Around the Bend

Our trip to Sri Lanka was chock full of fun things like elephant safaris, train rides through the mountains, tea plantations, outrageously good Sri Lankan food, and an endless supply of delicious Ceylon tea.

We also had a few adventures that were — how can I put this? — not exactly what we had in mind.

We had originally envisioned our 6-hour train journey between Kandy to Ella, for example, in the relative comfort of the first-class observation car at the front of the train.

We learned, however, that the current demand for tourist-related services in Sri Lanka far outstrips the supply, including but not limited to the aforementioned train car.

Instead, we found ourselves crammed in the space between the train cars with a considerable number of Sri Lankan families, other tourists, backpacks, suitcases and bags of rice.

But I think we may be more chicken-class people than first-class people: the minor inconvenience of standing for what ended up being close to 8 hours was mitigated by the thrill of (don't read this part, Mom) being able to hang out of the side of the train as it wound through the mountains.

We were also really pleased about the steady supply of food vendors who clambered over and among the hordes of people stuffed into the standing-room-only train.

As it turns out, I'll suffer through pretty much anything for 8 hours, if you feed me at half-hour intervals with savory Sri Lankan donuts and mangos rubbed in chili salt.

Our favorite vendor, however, was the friendly guy with a giant basket of fresh-roasted peanuts calling out "Good Penis! Good Penis! Good Penis! Try Good Penis!" as he made his way down the aisle.

Needless to say, it wasn't possible to pass that up.

After three days of hiking, eating, and drinking tea in the hill country of Ella, we were sufficiently recovered from our train ride to head to Udawalawe National Park, where we were thrilled to find lots of elephants and monkeys and about 3 zillion different kinds of birds.

We learned, incidentally, that different cultures have wildly different ideas of what makes for thrilling natural encounters.

One Sri Lankan tourist we met explained that most Sri Lankans don't get that excited about seeing elephants, in part because they're all over the country, and in part because they're featured in religious festivals that take place every year.

Sure enough: when we were riding around in the back of a safari jeep, our guide could definitely could take or leave the elephants, while he made sure to hit the brakes every single time he spotted a rabbit or a deer — yawn — cowering in the bushes.

John and I, on the other hand, got so excited about seeing monitor lizards that our guide started referring to them as "your favorite animal."

As in, "Oh look, there's your favorite animal again. I guess we'll stop and take another photo!"

He was really nice about it, but we suspect that our enthusiasm for the monitor lizard may not have been shared by everyone in the safari vehicle.

From Udawalawe, our plan was to travel by taxi to a guesthouse advertised as being "in close proximity" to Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a rainforest in southwestern Sri Lanka.

Our version of "close proximity" means you can get there in, say, half an hour.

This version of "close proximity" was something from another dimension altogether.

Ahem!

Before I go into the vacation-monologue equivalent of an 8-hour, standing-room-only train journey, I should confess that there was a certain lack of due diligence in our planning for our Sri Lanka trip in general.

And in this case, when I say "due diligence", what I really mean is "looking at a map."

In our defense, there was a not-insubstantial amount of chaos in our lives in the weeks leading up to Christmas, when we might have been scrutinizing our Sri Lanka travel plans and making follow-up calls and printing out something that had our return flights listed on it.

The kind that of chaos that leads one to pay rent twice in one month.

Just as, you know, a hypothetical example.

I say "might" because even when we aren't struggling to keep our lives together, we really try not to plan our trips down to the last antibacterial hand wipe.

(For the record: I deny antibacterial hand wipes, unless they're provided by my dear friend Janet, in which case I carry them around with me grudgingly and out of some misplaced sense of loyalty and excessive hygiene.)

So at some point during the headache-palooza of December 15 to 24, we found a place that described itself as being in the Sinharaja Forest Preserve "buffer zone", and, as I mentioned, in close proximity to Sinharaja.

It looked lovely in a humble, remote guesthouse kind of way, and since most of the other places we found were already booked, we went with it.

To get there, we asked one of the guys who ran the campsite in Udawalawe to help us organize a taxi.

Other than knowing it was somewhere in the vicinity of Sinharaja, we only had its name (Eco Jungle Hideout) and the name of the tiny village where it was located.

In retrospect, we might have paid more attention when we asked Mr. Campsite if he knew of it and his answer was, "Oh yeah...Eco Jungle...Hideout. It's....nice."

Thirty seconds later, his conversation went the taxi driver went something like this:

Mr. Campsite: Something something something Sinharaja.

Mr. Taxi: Okay.

John: Will he be able to take us to the hotel?

Mr. Campsite: Something something something something Eco Jungle Hideout something something.

Mr. Taxi: (silence)

Mr. Campsite: SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING ECO JUNGLE HIDEOUT SOMETHING SOMETHING

Mr. Taxi: (silence)

Mr. Campsite: Sinharaja something something something

Mr. Taxi: Yeah, okay.

Mr. Campsite (to us): Okay, he'll take you to Eco Jungle Hideout. No problem!

So we settled into the taxi. I stuck my head out the window and enjoyed the scenery, while John followed the slow but steady progress that showed up on his GPS.

For the record: traveling by private taxi is a relatively luxurious and speedy way to get from point A to point B, but even so: overland travel in Sri Lanka in general is somewhat laborious, especially if one has to traverse a mountain on molar-jarring dirt tracks.

Our estimate was that it would probably take 3 or 4 hours — at the very most — to travel the 60 or so kilometers from one park to the other.

Long about hour 4, Mr. Taxi started rolling down his window and asking people in the tiny villages and bigger cities along the way if they had heard of Eco Jungle Hideout.

This had mixed results — meaning some people pointed this way and other people pointed that way — so he kept driving.

Long about hour 5, we found ourselves driving through yet another tea plantation, this one complete with buildings labeled in the Queen's English as "Superintendent's Bungalow" and "Staff Recreation" and (our personal favorite) "Muster Shed."

The road snaked up the steep mountain in a series of long, slow switchbacks that were also charmingly labeled: Bend 1, Bend 2, Bend 3, Bend 4, Bend 5, Bend 6, Bend 7...

Long about Bend 10, Mr. Taxi parked his taxi, motioned to us to stay put, and hiked straight up the slope to interrogate some poor woman picking tea for a living.

While he was gone, John leaned over with the aforementioned GPS to show me that we were pretty much off the map.

I promptly rummaged around in my backpack and found a phone number for the elusive Jungle Hideout.

When Mr. Taxi came back, he seemed pretty happy to get on the phone and talk with someone who a) spoke Sinhalese, and b) could confirm that this hotel was not invented by crazy people from the Netherlands.

After they conferred, I also spoke with Mr. Guesthouse on the scratchiest cell phone connection imaginable, and I confirmed with some effort that yes, we were coming, and yes, we would like to have lunch when we got there, which seemed like it was going to be relatively soon.

And so Mr. Taxi turned his van around on the single lane road and we crawled back down through Bend 10, Bend 9, Bend 8, Bend 7, Bend, 6...

We were almost to Bend 5 when the phone rang again.

After a second, lengthier consultation, we turned around again and drove back through Bend 6, Bend 7, Bend 8, Bend 9, Bend 10...

Roughly two hours and sixteen more phone calls later, we turned onto a dirt track marked by a big yellow sign:

The good news about the tourist bangalow?

Our driver found it, thanks largely to the kindness of strangers and the wonders of cell phone technology.

The bad news about the bangalow?

It really seemed a lot like a Sri Lankan version of the hotel from The Shining.

Grand old estate in a semi-advanced state of decay perched at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere?

Check!

Darkness sweeping over the valley in the form of armageddon-like rain clouds?

Check!

Silent, lurking groundskeepers?

Check!

Complete absence of any other guests?

Check!

Complete absence of any sign of there ever having been any other guests?

Check!

Even our driver seemed a little concerned about leaving us there.

Whereas if I were him, I would have dumped us by the side of the road way back at the Muster Shed.