Day 5

I woke up early by a sound that I could not define, it seemed like two mentally handicapped persons were having sex in the next room. Ear plugs were not sufficient to block the sound, so I also put a pillow on my head. This did however almost make me miss the wake up call that we would get every day to avoid issues with people being late. (Turned out by the way that there were pigeons sitting on the beams of the roof next to a small hole in the wall and that one of them made a sounds that I just had never heard from a pigeon before).

At 8 we left for a bicycle tour in the surrounding area. Despite the early hour, it was already quite warm, but at that time there was still plenty of shade and the wind also provided some coolness. A bicycle off the beaten path is such a nice way to get to know a country, although us passing did seem to drive some of the street dogs a little bit crazy.

We visited two Buddhist temples that we passed and a school. We were allowed to have a look in the class rooms, which basically comprised a big room, with a combination of sheets and cupboards dividing the room in three separate class rooms. We were however not allowed to give school supplies or candy to the children, instead we made donations to the director of the school who would make sure that it reached the children that were from families that were most in need.

In the school, a girl indicated me to sit down on the empty seat next to her. I took a picture of her and of the boys sitting in front of her with my phone and showed it to them. One of the boys was really interested in swiping to get to the next picture and before I knew it, there were 4 pairs of hands swiping and poking at my phone. When the message came up to delete a picture, I wanted to pull back to make sure that didn’t happen, but not all sets of hands were willing to back off that easily, so at one pointed I said “kappen nou!” and then the girl sitting next to me repeated “kappen nou!”. On our way back we passed the outer domains of the Sigiriya Lion Rock and some tourists that still have not heard that a ride on a chained elephant is something that you should really skip during your vacation.

After a normal-pressured shower, we went for a lovely lunch in the village that we had cycled through and after that we drove to a wild-life reserve where we had a game drive. I have to say, it was no Africa, but here also the landscape was beautiful. We were a bit unlucky regarding the wild-life though. We saw plenty of peacock, which somehow I just did not expect in this part of the world. There were however also supposed to be many Asian elephants here, but the weather was turning and there was already some thunder in the distance, which elephants don’t like and hide from in the bushes. Luckily, we did get to see a few large male elephants and after seeing the last one it started pouring while we drove back.