Wasgamuwa Walks and Kandyan Culture

Well, managed to get to an internet cafe so decided to do a quick blog update. Arrived at Wasgamuwa National Park very late on Monday night, so first port of call was bed! Our bedroom is basically a brick barn with an open wall, so at nighttime we can hear the crickets and frogs singing us to sleep. Tuesday we had a guided tour of our main sites, the HQ site where the laptop and researchers stay, and the tree hut, a fantastic treehouse built high in the boughs of a tree that we sit in every evening at dusk to watch for signs of elephants. On our first night we were lucky enough to see a herd of eighteen of these fantastic animals, mohters, aunts, sisters and babies, all steadily and quietly grazing, moving as they foraged. On the way home to our basecamp we also saw a lone tusker, dark and skulking in the tree line.

Day to day life here is quite idyllic, consisting of early mornings woken by the rooster, a leisurely breakfast of rottis and tea, and then a hike through the beautiful lands of the park: either a transect searching for signs of elephant or leopard or a monitoring of the electric fences used here to encircle the villagers, protecting them from the elephants. Of course, it is so hot here that even a short hike will leave us exhausted. It gets dark by seven, so early to bed, apart from the odd evening when we have a 'bottle party' with Chintaka and Sarath, our staff members who stay at basecamp, sampling the local arrack, a liquor distilled from coconut.

Following a hard weeks work we have come to Kandy for a few days, a big change from the rural peace we are now used to! The city is a riot of colour, noise and scary road-crossings! Visited the fantastic Botanical Gardens yesterday, and today we had the confusing task of catching a bus from Kandy's central bus station to take us to the Millenium Elephant Foundation. We had a brilliant day, washing elephants and being liberally drenched in return! Photographs will follow shortly, they are difficult to upload due to the format I am shooting in!

Tomorrow we plan on visiting the Temple of the Tooth, a temple on Kandy lake that houses a tooth taken from the funeral pyre of the Buddha himself. Afer that we return to Wasgamuwa, and hopefully more sightings of the wild elephants!

Until then, ayubowan!