Nuwara Eliya and Horton's Plains/World's End

Nuwara Eliya was a long, bumpy, windy, and squishy 5 hour bus ride from the junction by Tissamaharama. We made the mistake of sitting at the back of the bus (they were the only two seats together that were still available). With about an hour left in our ride we finally got seats near the front which was SO MUCH BETTER! I would recommend to anyone to sit separately near the front of the bus than to sit together at the back of the bus if you had to make the choice! Regardless, the seats anywhere on a bus is made for tiny skinny Sri Lankans. Chad definitely did not fit in these seats (and those who know him also know he is not that big).

Morning view from King Fern Bungalow

We arrived at the Nuwara Eliya bus station and was promptly greeted by Wasantha, the manager of the King Fern Bungalow (not to be confused with King Fern Cottage, owned by his brother Nishantha). Up one of the hills we went to the guesthouse perched high on one of the surrounding hills with a gorgeous view of town centre. We checked into our room on the second floor which had a beautiful view off the balcony. We were eager to explore the town so Wasantha quickly drew up a little map that showed us the path to walk down to town (about 7 minutes) and we were on our way! We passed by a few kids playing cricket, saw the Cargills Food City that still had all their old colonial signage, had some short eats at a local vegetarian restaurant (best vada ever!), walked through the public golf course, and enjoyed the cool weather that was so familiar to us. The air was cool and crisp and a bit damp. Loved it! We had another amazing Sri Lankan meal, this time, prepared by Wasantha's wife, Chithra, and her helpers.

Dawn with Adam's Peak in the background.

The next morning we shared a van with three others to Horton's Plains for a 10km, relatively flat hike with some pretty uneven and muddy terrain though. We departed just before 5:30am with breakfasts packed for us and reached the park at about 7:30am after another very slow and bumpy ride. Along the way we spotted the silhouette of Adam's Peak along the road as the day broke.



We got out of the van to pay our entrance fees (again, expats with a residence visa have a much cheaper rate at 60 LKR compared to the 2500 LKR for foreigners) and was hit with cold! It was foggy and damp with temps probably hovering around 10 degrees. Not that cold, but certainly a big difference from the 30+ we were in down in Yala. We quickly hopped back into the van and drove to the parking lot which was our starting point.

World's End

It wasn't long until we were pretty warm while moving along the trail and the sun was breaking through the fog. It was a leisurely walk as we occasionally stopped at the informational signs to read about the flora and fauna of the plains. Within 45 minutes we had reached Mini World's End which was beautiful. After a brief stop and a few clicks of the camera we continued to what we really came for, World's End. That was probably roughly another 30 mins on so we were there by 9:15am. It was perfect timing as we took our time snapping shots and taking in the view. We sat down for breakfast as we watched the clouds and mist roll in over the view at around 10:00am. So peaceful.

The hike back to the car seemed much longer. On the way back was the beautiful Baker's Falls. We also stopped on the plains by the river to have a snack ... I didn't want to leave! I would have loved to set up a tent there and just stay there for awhile. It reminded me of home with "real" grass (i.e. grass like home and not Sri Lankan grass) with pine trees and rhododendrons all over along with the fresh air and clear visibility. Would love to go back one day and just spend the day in the park.



We got dropped off in town on the way back so we could have lunch then head down to the Mackwoods Labookellie Tea Factory.  The tour was lacklustre. When we first arrived we were told it would only be 5 minutes until the next tour. Then it was 15 minutes. Then 40 minutes later after being rather exasperated, we finally got a tour of the tea factory. The tour guide herself was real nice, but the cashier behind the counter of the tea room was rather cranky and had  a poor attitude tossing boxes of tea that customers were purchasing nonchalantly and pretty much throwing change back at them.

Anyhow, after that we headed back to our guesthouse where we had our 2nd lovely meal with Wasantha and Chithra along with our fellow adventurers.

Tea plantations near King Fern Bungalow. 

The next morning we woke and got ready for a stroll through some tea plantations Wasantha would take us on. What an amazing walk. Sunny morning, greenery all around, and Wasantha guiding us while answering all our questions about tea. He also found a tea picker who was nice enough to let us take photos with her and pick some tea. She was young and very genuinely nice, unlike the older tea pickers who actually beckon you to take photos with them so they can force you to pay them for that opportunity. We tipped this wonderful woman afterwards, anyways. I hope though, that through the years she doesn't become like the older women. After our walk, we had breakfast, then we were off to the train station to catch the train to Kandy! 

Kataragama and Yala National Park

A brief stop in Matara.

No time machines in this excellent adventure, but lots of good times were had! In Part 1 of our adventure, we started off in a rather cramped A/C bus in Colombo heading to to Galle. A brief pit stop in Galle to use the bathrooms and stretch our legs we quickly continued to Matara, this time on a regular non A/C bus. We briefly stopped in Matara for lunch before getting a bus to Tissamaharama, where our accommodations would be for the next two days. Travelling along the coast rather than going inland rewarded us with some amazing views of the coast!

In the garden of My Village Guesthouse.

We booked at My Village Guesthouse which turned out to be one of the best guesthouses I've stayed at so far. Sujith, the owner and his friend Alae, who was down from Colombo helping him were amazing hosts. We wanted to get to Kataragama for the evening puja (about 7pm) pretty quick so they helped us organise a tuk tuk for 1200LKR. No hassles, no problems!


Puja at Kataragama was interesting and different. Unfortunately, it was raining so we spent quite some time just standing under cover. I was later told that the Puja at Kataragama is mostly attended by Hindus and Tamils which have different traditions than the Sinhalese (as witnessed at Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic/Sri Dalada Maligawa). We saw one lady who was twirling head of long hair around (similar to headbanging) to the chiming of the bell at the temple, like she was possessed by some sort of spirit. Then there were a couple of different groups with drums, flutes, dance, and chants that paraded through the grounds touching and worshipping in particular ways. The one thing that I wanted to see was people smashing coconuts. So there are these two, giant tiles I suppose, in the ground on which people wish upon their coconut. This said coconut is sometimes on fire. When the wish is completed, the wisher smashes the coconut into the ground. If it breaks, it's good luck. If it doesn't, well, I guess what you wished for doesn't come true!

We got back to My Village to an amazing Sri Lankan dinner consisting of the proteins of our choice (chicken and fish) accompanied by 6 other side dishes! We were stuffed at the end and still couldn't finish. We got our full day safari organised for the next day (8000 LKR for the jeep and driver/guide + entrance fees). A note to expats with residence visas - try to get your driver to get you the local entry fee. It's something like 150 LKR as opposed to 2500 LKR! Photo is on my iPhone... will upload when I remember!

Entry Gate to Yala.

The next morning we were up at 4:30am with a tea ready for us. Alae and Sujith had been up preparing and packing our breakfast and lunch which we would eat in the park. Just after 5:00am we departed with our awesome driver who passed a bunch of jeeps on the way to the park to get us as close to the front of the pack as he could. We were in the park by 6:30am in time for the sunrise and immediately started to spot animals! We broke for breakfast at around 9:30am at a stopping point on the beach in the park. Most half day safaris leave the park by 10:00am leaving the park to just those on the full day safaris (which was just a handful) so when we drove around for another hour and a bit it was much more peaceful, allowing us to observe the leopard we spotted for quite some time!

We stopped by the river for lunch for a couple hours before starting the afternoon portion of the safari. Again a bonus was being able to start before all the afternoon half-day jeeps arrived. During this period we had some amazing close encounters with a few elephants where they were just a foot from the jeep while walking by. Just amazing. Also these elephants were such a contrast to the elephants in chians at Pinnewala, which I really don't like.

It started to rain, then pour at around 3:00pm. However, we weren't quite done yet! The jeep drivers have a bit of a network so if they spot a really cool animal they call each other. So at this point, there was word a sloth bear was spotted so we were rushed to that position where about 10 other jeeps were already. However, our driver, being patient, predicted that the sloth bear would exit the brush a little farther back and backed us up away from the other Jeeps. Eventually he moved a bit forward again but he was spot on! We got the closest sighting of the bear as it walked right past our jeep!

On our way back it was a bit of a slow trip on the wet rainy roads following or passing the local motorbikes/scooters/tractors. We waved to many of these locals and got some great smiles. One local man and his family on a scooter even tried to have a conversation with us while driving along! We arrived back at My Village for another amazing dinner after a nice shower. After dinner, Sujith asked us to help him place his guesthouse on Google Maps. This came up because when I booked his guesthouse I asked him to point out where he was located on Google Maps. Anyhow, it wasn't a really easy task as Tissamaharama ends up being Trincomalee on Google Maps but we figured it out eventually (we put Hambantota which allowed us to tag his guesthouse in Tissa). Sujith was so appreciative and we were so happy we could help!

The next day we were a bit sad to leave, but after a relaxing breakfast in the garden we said our goodbyes as the tuk tuk they arranged for us pulled away to drive us to the junction where we needed to catch our bus to Nuwara Eliya!

For more photos, go to my Facebook album.

South Asian Beach Games 2011 - Hambantota

Ok, I have to warn some people that my observations in this post are quite frank. I don't mention any names, but if you read this and you recognize yourself being criticized in here, I make no apologies. I would be happy to talk to you about how we could improve upon the work that was done and I'd be happy to hear any reasonable feedback you may have on my work. Please e-mail me or call me at the NOC if you need to reach me. I know change is not immediate and that I probably have ruffled a few feathers trying to set some change into motion. I know that people here can be stubborn and some think that of me as well. I can only hope that change for the better will eventually take place - even if it's not a conscious decision because of lessons learned.

I also felt the need to wait to post this until the decision was made on where the 2018 Commonwealth Games were being held as Hambantota was a bid city, so there was no chance that people could say I influenced a negative outcome on the bid process (although Canada has now been blamed). Congratulations to the Gold Coast!


An opportunity that came up unexpectedly was one that involved work with the South Asian Beach Games (SABG). When I had returned from CYG and midterm, I was disappointed to see the staff hard at work on SABG. Prior to leaving, I had checked, and double checked with them that they didn’t want to use Zeus for SABG Accreditation, which they didn’t need but as we addressed that they promised that they would not be involved with any SABG work as the Games Secretariat had it under control.


It wasn’t out of choice that they had to do work for SABG as the Games Secretariat eventually needed the help of the NOC. Seeing the disorganization and fresh out of my experience with coordinating results at the CYG using Zeus, I inquired about results management for SABG. The reaction was an "uhhhhhh..." so I offered that I would look into the possibility of managing Sri Lanka's results on Zeus. That quickly turned in to managing the results for all of SABG, but instead of Zeus it was done on Excel. (Long story short, there are non-Commonwealth countries that are a part of SABG whereas Zeus is currently geared towards Commonwealth countries ... soon to change!) 


The two weeks leading up to the games were intense. The office staff worked through the weekend and stayed as late as 1am at the office only having to take up to two hours to get home and then get back on transit by 7am to get back to the office the next day. By the time the games started I was seriously worried about their health as they were running on empty especially since they were not eating meals regularly. Perhaps they are used to it as Sri Lankans eat breakfast early, then lunch around 1pm, then dinner isn't until well after 8 or 9pm! For me it was really a struggle as most of you know I snack all day long. I eventually was attached to a bag of food, but not food that I am used to eating as the only fresh food I could really carry was bananas. So during this week of prep and then at the games, dinner often wasn't until 10:30pm when we were back at our accommodation and for me that is WAY off my schedule and goes against my rule of eating before I sleep. But, if I didn't, I would have been nutritionally starving my body and that's not good either! 


Ok, so back to the disorganisation... it comes from the Games Secretariat being a bit old fashioned wanting to plan everything from beginning to end without help. They didn't realise they were a bit out of touch, I think, with how games procedures have evolved and the intricacies with planning such an event. For example, accreditation applications and the accreditation forms were done on paper ... with carbon copy paper to make multiple copies. THEN, these forms had to be entered by hand into the online "accreditation system" which wasn't completed on time for the teams to do themselves so the NOC staff and a team of volunteers had to enter them all. I had put "accreditation system" in quotations because it hardly qualified as one. It was an online form with fields to fill in which then filled in the accreditation card template. No reports could be run and the system was extremely slow. There all sorts of glitches and it was poorly developed. These cards then had to be printed off one by one through the system and we only had an inkjet printer to do it. Then, because the alignment of how the cards were printed was poor, each one had to be cut out of a piece of 8x11 paper by hand and then glued together because the print out was single sided. Then, these were stuffed by hand into a plastic pouch. Oi! 


Then there was the volunteer management. There was no volunteer manual. Sure, the volunteers received a training session, but a lot of those volunteers could not make the training session. As a volunteer I would have been frustrated as I would have had such a vague idea of what my role was, what the rules were, and who my resources were that I would not have felt empowered. However, these amazing volunteers pulled it off by coming together as a team. I could see some of the committee members being really frustrated with all the questions they were getting from the volunteers as they tried to solve problems ... but that is a result of not having proper procedures and communication protocols in place. 


One of my biggest frustrations was having to deal with the demands of the media here. They just didn't understand that sometimes, they had to wait for the information as we were working with limited resources. Many wanted paper print outs which was just not possible with the tools we had. I had to insist that the best way for them to receive updates was via e-mail. Unfortunately a few of them failed to understand the pace at which we could work at and what we had to work with which brought out the ugly side in me. I am not proud of it. I'm not sorry for it. But instead, I am disappointed in myself for not keeping my cool. What was really frustrating to hear was that the members in the media centre were not helping each other out. I don't know if it's common - I do know that agencies compete against each other to be the best. But really? Results are public knowledge and I'm sure passing a score over to a fellow member of the media isn't going to hurt your career.

Well, how about some positives? The venues were fantastic. The crowd in Hambantota was through the roof (literally). The matches were free to watch, as were the nightly concerts and as a result, the venues would be filled to the rafters with spectators. It was so so SO awesome to see a sporting event bring the community together to enjoy sport. I could tell that some spectators weren't familiar with the rules of the sports, but were having a blast anyhow!

And then there were the athletes. For many of them, this was their first ever international competition. For others, they were veterans. What was great was to see the cooperation of the veteran nations in some of the sports teach the newbies in some of the sports. For example, it was the first international competition for at least two of the teams participating in Beach Handball and the progress these teams made through the few days of competition were remarkable. The learning and adaptation that was going on was the spirit of sport visible for all to see. Loved it!

Personally, this was a huge learning and personal development experience. As I've been learning how to manage my stress and my tolerance level for uncomfortable situations, the ones I encountered at SABG were more challenging than most I've ever had to deal with. It pushed me to new limits and it really made me again, thankful for the training that has been provided to the CSOs by CGC and CGF. I struggle day to day with the cultural norms here and they were magnified tenfold at the games. It's so cliche, but it's so true when they say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Grand Adventure Part 6 (Cayman Islands)

Chad is arriving in 26 hours ... and then we set off on a two week trip through parts of Sri Lanka and then to the Maldives. Life has been pretty all over the place (literally), but I will most certainly have an update after the Commonwealth Games 2018 host city is announced! In case you don't know, Hambantota on the south coast of Sri Lanka is competing against the Gold Cost in Australia. I honestly can't tell you who is going to win and who I want to win because like so many others, I keep flip flopping on the pros and cons. I don't envy the CGAs who have to make a decision on who to vote for!

Back to the adventure ...

So from the Isle of Man we left to go to London, met up with two other CSOs, Wendy (Uganda) and Natalie (Falkland Islands) and spent a night in disappointing 2 star "hotel" in a dingy basement triple room that smelled musty. The company was great though, we had a nice walk around in Covent Garden, and we were thoroughly excited for Cayman Islands!

We flew via Miami and reach Cayman on the evening of the 15th September. Greeted by all the CSOs we were relieved to find beautiful rooms at the Grand Cayamanian Resort and being in the company of familiar faces. Being exhausted, I hit the bed pretty early after dinner so to be ready for the next day!

Despite what some might think, we were in the boardroom from 9 - 5 everyday with the exception of one day ... where we made an afternoon trip to 7 mile beach (SO SO goregous!) I wish I had photos - I forgot my camera that day. :( Needless to say it was relaxing and really enjoyable. Jennie (CSP coordinator) did some one on one meetings, including mine, in the water. Now that is what I call an effective meeting! Aside from that, quite a bit of time was spent in the morning and evenings by and around the pool as the ocean off this resort had jellies in the water. We only learned after Nat and Jennie got stung!

We also met up with the Cayman Hash House Harriers who were an extremely hospitable group and made us feel so welcome! It was a "Hash Bash" meaning they had met some major milestone (in this case, the 1750th hash in the history of the club). The challenge that day was that it was a short run/walk (4km) but every km they had stopping points where participants, if they chose to participate, had to down a beer at each stopping point. Hearing from those who tried it, it was tough!

Anyhow, our midterm training in Cayman was incredibly rewarding. There was a lot of self-discovery through a lot of the nervous and anxious energy I was harbouring. I got some reassurances with what I was doing is in a positive direction and a much needed injection of self-confidence. We worked more on our cross cultural skills, problem solving, assessing our personal and professional progress, as well as evaluating the program thus far. We also did some work on principled negotiation ... I really need to work on that!

It was really hard to leave this group to come back to Sri Lanka. Not that I don't like Sri Lanka, but when you are with people who you are close to and love it's hard to leave them. I had spent the last month with some of the closest friends I have from meeting Linda in India, travelling with Paddye through Ireland and the UK, spending time with Wendy and Nat, then with the awesome CSOs in Cayman Islands. Additionally, for three weeks I had let my guard down and didn't have to deal with the constant questions of whether I needed a taxi, where I'm from, what I'm doing, or the staring. As much as those things don't really bug me, I am consistently in a heightened state of alertness which is a bit tiring and exhausting!  This was a really foreign feeling from the first time I left Vancouver. The difference I think was that I didn't have a benchmark of what it would feel like living alone, away from home, for an extended period of time. My trip back to home away from home felt like I was missing something ... but it wasn't long until I got back into my routine and things felt better again.

With that I conclude my Grand Adventure. I did spend one more day (12hr layover) in London on my return trip from Cayman back to Sri Lanka where I wandered around the Museum of Natural History (really cool place!) and Oxford Street. Photos will be on Facebook, eventually!

I also want to take this chance to thank my readers. I know many of you are reading this to just see what I'm up to, but I am also getting hits from some countries I wouldn't expect - particularly on my posts for the Kandy Esala Perhera and my stakeholder map! I also want to say that if you are one of those people who have ended up at my blog because you are searching for an image or information on travelling (or whatever else I have written about), please don't hesitate to send me a message/email if you have any questions!