Nine things about Sri Lanka that are awesome

Yes, 'awesome'.

1. It's hot. It's sunny. It's so humid I barely have to moisturise my legs. My hair is returning to its rightful shade of blonde, my skin has sufficient colour so that I no longer look like I have some kind of wasting disease, and my stores of vitamin D are no doubt being replenished. The tropics are a thousand times better than any chemical drug. I am actively NOT thinking about how people start wearing shorts when the temperature in the UK climbs to a mighty ten degrees, because really, that is horrifically depressing.

2. Everyone-everyone!-waves and says hello and much of the time, they don't even want to sell anything. My suspicions are that the vast majority of the country is so chilled out because of the tropical weather. It's even more amazing just how friendly and smiley everyone is when you think about the decades-long civil war and the tsunami that recently hit.

3. There are monkeys everywhere. I know, I know, they're annoying, vicious, thieving pests, but in the same way that visitors ooh and ahh over the wild garden-destroying deer that live in Northern California, I find the monkeys wonderfully entertaining. We spent a good two hours watching a troupe of them swing from vines and chuck coconuts at our heads. Prepare yourself for a lot of pictures of monkeys. The other thing is that they look so ridiculously human. It adds to their odd and novel appeal, but they look so human as to be kind of revolting. The babies all look like little old men, and monkeys of all ages have those unnervingly human little hands and fingernails.

4. All the tropical fruit I dream of when I watch the rain lashing my window is spilling out of fruit stalls just waiting to be bought and eaten. There are the ones you just don't find in the west, like mangosteens, rambutans, custard apples, soursops, durians, and Chinese guavas, which are ridiculously delicious. And there are the ones you can technically buy in your local Waitrose-pineapple, bananas, mangos, papayas-but the ones here are so sweet, juicy and ripe that the ones you can buy back home seem like a different species. When I die, entomb me in a giant coconut. I actually love tropical fruit so much that if people knew the full extent, I would be deemed mentally unstable.

5. The rest of the cuisine here is actually spicy enough to put a bit of colour in my cheeks. It has been a long, long time since that has happened, and the burn feels fantastic.

6. Is it insensitive to mention that it's cheap? Well, it is. It's rather great to dine for about three pounds a head. The only exorbitant prices I've seen were for a box of cornflakes (530 rupees, about 5USD or three quid) and, oddly enough, a pack of spiced cashews.

7. Even though Sri Lanka lost the cricket World Cup to India last night, people were still celebrating by chucking firecrackers around and having dance parties on the beach. When I offered my condolences about the match this morning, no one really seemed terribly distressed. The most dramatic reaction I got was (wait for it!) a shrug. It's hard not to love a place like this.

8. The crows are for some reason very sleek and robust. Much better than crows elsewhere. I have no idea why this is.

9. The beaches of the southwest are exquisite. If I believed in intelligent design or God or any of that, I would say that he had a soft spot for this island, because the golden sand and turquoise water of Unawatuna are dreamlike in their sheer perfection. It is utterly unsurprising that the people here seem like they're in such good moods all the time.

You might have asked yourself, 'Why nine things?' That is because I wrote down nine things and then, to be honest, felt like drinking mango juice and reading my book. Oh, tropics, you beguiling thing, you.

You can't spell 'team' without 'tea'

Forgive the really stupid title of this post. I'm sure there are better puns about tea or about Sri Lanka in general, but I can't think of them right now and I'm trying not to run up an astronomical tab here in this Nuwara Eliya internet cafe. Though considering it costs all of 400 Sri Lankan rupees an hour (about a pound fifty or so) that would be difficult.

I've always wanted to come to Sri Lanka; first, because I liked the name, and then later, because in spite of its decades-long civil war, the spirit of the island seemed so beautifully zen. There it was, hanging off southern India like an earring or a tear, just quietly existing in all its tropical satisfaction in one of the world's most beautiful oceans beneath its much larger and brasher neighbour. The war ended, Natasha and I were in desperate need of a break from the soul-wrenching dampness and greyness of Scotland, and lo and behold, here we are. We landed in the damp heat of Colombo at about 4am on the..erm...26th? 27th? Things are so laid-back here I don't even remember; needless to say, I am slowly being restored from my late March-self, which is pasty, exhausted, and fed up with all things St Andrews, to my mid-April self, which is usually tanner, more energetic, and generally likes life better.

After a gloriously languid day spent drinking iced coffee and wandering through the cracked and leafy streets of Colombo, we hopped a train up to Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka's highest town. The moist and heavy air cooled as the old colonial-era train snaked its way up into the hill country, and the palms and grasses of the lowlands gave way to eucalyptus trees so tall as to be surreal and sweeping valleys coated in tea bushes. Hanging out the side of the train (the doors are just left swinging open because some countries aren't slaves to health and safety), I could feel my eyes bug out more and more with every bend we rounded. It is stupidly beautiful up here, ethereal in the afternoon clouds that fringe the peaks, festooned with flowers of all shapes and colours, and so verdant as to look unreal. Were the garden of Eden real, it would look like the Sri Lankan hill country. My dad, a genuine gardening fanatic, would have a field day up here (no pun intended).







The reason for coming all the way up here was because of the tea plantations. To state the obvious, tea is a big thing here. The mountains are positively covered in it; the velvety green slopes are broken only by reddish dirt footpaths, the occasional towering, spindly tree and white-clad tea pickers filling the sacks strapped to their shoulders. We caught a local bus about 20km down the road to Labookelie to a local factory, where I finally learned the difference between white tea and green tea and silver tips and golden tips and all that, and then proceeded to have our minds blown by the utter gorgeousness of the surrounding hills. As far as the eye could see, tea grew and lent the mountains such a vivid colour that they appeared to be glowing in the soft afternoon light that filtered through the clouds. We walked back up the winding road to Nuwara Eliya with our mouths agape at how unreal it all looked, which of course made the locals piss themselves with laughter. Apparently they love weird Westerners.





















Ceci and Natasha: providing roadside entertainment in South Asia since 2010

Walking through the giant teabag that is Sri Lankan hill country, it's easy to see why everyone here is so relaxed and indeed why this place is one of the last strongholds of Buddhism. When you have all this amazingness to look at and very probably the world's best cup of tea right out your doorstep, what's not to love?



















Your morning cup of Orange Pekoe in its infancy









































The hills are alive with the sound of...erm...tea

For those of you without an imagination, if you find this all really boring, there will be pictures added later.

Edit: see?