Down the Mountains to Tissa(maharama)

Took of from Nuwara Eliya in the morning. Luckily it had stopped raining. On the way, we saw a Hindu temple. This was (one of?) the first Hindu temples we stopped at, since almost everything else we had seen was primarily Buddhist.



Some more driving...

This place is called the Ella Gap, because it's the gap between these two mountains, and on a clear day, you can see all the way to the ocean.



Next up was the Rawana Falls. Pretty neat waterfall, with a little pool that you can go swimming in. I didn't, but other people were!



Side note: this is EGB (Elephant Ginger Beer). It's basically ginger ale, and people here love it and go crazy about it. It's everywhere, and actually pretty good.

Destination: Tissa(maharama). Even to the locals, the name is too long, so they all just say Tissa instead of the full name.

Like most towns, it's pretty small, but a neat place with a couple big lakes, and more Buddhist temples. I wandered around a bit and somehow went into a small, rural neighborhood. Everyone was very friendly, just like everywhere else, with the usual "Hello sir!", "How old you are?", "Where you are going?", "Goodbye!".

I'd say I stopped and chatted with a couple of them, but we had a serious linguistic divide, with my Sinhala basically limited to "Ayubowan" ("long life", used like Mahalo to say hi and bye), "Stuti" (thank you), and a few other random words that weren't very helpful. On the other side, people often like to say "hi", and ask me how old I am. I asked Aruna why, and he said it's because I look really young (he said someone thought I was 16 at one point). Anyway. I did say "hi" to a few of them, and even got as far as "what is your name! how are you! good! OK bye!".

Even in the cities, and everywhere else, people are generally very friendly.



Tomorrow is an early start at 5:00 AM! (at least in theory)