Well… it has hit us.  Like really hit us.  We had seen glimpses, heard whispers, and felt little inklings along the way.  But it was when we arrived in Sri Lanka that we took the culture shock blast to the face.  This little island gave us our first taste of a truly unfamiliar culture filled with new customs, different standards, and an all too unique pallet of spices.  The streets were deafening with car honks and tuktuk beeps, most of the population seemed to walk without shoes, and eating with your hands was appropriate even if dressed in suits at a business meeting.

 

 

We ended up in Sri Lanka after hosting a native of the island for a month at our home back in Colorado.  When we were sharing our itinerary with him, he casually mentioned that we had left Sri Lanka off the list.  Not having a complete idea of where this country was… let alone what it had to offer, we played it cool and quickly improvised a spot for it in our plans.  Months later, we found ourselves sitting on wooden benches in an old train with our heads out the window watching this tropical world wiz by.

Sri Lanka is relatively new to the western tourist track as it just ended a 30-year civil war in 2009.  We felt lucky to, unknowingly, have stumbled upon a little part of the world that was just beginning its navigation of tourism.  We enjoyed the comforts of the obvious touristic options a tropical island has such as scuba diving, whale watching, hiking to waterfalls, and fruity drinks on the beach.

 

But we also found ourselves in situations involving genuine teamwork with locals to help make our travels work.  When our ride from the beach to the mountains fell through (a 4-hour, one-way trip), a crew member on our whale watching boat called his dad who “wasn’t doing anything today” to take us.

With help from the local population, we found solutions to problems that would almost certainly never exist in a tourist-savoy country.  When the only ATM in an hour radius of our tiny mountain “cash-only” town was out of money, help came from all over to find us someone to exchange currency with.  When a monkey took off with one of my shoes, it took some serious time and multiple hand signals to finally refuse offers of shoes from other girls nearby.  My guess is that Sri Lanka will be more than tourist-ready in no time, so I am definitely choosing to treasure these moments of insecurity, bad charades, and heavy laughs.

Known as “India Light”, Sri Lanka shares a similar history of eastern religion blended with western colonialism with their dominant neighbor to the North.  This is a country laced with Buddhist history, passionate about tea, and never tires of rice and curry.

Jonathan and I both remember taking a world religions class back in the day, and I am sure they spent some time on Buddhism.  Unfortunately, time has erased nearly all of the facts from our brains leaving us about as clueless as they come regarding this paramount religion.  But as the saying goes, “involve me and I will learn” – so we dove in.

We were introduced to the cultures of this religion, of nearly 70% of Sri Lankans, in Kandy at Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Tooth.  This stunning temple is believed to house the left upper canine tooth of the Lord Buddha himself that was left after his body was cremated.  The tooth itself is kept in a two-story inner shrine fronted by two large elephant tusks AND rests on a solid gold lotus flower, encased in a jeweled casket, sitting on a throne.  Yeah… it is a big deal.  We stood in the back of a sticky, crowded room while drums boomed and a high-pitched flute melody spliced its way through the masses.

 

 

Though we didn’t understand exactly what was happening, the amount of respect and devotion in the room was incredible.  We were there for the evening puja (a daily ritual where devout Buddhists have a chance to see the case that holds the tooth for a brief moment).  We stood by as hundreds of devoted pilgrims clad in white offered beautiful lotus flower arrangements and stood on tiptoes trying to catch a glimpse of the sparkling chest holding this sacred relic.

 

 

Our other two big sites were Dambulla or The Cave Temple and Sigiriya, an ancient rock fortress and monastery.  The Cave Temple stretches across five caves and is filled to the brim with ancient sculptures and artwork.  Over 150 Buddha statues stand, sit, or recline as murals cover every inch of the ceilings and walls.  Walking through, Jon and I couldn’t help but wonder what each pose meant and why some received the lotus flower offerings and others did not.  We were prompted to quickly make up a cheat sheet of the different poses for all future temple encounters.

Near Dambulla lies Sigiriya, a massive (660 ft) high rock that sits on its own surrounded by the tropics.  King Kasyapa selected this site in 477 AD for his new capital and built his palace upon the rock.  The palace and the grounds surrounding it must have been such a spectacle based on the ruins we saw when we arrived.

We set out to climb the 1500 steps up to the top passing by remains from ancient gardens and pools as well as plenty of grooming monkeys.

About halfway up the rock, we came to the official entrance of the palace marked by two giant lion’s paws.  I was having flashbacks to the massiveness of our visits to Petra and the Acropolis.  With a final heave in the oppressive humidity, up a staircase that definitely would not pass any standards in the US, we arrived at the top with a killer view of the area and plenty of ancient walls to scale.

 

On our way down we stopped to see the sites of meditation for the monks that claimed the site as a monastery after the King’s death.  Despite the touristy nature of the “Lion’s Rock”, we had a great time exploring Sri Lanka’s most visited site.

Prior to independence, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon.  If you think that sounds familiar, it is probably due to Sri Lanka’s number one export: Ceylon Tea.  It is impossible to be in Sri Lanka for much time before you are fully aware of the tea culture here.  Not only do they cultivate it using the “contour planting” method, where bushes are planted in lines in coordination with the contours of the sloping land, but they take the tea from leaf to bag in one of the many tea factories dotting the hills.

The process is incredible.  Only women (due to their delicate touch) are allowed to interact with the tea leaves themselves, skillfully plucking up to 45 pounds of leaves per day.  Sri Lanka prides itself in being one of the few countries to hand-pick their leaves, preventing any unwanted sticks, buds, or unworthy leaves from entering the process. Jonathan and I caught countless views of women plucking away to fill the white bags they had strapped to their heads.

We took a tour of a working tea factory, and I have to admit, we felt the whole process, while incredible, seemed outdated.  Hand picked leaves were transferred to mesh drying racks where temperature was rigorously controlled with wooden shutters on the windows.  Once dried, they were rolled on old wooden battened tables and eventually dumped on a open air table to oxidize.

Each tea factory employs one man (and his one apprentice) who acts as the “nose” of the factory and is the sole person responsible for smelling the leaves and determining when the process is complete and the leaves are ready to be fired (to prevent further fermentation) and bagged.

Though it seems a bit antiquated to us, who are we to judge a process who for over a hundred years has consistently provided some of the world’s best tea?  We are quite happy to sip away appreciating the care and detail that went into our cups.

If tea is the backbone of Sri Lankan cuisine, then rice and curry is the rest of the darn body.  It is eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It is served in the fanciest of restaurants and in newspaper packets on the street.  It is often the only option on the menu, and there are hundreds of ways to prepare it.

After enjoying our cooking class in Istanbul so much, we decided to see if we could learn a bit about the curry culture here in Sri Lanka.  To do this, we spent the evening with Lanka, a quiet and stern chef up in the hills.

After a few minutes of small talk, we got to work, and Lanka started to light up as he taught us the magic spice combo for curry powder, the art of making coconut milk, and the true variety of curries one can make in a few hours.

Before we realized it, we had seven completely different curries ranging from banana leaf to green beans to lentils steaming away in clay pots.  I had no idea curries could taste so varied, yet compliment each other so well.  Though we don’t have some of the tools we used with Lanka, I am confident curry nights are in our future once we return home.

As for our last few days in Sri Lanka, we spent them relaxing in the capital city of Colombo while we tried to wrap our heads around the next two months we were about to embark on in Southeast Asia.  And, if I am being honest, after weeks of rice and curry, we also made a pretty solid, though unsuccessful attempt to find pizza.  🙂