seeing! They also have there very own cow! However, it  isn't that shocking anymore because in Sri Lanka there are cows everywhere! I have about ten pictures of cows in funny places, such as on the side of the road, or walking along the pavements! Apparently the cows are sacred, so can wonder around and do whatever they like.

Cows relaxing on the side of the road

At Mattegoda orphanage I teach at the children are all in one big class of 40 people, so it was very difficult at the start to get every ones attention.It was also difficult to play an activity that all the children would enjoy. We played games with the children who wanted to join in, while some of the older ones just watched and laughed at us amongst themselves. So, in the last half an hour of the lesson we said goodbye to the little ones and went to a classroom to chat to the older ones. They were very shy at first and didn't want to talk to us, but after a lot of talk about celebrities, films and boyfriends they began to like me and they were soon chatting away in English and asking me lots of questions. I promised to bring them magazine pictures of famous English celebrities next time I visited them.

More at the Camilla School

 The other volunteers and I went to the least disabled part of Camilla school, where they are given lessons and have a fairly normal school life. There are two classes with about twenty in each class, the ages in each class ranging from about four to fifty! A few of the very young children are more able than the older adults! We  assisted the teacher in a maths class. The children had to copy many times each number from one to five in their exercise books. We soon found out that some of the children did not understand what the numbers meant and were simply doing a copying exercise, which is not teaching them what they need to know.  We thought we would introduce more fun ways of learning numbers, and used blocks and team involvement to help them learn to count. We managed to get a lot of them to understand the numbers and got one boy to count to twenty. The teacher said we should teach the class!

Playing with the children at Camilla School

 I've noticed that the children love to clap their hands, and so, in the physiotherapy room, I managed to incorporate some of them clapping, some drumming their hands on a container, some hitting bricks together, one playing the keyboard (we managed to teach her how to play 'twinkle, twinkle, little star'), and some singing, to produce an amateur percussion band. They loved it and we got a lot of the children to join in. Even some of the paralyzed children were laughing along. It surprised me how many English nursery rhymes and other English songs they knew. I felt like we had a breakthrough with the children, with them being happy, active and with music being a way of expressing themselves. We now know that they all love music!

The Camilla School

Camilla school is meant to be a disabled center for children, but it houses adults as well. The ages range from 3 to 65. It is very difficult to know their ages as their physical disabilities cause many of them to be very short for their age. For example, I was trying to play with building bricks with this one kid i thought was about 5 years old. She got upset and wasn't interested in playing, then I was told that she was actually over 20 years old! She couldn't communicate to me that she was too old to be playing with bricks, due to her mental disabilities, and therefore she must have got upset and frustrated because she couldn't communicate to me. Many of the children have a complete awareness of what is going on around them, but their disabilities, either physical or mental, prevent them from being able to communicate their understanding. I soon learned that even if a child isn't joining in with what you are doing or communicating any understanding, they are still enjoying you just playing in front of them. They may smile or laugh or move excitably, which shows me they are enjoying what is going on.

When I first went to the disabled center I was utterly shocked and appalled by the conditions.Some children are partially paralyzed and so are left alone in one dark space all day, with no stimulation, apart from the occasional feed. One boy is left in his room for the entire day and only looked on to give him a glass of water. Many have open wounds and other illnesses which are not cared for, because the center does not have the funding. Some children, such as those with cerebral palsy, are meant to be given physiotherapy many times a day to improve their condition, but due to a lack in funding these children are only given a short session once a week.

After my initial shock at the conditions, I realized that there is so much that I could give to these children. We could give the more disabled children some stimulation each day and help to improve the children's lives. I am excited contemplating what we will be able to achieve.

Travelling to our new home

I met four other volunteers at the gate, in the queue for getting on the plane, and they were sitting only the row in front of us on the plane! They were all lovely people, and I'm glad because we had to spent 8 hours in Chennai Airport, India, waiting for our flight to Colombo. It was my first slight sight of the poverty to come, as the seats we slept on were wet and moldy and their were wires hanging out the walls. When I slept I tryed to cover my whole body, as my DEET spray to repel mosquitos was in my suitcase, which i did not have access too. However, my hand fell out of my sleeping bag for five minutes and got my first 3 mosquito bites!

The security were very shocked that we had no Indian visa, even though we were only in transit. They insisted on taking our passports and didn't return them for four hours! They said everything was now fine and so we happily fell asleep again, setting an alarm and getting up just in time for boarding, but needless did we know, they hadn't sorted our passports out, and sent us away. We waited and asked again, but were still sent away. We waited and waited and waited and just as they were close to closing boarding we managed to get in. Ironically we could have sorted out the problem, because all they needed was 'transit' to be written on our tickets!

I feel asleep on the plane and woke 10 minutes before landing, with a full tray of food on the table in front of me. I ended up trying to eat sloppy rice pudding as the plane landed.

When we arrived, we thought that this whole thing may be a big hoax and we would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. But, a lovely man, named Buddahika, met us and took us for our first taste of Sri lankan tea. I pretended to love it, but  really I preferred English tea. However, as I have been drinking the tea for a week now I am beggining to love it. The trick is to put a lot (3 tbsps) of sugar in it.

We met another lovely volunteer at the airport and then all 7 of us, a driver and all our luggage had to squish into a van. We just about managed it, apart from one chair falling off its hinges! We were maazed by everything we saw on the way to our new homes, and we just stared out the windows in awe. We stared like we were on safari, watching everything going on outside, and the Sri Lankans stared back at us like we were zoo animals. Some how I managed to get bitten by mosquitos another 4 times, underneath my trousers!

When I arrived at my 'homestay' I felt immediately welcome. The family were great and laughed at nearly everything we said. They found our culture very intruiging, as do I to theres. They laughed especially when I was fascinated by a passing family of monkeys, moving along the telephone wires right by their house. They call the monkeys pests here, becasue they eat all their fruit!