Sri Lanka In Spandex
Jason Heaton Takes On Sri Lanka’s Hill Country By Bicycle
By
Jason Heaton on July 7, 2009
I woke on Day Two to the sound of a steady cold rain beating on the tile roof. We had another 100 kilometres to ride and wanted to get an early start. It would be mostly downhill today, and the rain would make the going treacherous on oil-streaked mountain roads. So we opted to doze a bit longer and hoped that the rain would let up. It finally did as we finished our breakfasts (more curry), so we suited up in jackets to ward off the inevitable road spray and set out once more.
The ride down to the town of Ella was exhilarating, with sheer precipices and deep gorges on one side, steep cliffs on the other; lumbering buses and trucks appeared around every hairpin turn.
Our destination was a town called Belihul Oya, 1,800 vertical metres below Nuwara Eliya. The early kilometres passed quickly, with hairpin descents and screaming straightaways for what seemed like hours. The slick roads and steep drops on the roadside made for a white-knuckle death grip on the handlebars, and I was careful to not squeeze the brakes for fear of overheating them and melting the pads. Upali and I would stop every few kilometres to catch our breath and cool the brakes. Riding uphill was tiring, but the ride back down proved challenging in its own right.
The temperature rose as we descended, and the sun emerged from behind the clouds; the tarmac steamed, causing us to shed layers of clothing. Along the way, we stopped at several gorgeous waterfalls, including the famously towering Rawana Ella Falls. By evening, we rolled into Belihul Oya ready for dinner and soft beds.
The Belihul Oya guesthouse is achingly picturesque. Situated alongside a cascading river, its open-air dining room and clean, modern sleeping quarters were a treat after a tough day of riding. After scarfing down more rice and curry and more Lion beer, I showered and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
After the previous day’s coasting and braking, Day Three brought more climbing. Upali’s knee was not doing well after suffering on the steeps up to Nuwara Eliya. We headed into the heart of tea country, the roads no more than crumbling paths wide enough only for the small trucks that ferried tea pluckers to their day’s work.
Reaching a crossroads in a small town, we stopped for a ginger beer. Upali found a tuk-tuk and said his farewells, promising to come back to meet me along the road in his friend’s van after he’d made it to his house, our day’s destination. As the tuk-tuk drove off, I felt a hint of trepidation and started pedaling in the same direction. There was little English spoken up here and, as I climbed above the last tea estate on the mountain and into the forest, I have to admit, it’s where the adventure really started for me. I stopped at a small roadside fruit seller’s shack and practiced my Sinhala to say hello and buy some bananas and thambili.
Then the road turned to dirt and headed into a dense forest. For the first time, I saw no people and no traffic. Around a bend, there was a small waterfall cascading over a rock into a pool. It seemed too good to pass up so I dismounted my bike, took off my cycling shoes, and peeled off my jersey. The pool was so cold it made me gasp out loud as I ducked my head under the waterfall. It was the crystallizing moment of the whole trip – alone on a remote mountaintop in a foreign land, dirty and tired but completely at peace and happy.
I climbed back up and sat on the roadside to dry my feet before putting my shoes on. I glanced up the road and saw something that made my whole body shudder. Walking toward me was an elephant, the biggest I had ever seen. It seemed to occupy the entire road. My instinct was to leap back into the ditch. But then I heard voices, and from behind the elephant emerged two men carrying long sticks. They were mahouts and this was a working elephant, presumably coming back after a day of loading felled trees onto trucks. As they drew closer, the men eyed me with as much fascination as I did them. The ground shook with every step from the elephant. They paused when they got to me, the mahouts’ teeth stained red from chewing betel leaves. I greeted them in my best Sinhala and asked them what the elephant’s name was. “Raja” was the response that came. “King.” I had never stood so close to an elephant before. It towered above me, emitting an aura of strength and fearlessness. With no more common words to share, we all nodded and moved on in our own directions.
I finally rode over the mountain and headed down the other side, out of the forest into more tea plantations. It wasn’t long before a pickup truck, its horn blaring, approached me with a smiling passenger leaning out the window. It was Upali, come back to get me. I tossed my bike into the back and, with a mix of disappointment and gratitude, piled into the cab. We turned around and bounced down the mountain, our journey over. We spent that night in a tea planter’s manor house. After a cold shower followed by some roti and arrack, the wind knocked out the power, which signaled that it was time to go to bed. I slept with dreams full of elephants and waterfalls and tea, and my leg muscles twitching under the sheets.
Jason’s article has also been published in Serendib, the in-flight magazine of SriLankan Airlines.
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