A fistful of rupees
I’m currently on a domestic India flight where the ratio of child to parent is at least 4:1 and just realized my headphones are in checked luggage. What better time for a blog update?
When I last left off in Sri Lanka, Sam (yes, two Sams) and I had just wrapped a smorgasbord of a cooking class on our last night in Ella. From there, it was back to the train station for a breezy three hour ride to Nuwara Eliya. This town, about halfway between Ella and Kandy on the famous train route, is known to be a bit sleepier than Ella was, but with different highland terrain for sightseeing. After Nepal, I’ve been feeling pretty lazy on the hiking, and Sam isn’t a big hiker either, so we elected to hire a tuktuk for the day to drive us around.
This was our second foray into tea country, but it was just as stunning as our visit to to the Lipton estate. Nuwara Eliya sits at the the top of a massive valley; the tour consisted of motoring down through the valley and making frequent stops along the way. The uppermost part of the valley had the most ideal conditions for tea plant growth — chilly, foggy, and wet. Low hanging clouds clung to the green leafy terraces; the tea pickers in their bright saris speckled across the landscape.
We visited the Damro tea plantation for a tour and tasting, a massive cream-colored building set into the lush hillside. Our tuktuk driver was a great source of information — from him, we learned in recent years that tea plantation ownership has transitioned from the British to joint ownership agreements between private local interests and the national government. Our tour was pretty similar to the one we took at Lipton, but the equipment was much newer and the Lipton one didn’t come with a nice slice of cake at the end.
Further down the canyon, foliage of the canyon transitioned from highland scrub to lush jungle. We visited a few waterfalls nestled into the steep cliffs, and ended our journey with a final vista overlooking a giant lake fed by the waterfalls we just visited. That evening, we tried our first kottu — it’s like a stir fry but with chopped up pieces of pita. We also sampled several arrack and tonics (local hooch) at the 19th hole of one of the nicest…and only…golf courses in Sri Lanka.
The following morning, we were up bright and early to continue our train journey to Kandy. The train rides up to this point have been beautiful, but it’s this part of the route that really gets the travel bloggers going. I sat in a door frame in 3rd class with some locals my age; we shared snacks and took pictures of each other. It was all it was cracked up to be and more.
Kandy is Sri Lanka’s second-largest city, set within a massive forest and beautiful lake up in hill country. Sam booked us a hotel with an amazing view.
While in Kandy, we visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, one of the holiest sites in Sri Lanka and Buddhism in general. It is here that one of the teeth of the Buddha is kept, only to be brought out once per year in a massive parade and celebration. The temple itself is quite impressive, with hallways and rooms full of idols and carvings of precious metals. In the parade, the tooth is carried on the back of a giant elephant, proceeded by *at least* 100 other elephants. They even preserved their favorite temple elephant, Raja, after he died — you can go pay your respects in person. Sam and I accidentally hired a “tour guide” outside the temple who basically followed us around making stuff up as he went along in exchange for $5. Thank you.
Sam and I completed our usual bar crawl that evening and we said our goodbyes the following morning. Solo for the first time in weeks, I continued onward to Sighiriya. Traveling with my employed friends in style was comfortable but a little pricey, so as soon as they left it was back to local buses and cheap hostels! On arrival, I befriended Andrea and Sacha, two fellow solo travelers; the former a Slovenian professional ballet dancer/coach and the other a French carpenter living in Madagascar. Can’t make this stuff up, folks. Our hostel manager took us up to a secret viewpoint to catch some sunset views and listen to some jams.🙂We did get caught in a bit of a downpour at the top and had to slip and slide our way down.
The big tourist draw to Sighiriya is Lion Rock, a huge flat-topped formation jutting out of the jungle landscape. Unfortunately, the Sri Lankan park service is well aware of its popularity and charges a huge fee to enter. The sneaky backpacker workaround to this is climbing adjacent Pidurangala Rock instead, at 1/5 the cost with views just as good. Sacha and I woke up at 5am to make the trek. Monkeys and dogs somehow cohabitate at the top of this fairly steep hike, so we had some non-human company in greeting the sunrise over the jungle.
After a whirlwind few weeks in Sri Lanka, I was pretty pooped. I swung by Colombo to get a treatment plan for an eye infection I had picked up, then made my way back down to Mirissa in the Southern Province to hit the beach. For about three days, and for the first time on my trip, I literally did nothing but lay on the beach, read, eat curries, and sip mojitos. Sometimes you need a vacation from the vacation.
My last night in Colombo, Christmas celebrations were kicking into high gear, so I wandered around to take it all in. I said goodbye to Sri Lanka with a drink at a fancy rooftop hotel bar.
Everyone had set my Indian traffic expectations very high, so I was mildly disappointed when I landed in Bangalore to find clean highways, tree-lined streets, and only a few cows blocking the road at critical junctions. I was here to attend the wedding of my friends Rahul and Jesse. Rahul’s cousin, Aneesh, lives in Bangalore, and played accommodating tour guide and host for us during our stay. Our friends trickled in to Bangalore over the weekend, and we spent our free time before the festivities touring local microbreweries, eating, shopping, and at the pool. All this, of course, punctuated with breaks for chai. Everyone is constantly drinking chai. I’m not even gonna mention it the rest of this post, at every paragraph break from now on picture me stopping to drink some chai.
I had a surreal moment during our microbrewery forays where Aneesh took us to “Arbor Brewing Company.” That’s weird, I thought, there’s an ABC in Ann Arbor too. Turns out they have exactly two locations — Ann Arbor and Bangalore!
Shopping for wedding outfits was stressful but exciting. I love getting dressed up, but there’s only so much you can do with a suit and tie. The different styles, patterns, and colors available in formal Indian attire are way more fun.
The food…oh god, the food. I have a problem at home when I order Indian food; it’s so delicious that I always order and eat too much and am then in a coma for a few hours. I’ve been having the same problem here except instead of takeout every other week it’s been an every day thing. I’ve eaten more chaats and dosas than I can count.
The first morning of wedding festivities, we celebrated a puja (pre-wedding ceremonies) and lunch at Aneesh’s house. Every family and ethnic group has their own variations, but at theirs, everyone cleanses the bridge and groom with haldi (turmeric and water mix) and the two of them sit in a special chair swing. The couples in attendance played a sort of guessing game I thought was also tradition, but it turned out Rahul’s mom made it up to stall for time because lunch was late. Still fun though, and Rahul’s parents presented us all with matching stoles — the first of several gifts we were to receive from them.
That afternoon, we went back to Commercial Street for even more shopping and to pick up our tailored kurtas. There has been a bit of tension in the air around Bangalore — the government is working on a bill that provides a path to citizenship for religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan…that specifically excludes Muslims. We’ve seen a few demonstrators here and there and are exercising an extra bit of caution.
Seeing as this was Christmas Eve, next up was dinner at the Ritz, only a short ride from our five-star resort, the Oberoi. Yes, once again my trip had swung back into the lap of luxury.
The next morning, we boarded buses to the wedding venue itself — Miraya Greens, a massive compound purpose-built for wedding celebrations just south of Bangalore. I’m learning the wedding industry here is an incredibly well-oiled machine; they had us hustled off the buses, checked into rooms, and at the mehndi ceremony in under an hour. Historically, only women would apply henna to their hands and feet, but it’s common for men to want to get in on the fun now too. I got a lotus and mantra I learned in Nepal on my forearm, as well as a finger mustache.
That night, we gathered in a beautifully decorated field for the sangeet. This is an evening of dinner, drinks, music, and live entertainment. Sounds pretty typical, except the live entertainment is provided by wedding guests! We performed a coordinated dance with the bride and groom; several other groups performed dances as well and Jesse’s grandpa even put on a moving recorder solo. We partied well into the night, eventually falling into bed around 4am.
Everyone took a big sleep-in the next morning, followed by a traditional South Indian thali. This is a big lunch made up of a bunch of small plates, all served up on a banana leaf. A line of chefs swung by our tables and served up each little dish until our banana leaves were speckled with beautiful contrasting colors, after which we were instructed to dig in…with our hands. Stumbling around in a food coma after, I found myself playing carrom with some other wedding attendees. This is a classic South Asian tabletop board game similar to pool, except you play it with your fingers and little checkers-like discs.
After a brief nap, we woke up and began getting ready for the baraat: the groom’s wedding procession. Traditionally, the groom and his family and friends would be traveling in the baraat from his village or house to the bride’s village or house, so you‘s want to, as one of my friends put it, “show up big.” The groom comes riding in on an intricately decorated white mare, accompanied by dhol drummers getting the crowd going, and everyone’s just dancing and generally going nuts. We dance-walked with him up the street to the venue. At the end, the bride, groom, and families exchange garlands.
Finally we got to the wedding ceremony itself, which involves a lot of sitting around for everyone, including the bride and groom. I was told more conservative South Indian weddings can go on for several hours, and that mostly people don’t pay too much attention to the ceremonies themselves — just sit around chatting and drinking chai — until the important stuff toward the end.
Eventually we all went back to the rooms to get ready for the wedding reception. For those keeping score at home, we’re now up to my fourth wedding outfit. Can’t complain too much though, the bride had 11 outfit changes.
The reception was even more binge-eating, drinking and dancing. One fun thing to call out they were serving here is paan, a digestif slash stimulant made of betel leaf, areca nut, and sometimes tobacco. It was nice post-meal treat at the time, but now I’m reading about it on Wikipedia it actually seems pretty bad for you so maybe just try it once. We stayed up late playing drinking games and dancing, and after a quick few hours of sleep it was time for to groggily say goodbye and catch rides to our next destinations.
My first Indian wedding experience was so much fun, but now I’m ready for another vacation vacation. A group of 7 of us are heading to the state of Kerala for relaxation and to ring in the new year.
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