Thanksgiving Surprise

I know, it's practically Christmas. I'm way behind in posting but I didn't want to omit our Thanksgiving surprise.

The weekend before Thanksgiving we got a call from my brother-in-law, Josh and his wife Linda. It turns out that soon after we told them of our plans to spend the fall term in Qatar, they bought tickets to come visit us. This is months before we had our own tickets, mind you. They figured that, although they have traveled all over the world, they've never been to the Middle East. What better time to go? And to add to the excitement they decided to make it a surprise visit.

They flew in to Dubai for a couple days' sightseeing and then hopped over to Doha in time for Thanksgiving. They rounded out the tour with a second hop over to Bahrain before flying home. So Josh and Linda, in just over a week, actually saw more of the Middle East than we have in four months. I mean, who moves to the Middle East and doesn't ski Dubai? But that's OK - they're seasoned travelers. And skiing wasn't really an option anyhow.

The other big news is that Linda is expecting, which is absolutely wonderful. You see, Josh and Linda are a great couple. They work hard, they know how to play and they have a great sense of adventure. That zest for life is a trait I think we should all share with our children (and, heck, everyone we meet).

Of course, for the first couple of years it's a struggle to hold on to that enthusiasm, as Linda is certainly learning. She was wretchedly morning sick throughout the trip but she was a trooper and I hope she had a nice time despite the nausea. Poor Linda - even after months of acclimating I think the food in Qatar has an off-flavor; it must be ten times worse if you're in the first trimester.

We didn't spoil the big surprise for the kids. I left a house key with the guards at the compound gate when I picked them up from school, and they were there when we returned. C came in first, and Josh walked around the corner wearing a thobe (white robe), keffiyeh (head scarf), and agal (black cord circle to hold the keffiyeh in place). And don't forget the aviator glasses. Stopped that kid in his tracks; this is not what he was expecting. Fortunately A was too shocked to cry immediately and figured out it was OK when her brothers screamed and laughed and tackled this strange Arab man. Josh looked good but it takes a certain panache to wear the keffiyeh well. Kind of like the guys wearing sarongs in Sri Lanka. You gotta believe it to wear it.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving morning came and we decided to go out for a quick jaunt to the beach before dinner. We packed a lunch and went to a spot north of Doha that has some interesting rock formations along the coastline. Well, it was a decent plan and I'm glad we got out of the house. But the beach was a bust. The second we opened the car, a cloud of flies descended upon us and our food. You literally couldn't stop moving because the flies were everywhere. At least they didn't bite, but yuck. The kids were cranky, Linda was sick, we couldn't win for losing. So we stayed only about an hour before we packed up to go. B and Josh got in the car, opened all the windows, and tore around in the packed sand waving and smacking to get rid of the flies.

Mercifully, Thanksgiving dinner was very nice. We were invited to a friend's house who arrived in Doha at the same time we did. Polly is a marvelous cook, who has unraveled the mysteries of baking in Qatar in a way I can only dream of emulating. Mind you, Thanksgiving dinner three months after you arrive in a foreign country is a daunting task. I decided early on that it was way beyond my ability and I don't know what we would have done if Polly and George hadn't invited us. She brined the turkey and it was moist and delicious. There were several families, and we ate outside at picnic tables in their community garden. Short sleeves and bare feet. Not to brag.

And before we knew it, the visit was over. I wish we had been able to see a camel race, or somehow show Josh and Linda some fancier sights. We did get a babysitter one night and go out to dinner at a restaurant in Souq Waqif. But it was wonderful of them to visit, and I appreciate it.

Home Sweet Home

It's been a while since I did or said anything interesting and my imagination hasn't been clicking the way I might like. The sense of humor is lacking, too. Good day to decide to post, B. The idea is that maybe blogging will help me regain perspective.

This is not what my house looks like. This is what my house would look like if it were clean.

Here's the sitting area in the living room, in the front of the house next to the entryway. I like the floor pillows. The orange you can see through the window is the wall to the side garden, which in our case is just a bricked walkway. If we were staying longer I would pull up a couple rows of brick alongside the wall and plant creeping vines like bougainvillea so we would see some green out the windows... one neighbor did that last year and the effect is really nice.


Here you're looking from the couches at the entertainment console and its mass of wires. We've more recently spruced up that area with family photos on the shelves.


Here's the dining room - an open plan from the front of the house to the back. You can't see the door to the back garden, just past the right edge of the picture.


The kitchen is the only small thing in the house, complete with metal cabinets and an exhaust fan that draws steam from the stovetop and vents directly out the top side; I have no idea what use that might be. You have to light the oven with a match, which adds a nice element of danger to cooking. The kitchen is only connected to the house by a door off the hallway that leads to the laundry and maid's room. It's really hard to hear anything that's happening in the rest of the house when you're in there. I've been spoiled by my Pittsburgh kitchen; I really miss being able to talk to people while I get the food ready.


Here's the master bedroom.


The boys share this room now; A is in her own space using the maid's bed which we carried upstairs. For the past week the boys have had a camping tent pitched between their beds (a birthday gift for C) which really adds to the effect of the room as you might imagine.


And this is what a bathroom looks like. No shower curtains or rods. Never quite got around to fixing that in the kids' bath...


Hopefully my mood funk will pass today. I'm doing all the things that usually work for me: getting exercise, planning family outings, cooking meals. Yesterday really stunk and if my job is to keep the family happy, balanced and functioning we can't have much more of that...

Thin Blood

It's 79 degrees and I'm pulling out the fleece.

I'm actually glad they've switched off the chiller in the pool and switched on the heat. I can exercise outside during the day so long as I either ride bikes or stay in the shade. We're going to have to start using sunscreen, which we haven't had to do so far because the sun was so painfully strong even the kids hid from it. The cold water tap actually runs somewhat cool; I don't have to put ice in the bathtub to prevent the kids from being scalded. We sleep without the A/C blowing at us. It's the beginning of the growing season, so I planted some annuals in the back garden. Nothing fancy - just vinca, petunias, and dianthus. But things are getting greener (where there are irrigation tubes).

This is very nice.

Now if I could only get a good steak...

C's Birthday Pool Party (and ruminations)

To celebrate C's birthday (the big six!) he wanted a pool party because when will he ever again be able to have a pool party in November?

Normally the birthday parties in our family involve a theme, a fancy cake, decorations, and a bunch of special party games. Well, this year there was a lot going on so we took a lighter approach of more self-directed fun. We invited friends to the community center in the compound and played with folding and decorating paper,

bopped balloons around, played a couple of games, had cake,

(the birthday boy)
(Tobias, C, Dane, A, Lucas)

(Tom, Alex and his mom)

opened presents,


and then went swimming. Many thanks to Gigi for providing pictures...




I was extra glad it worked out (and nervous) because for his birthday dinner we planned a sure-thing: KFC at the skate park. Either there was a special event or it's just going to be mobbed for the rest of the winter, but there were at least 10 times as many people as we have ever seen at the family park. Poor C; it just wasn't much fun and they weren't able to practice on the skateboards at all.

But the party was a laid-back good time; the boys were just really excited to be together and they didn't need a lot of bells and whistles to have fun. C is just so happy to have school friends. I remember being amazed at how J matured when he went off to kindergarten - he really felt good about himself, he enjoyed being around kids his age, he learned so much about friendship. C is there now and it's just a joy to hear him talk about how he has so many friends, and to watch him make artistic creations out of everything he can get his hands, scissors, and some glue on.

I think C was the perfect age to come here. J and A felt really uprooted - they were pretty established and happy with their daily routines. Of course, being five years older J dealt with the stress better than his sister did but this hasn't been as easy for him as I thought it would. For C it was going to be a time of upheaval anyhow, going off to school for the first time, so he didn't have any rigid expectations of what his life should be like. It will be harder for him to leave Doha. J and A both really miss their friends in Pittsburgh and talk about them often; their home base definitely without a doubt did not move.

That night we also said goodbye to Gigi and Grandpa Dave. It was wonderful to see them and I remain thoroughly impressed that they made the trip. Now, I don't know how spectacular Doha seemed to them in the wake of a whirlwind tour of London, but they certainly seemed amused and happy to be part of all the Halloween and birthday festivities. I guess those events were the main attraction here more so than sightseeing. It was a long way to come and I'm sure they're exhausted but we really enjoyed seeing them and we appreciate that effort.

Beach Day

We wanted to do something fun outside Doha with Gigi and Grandpa Dave, so took our honkin' big SUV south of the city to a beachside resort called Sealine.

(Aside - did I mention that we got a honkin' big SUV? Now that the weather is getting so nice, we wanted to do some exploring in the desert and that means 4WD. It's handy, too, while the grands are in town so we can move the whole group in one vehicle. And there's something kind of surreal about trucking around a Middle Eastern city in a big-a** TrailBlazer with Johnny Cash playing on the stereo. Add that to the list of "never thought I'd...")

Back to the beach. Sealine is about an hour's drive Doha, going south through the desert. Photos don't serve a purpose in most of Qatar's desert areas because there's absolutely nothing to look at. It's tabletop flat and the ground isn't really sandy but rocky, hard-packed dust and widely scattered scrub. Occasionally you see a group of camels but they stay pretty far away from the road. Most of the coastline is the same thing: packed dust turned to mud flats by the tide. So you have to know where to look for a decent beach.

After driving through that for an hour, going past oil refineries and a massive power plant, you get to the sand dunes and a nice, long sandy beach. Sealine is a resort on the beach, and for 50 QR per person you can go use their facilities and enjoy the beach and pool. We were not the only ones to have this idea. The pool was crazy.


I need to get my rant about Sealine out of the way so I can move on... the pool water was cloudy, the facilities were barely a step up from what you would expect at a public beach, and there were hardly any umbrellas or chairs on the beach. But what made me crazy was the trash - I picked up plastic bags, bottles, paper cups, even broken glass. What people do makes me sick.

OK, now I'm going to move on and show what a day at the beach looks like in Qatar: a lot of it is like any beach. We had a strong offshore breeze, so no body surfing today. We get bigger waves in Northern Michigan.


Mother and son bonding time.


But I haven't ever seen camel rides offered along the beach at Mullett Lake. Key tip: sit behind the hump. I'm not sure why they don't just slide right off the hind end, but I guess that's what the saddle is for.


Nor do you see groups of women in abayas on the beach at Walloon Lake.


Maybe it's that the heat has broken, maybe I'm acclimating to the culture, maybe I'm being brainwashed. But the abayas don't look particularly restrictive to me anymore. These women don't look oppressed to me. Their abayas are detailed and ornate with rhinestones and embroidery. They're wearing jeans or whatever they want underneath, walking with sandals or barefoot along the beach, drinking a soda, talking and laughing. As far as I can tell, in Qatar the black robe (abaya) and head scarf (shella) are pretty much obligatory for Muslim women, but further covering is up to the individual. And it's not so discriminatory when you realize that the men wear full robes and head coverings as well. I don't really get why women have to wear black, but what woman doesn't have a little black dress in her wardrobe?

Sorry for all the tangents... Here you can see the dunes in the distance. The tiny bumps on top of the dunes are SUVs - dune bashing is a big sport here. There are ATV rental places lining the road that leads to the dunes...


All in all, it was a good day, and it was helpful to be able to use Sealine's facilities. We're hoping to get out of Doha a lot more often now that we have an appropriate vehicle for the desert. I have a long list of places I want to see...

Halloween

It's Halloween in Doha, too! At least at the American School it is. They pull out all the stops to make sure the kids get a Halloween; most neighborhoods here don't observe this rather Satanic / American holiday. So ASD had a Halloween Carnival party last weekend and celebrated today with a Kindergarten parade and parties in the classrooms. Here's C in a toga with his Kindergarten class.


One of the moms in our compound organized trick-or-treating and a potluck party too, so we got the whole experience. Now, our neighborhood in Pittsburgh has a lot more families participating in Halloween, but the folks here made it up with gusto. About 25 villas hung trick-or-treat signs, but J was amazed that his take was as good as he's accustomed to getting in Regent Square. J is all about the take on Halloween.

Here's C (a Roman), A (pumpkin princess), and J (ninja). Let's call this the "before" shot.


And click here to see the "after." You really are seeing (and hearing) two extra kids there; those are our dear friends and constant companions Dane and Lucas. I'd like to say I've never seen such a commotion in our home but I know you all would cry bull on that...

Back in Doha

Well, I said I'd write a bit about going home from Sri Lanka but at this point it's old news so I'll briefly summarize.

We got home eventually with only a few mishaps: after a week of eventless white-knuckle driving in Sri Lanka we arrived on the modern streets of Doha and our taxi driver promptly smashed the minivan. No injuries (although RTM's back is still creaky) but the irony was notable.

Also, with the help of the internet we diagnosed the kids' bug bites as bed bugs rather than mosquitoes. Fortunately, we haven't seen any evidence that we brought stowaways home.

It was kind of strange to come "home" from a foreign vacation and land in Doha. It actually felt almost like coming home. Almost. We were really glad to see our friends in the compound, and to eat plain old peanut butter.

I did get a fun break last weekend - I borrowed someone's bike and went out for a ride with a group from CMU. It was awesome, and hopefully I'll be able to ride with them again. It's really fun to ride with a group, especially when you can form a pace line and really hammer. Or just click along and watch the camels.

Now we're back in school and getting ready for Halloween. J will be a ninja (realizing a lifelong dream), C will be a Roman in a toga, and A will be a Pumpkin Princess. As an added bonus, Gigi and Grandpa Dave are here for a visit, so we have a busy week ahead!

Sri Lanka - Beach

'Round midnight we pulled up to The Fortress and the gates were closed.

These were like real fortress gates, the kind you'd expect to see in a castle just before the portcullis. Except bigger. Honestly, they were about 20 feet high with a giant wall around the entire resort and it took a couple of minutes to let the inner chambers know we were here and worthy of admittance.


Once we got in the door, it was wonderful. This was our splurge for the week, the fanciest hotel, and it was gorgeous. The pool was huge, the rooms likewise and packed with amenities (ipod! Bose DVD! espresso! plasma TV!) The best part was that, even with the super posh amenities we felt relaxed and welcome. There was no problem with letting the kids run around and explore and enjoy themselves. We took them to a CMU function at the Four Seasons in Doha and our nerves were shot trying to control their, ahem, exuberance, but no such stress here. The staff was friendly and genuine, and I felt like they were really looking out for us. We took a day to chill out before we could even think about doing any more touring around. The beach was pretty rocky in front of the hotel so we spent most of the time at the pool.



It wasn't a hardship.



It's a good thing we liked the hotel, because the following two days were solid rain. But it takes more than a warm drizzle to pen us up and there wasn't thunder so we stayed outside and swam and explored the beach.

That was where I started to get a better sense of the place. All beaches in Sri Lanka are public, so the moment C and I stepped down from the resort property to play in the sand we were targeted by the tuk-tuk drivers trying to sell a ride. We had been warned by Nandana and the hotel not to accept these offers - you just aren't sure enough of where you'll end up. I didn't get the sense there was a danger of abduction, but you could get shaken down or abandoned. So there was no way I was buying a ride. Once I was able to get that message across ("I'm not getting in a tuk-tuk, and there's no way I'm going to put my kids in a tuk-tuk. We can talk about America, we can talk about Sri Lanka, we can talk about the weather, I'm happy to talk. But I'm not buying a ride."), we were actually able to talk and it was really enlightening.

The southern coast of Sri Lanka was hard hit by the tsunami in December 2004 and the evidence still is everywhere. It was dark and late when we drove in, but even so I was aware that Nandana's commentary changed from identifying the types of farm (coconut, pineapple, tea, tobacco, banana, turpentine, etc.) to noting the impact of the tsunami: in this empty stretch there were houses. Here the commuter train was swept from its tracks, killing hundreds. See the boats still grounded well away from the shore. Many hotels and homes have been rebuilt, and life has clearly moved on but all along the coastline there are are homes and shops where only ruins remain like memories.

The memory is a constant shadow on the people as well. Everyone we met had a comment on what it was like before the tsunami. I was glad that when the tuk-tuk drivers heard I was American they told me, "After the tsunami the Americans were the first ones here. 24 hours later they came with supplies to help us." "Bill Clinton stood on that spot to speak." I saw a Habitat for Humanity t-shirt, UNICEF trucks (from the UN), and a US Aid outpost; it was good to feel proud of my country, like we had actually done something right in the global community. At the same time I felt completely impotent, because clearly there is so much left to do, and so little I could help. But that afternoon I could talk and listen. You wonder whether it's ghoulish to go to a tourist spot after a disaster, but at this point I think what Sri Lanka needs most is to bring back their economy, and this is the right time to go. Of course, now the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) violence is crippling the tourist industry, so I don't know how they're going to get past that.

Enough said. I didn't take pictures of tsunami damage, but we did get some nice ones on our last day, so here we'll cut back to the vacation. By Thursday we were ready to venture out again. We arranged for a tour of the old Dutch and Portugese forts at Galle and stopped at a turtle hatchery on the way home. Maybe we were spoiled by Sigiriya, but Galle wasn't as impressive as we had hoped. On the other hand, the turtle hatchery was very cool.

For the last 15 years, this small outfit on the beach has been buying back the turtle eggs that beach combers dig up to sell at the market as food. They identify, label, and re-bury the eggs and then raise the young turtles until they have a decent shot at survival in the wild. We got to see green turtles and hawksbills, but they also had leatherback eggs buried. This baby green turtle was four weeks old.


Watch your finger, dad!


Even A got brave and fished a couple out of the water.


We made an extra donation for the opportunity to release six young turtles back to the sea. It was a stirring experience, much more up close and personal than you'd ever be allowed to get in the US.

I was unsuccessful in uploading a movie to this site; click here for a youtube video of the release.

It was another excellent day.

Our last day in Sri Lanka was pretty much eaten up by travel. We got out early and walked along the beach until we found a good spot to body surf in the Indian Ocean. Check out was at noon, and Nandana picked us up and delivered us to the airport in plenty of time to make our flight.

Sri Lanka - Cultural Triangle - long post!

We arrived in Sri Lanka in the late afternoon on Thursday, met Nandana our English-speaking driver, and were off in the van. Yes, Red Dot Tours did get the memo (ref. previous post) and although the van was by no means new, it was roomy and had seat belts to spare. Because driving in Sri Lanka is an experience.

The tour companies strongly encourage tourists to hire drivers and that's not just to boost the economy. It's a safety issue. The roads are narrow and potholed, generally two lanes or less, and traffic is both heavy and diverse. The most common vehicles include bicycles, tuk-tuks (three wheeled enclosed motorcycles), modified tractors, trucks, and cars, in order of increasing velocity. The speed of the vehicles varies wildly, so cars are continually passing other travelers. Remember the potholes and two lanes?
Yep, you'll have cars going in opposite directions while simultaneously passing bikes and tuk-tuks, as many as four abreast, on a two lane road. Use of the burm is widespread and has prevented countless fatalities. Let's just say we were all glad to have Nandana who got us around the country safely and, with liberal dramamine, in reasonable comfort.

Our first night was in a hotel on the beach in Negombo, close to the airport. The beach was great - probably 100 yards of sand from the hotel to the sea, and stretched in either direction as far as I could see.


That's A with one of the sailboats you see in the boys' surf picture. But we only had the morning to enjoy it because we had a long drive to Sigiriya, our base for the next three nights. The drive was quite interesting though, as you just read, and filled with sights. There are fruit stands with coconuts and bananas all along the roadside, and Nandana was great at pointing out different plants and animals.

It was interesting to see the Buddhist shrines next to Catholic churches and Muslim mosques. I was surprised to see religious tolerance, and I don't know whether that's because I've spent the last couple of months in Qatar where non-Muslim religions are invisible or because I assumed a third-world country wouldn't be so progressive.

We stopped for lunch at a place he recommended at the edge of a lake. The food is... well, it's curry. You can often get simple Western food but generally, the food is curried x. Turns out that it's kind of hard to feed blonde kids in Sri Lanka because even the plain chicken sandwich has curry and even the hamburgers have minced onion mixed in. We were hard pressed to find anything J and A would eat, but C was in his glory. That kid eats like a champ - there's not a table he's seen that doesn't have something he likes on it. He doesn't get motion sickness and can sleep anywhere too, which was a good thing. Overall, C definitely won the prize for being a good traveler.

The best part of the day was the elephant ride. Nandana brought us to a place near Sigiriya where they do elephant rides, which I thought sounded pretty kitschy but it was really fun. Sometimes I need to remind myself it's OK to be a tourist. Our elephant was named Rani and everyone enjoyed the ride, even A who I thought would hate it. As the sun got lower, the creatures started coming out - the sky was filled with huge fruit bats, and we saw monitor lizards and cormorants and cranes and a hornbill and monkeys and all sorts of cool things. Of course there was a vendor conveniently selling bags of bananas so we all got to ride on Rani's neck and feed her bananas. Except for A because three-year-olds don't do that, as she was quick to point out.



And here are the fruit bats - click to enlarge.


We arrived at the hotel after dark, so it wasn't till morning that we got to appreciate the surroundings. You can see Sigiriya rock from the open-air restaurant.

All the restaurants were open-air; now that I think of it, the only reason they closed rooms off was to keep in the air-conditioning. We were outside all day long from the minute we left our hotel room. Sigiriya Village, our hotel, had beautiful grounds filled with plants and wildlife (mostly birds and monkeys). We had two adjacent rooms and the kids decided they were brave enough to sleep in their own room rather than splitting up with the 'rents. Crafty little buggers - they figured out they wouldn't be allowed to turn on the TV unless they ruled their own roost. Score for both kids and parents. After a two-minute tutorial J was confident he could summon us on the phone and we all got a good night's sleep.

In the morning we got off to see the ancient ruins at Polonnaruwa. On the way Nandana stopped at the roadside where he knew a man who feeds monitor lizards for the tourists.

Polonnaruwa is the second ancient capital of Sri Lanka, after Anuradhapura. Those two cities, with the last ancient capital (Kandy) create the cultural triangle. Polonnaruwa was the capital from the 11th to 15th century. The fun thing about ancient ruins in Sri Lanka (aside from how very old they are) is that you can walk around inside them. Be careful not to fall off the edge. This is the council chamber where the king would meet with his advisors.

All the walls and columns were engraved with relief pictures of lions, elephants, monkeys, dragons, and flowers.

Here is a moonstone - they were placed at the bottom of the steps at the entrance to temples and other important chambers. It represents the cycle of reincarnation from geese on the outside through elephants, horses, creeper vines, and finally the lotus in the center representing nirvana.

The most common ancient architectural feature in Sri Lanka is the dagoba. The one at Polonnaruwa is 55 meters high and was built at the end of the 12th century.

Here we are standing with a Buddha inside one of the smaller shrines surrounding the dagoba.

And this is the rock-cut shrine at Polonnaruwa. These depictions of the Lord Buddha, along with two more to the left that don't appear in this photo, are all cut from one enormous rock. It's hard to get a feel for the magnitude of many of the Buddha statues in Sri Lanka - they're just so huge.

We decided to climb Sigiriya rock in the morning on Sunday.
Sigiriya is a citadel built by King Kasyapa who reigned for only 18 years at the end of the 5th century. This is an interesting story: he killed his father the king, stole the crown, and sent his older brother into exile in India. With this history, he was pretty paranoid so he built this citadel on top of a 370 meter high rock to protect him from his brother's inevitable return. It's worth a few minutes to read the wikipedia entry on Sigiriya. These are the gardens at the base of the rock.


The steps are carved right into the cracks between boulders.

The actual palace at the top has been destroyed by time but here the kids are at the very top step.

Looking back down to the water gardens.

And this is what the top stretch of steps looks like...

Every once in a while you come across a snake charmer.

Cows roam freely all over the place.

In the afternoon we took a jeep safari tour of Menneriya National Park where we saw loads of wild elephants, including several babies.


On Monday we had an unbelievably long day. We needed to drive from Sigiriya all the way down to Kogalla, at the southern tip of the country. We started at about 8:30 and made three stops: at an Ayurvedic garden where we had a tour and learned about medicinal herbs, at Dambulla cave temple, and at the Pinnewala elephant orphanage. The cave temple at Dambulla was impressive - five caves filled with hundreds of Buddha statues and murals.

I especially liked this shrine, where in the 12th century they added a couple of Hindu gods just to be fair. You can see Vishnu on the left, next to all the Buddhas.

But by this time we were pretty well behind schedule and a long way from our hotel, with one stop left at Pinnewala. Just our luck - the bridge for the main road was out and it took forever to get there on a tiny, winding, cratered one lane road. Thank you, dramamine. We got there just in time to see them finishing up the elephants' bath in the river and walked around to get a front-row view. It was a great vantage right there on the rocky bank of the river. Turned out that was also the exact path they parade the elephants along to get back to the orphanage. It was pretty exciting when the elephants started coming straight at us; C and I were pressed against a rock wall trying to get out of their way while Dad fled with A and J up to the gate for their own close-up. Those elephants are pretty blinkin' big, and not so tame that you'd really want to be that close. Unlike the docile Rani, I got the clear impression that these guys wouldn't mind charging and there was no fence, no wall, not even a mahout with a pointy stick between us and them. I started thinking that maybe the super-conservative American safety measures weren't such a bad idea.

It was now nearly 5 pm, we had gotten about 50 km down the road and we had about 200 km left to go, and the average traveling speed in Sri Lanka is 30 km per hour. It was very late by the time we arrived at the Fortress Hotel, in Koggala just east of Galle. We were exhausted and ready to spend a few days chilling out by the beach.