hill country

From Sigiriya to Nuwara Eliya today, the Hill Country. “Mac”-this and “Loch”-that Tea Estates and little towns one building deep on each side of the clogged “highway”, one side wedged into the red hills, the other side teetering precariously at the edge of steep ravines that sweep down into meticulously maintained raised vegetable beds, laundry on bushes, hindu temples, stands of pines, and tea, tea, tea. Roadside vegetable stands everywhere and children despondently plying their trade in brilliant bouquets of carnations to largely unromantic traffic as it passes.
The roads today make previous curves seem like an airport conveyor belt. They are a bowel-rearranging, full-body affair; 2 feet bracing on the dash, 2 claws gripping the roof struts, trying to share the force through the whole of my spine to minimize whiplash… More hairpins than your granny's vanity drawer. 
The sprawling grandeur of the tea estates, dinosaurs out of time, stands in sharp contrast to the scrappy shanties of the tamils who work said estates. I have learned that, unlike the Northern Tamils who have a long standing history in Sri Lanka, money, and education, the Tamils of this area were brought here by the British to work the tea hills. They are ragged and desperately poor, clothed in scraps, and their work impossibly back-breaking (& probably quite poisonous - who knows what kind of chemicals keeps the pristine veneer)…jesus, and I’m drinking a cup of tea right now as i write this… : ///
Tonight we stay in Nuwara Eliya, over the valley below clouds of purple grey and rose white, as if out out by a knife in relief against the not-yet sunset pale blue. For one moment, a perfect elephant head, curling trunk and deep soulful eye etched within, but by the time i can direct the boys’ attention (D and the hotel “boy”), the elephant, like any wild thing, is gone.
The evening unfurls and I watch the sky morph continuously - all one need do is blink and a new watercolor spills forth and seeps into the wet paper of this Sri Lankan sky… it’s better than the puppy channel.

​5 am the next morning it’s just me and the monks chanting across the valley and the frogs, whose chorus wafts unevenly through the still dark air, like an orchestra of bamboo bells warming up for performance. Off to Ella today.