in the end

summing up my great adventures...

Kandy (the first and longest part of the trip) where i was bored out of my brains, and turned to fruitless card stacking with mostly failure.

Colombo and our fairly long stay at aunty Anto's four-storey house - this is the view of other people's roofs from above... also spent new year's here with fireworks on the beach... pretty über!

the train ride around Singapore (on the way back from Sri Lanka) it's weird how the image is - blurry and all - is how i felt, everytime i sat down on those trains i fell asleep with jetlag. this was on the ride back from sentosa park thingo - absolute failure of a park, especially when your on your last dollars...

and a curious random picture from Queensland (which i went to with school) a few weeks after the great Sri Lanka adventure. i dunno what went through my head when i decided to take a picture on a rollercoaster... but here it is

the mighty jungle

much of our trip was spent in Kandy... where i think this shot was taken, though that tree in the far distance kinda looks like a gum tree - the same gum trees i ran away from in Australia!

seriously though, i hate to be so un-patriotic but one thing that really annoys me about lovely Australia is the gum trees, they're just so dull and grey and drop nuts everywhere... urgh

small and not-so-good picture of one tinsy section of Peredenia university - it was so spacious and massive and beautiful!! And green and wet and tropical...

taken at some weird-named national park - absolutely hated that place cos' there were leeches everywhere! i spent the entire walk through jumping up and down, the only time i paused was to take this picture... so disgusting though i felt like they might be crawling up the side of my tights on the way back and at the nearest stop i had to hop off and check.

anyway, this picture is quite significant cos it shows the other side of the country as it's immense beauty is cancelled out by the treacherous war that prevails. quite pissed off that there were a lot of places would've loved to go to (i.e. Trincomalee beach) but couldn't cos bombs had been going off there and twas too dangerous.

double-exposed fiddling - me in the trees by the looks of it, not my best angle eh?

Darren with a buffalo carcass for a head - we found this while randomly stopped in midst of Udawalawe national park (we were staying in a bungalow there) probably wasn't very hygienic to touch... not like a relic in a museum or anything. also picture probs would've worked better if there wasn't a hand there holding it up!

random rest stop on the way to Colombo or Kandy (dunno which one we travelled between the two so often!) and the transport there is so annoying, the roads are complete with potholes, dogs, cats, cows, buses going too fast and beeping loudly, you name it - and there's no 'right' side of the road - everyone just goes where they please, it's hell. what would take about an hour or two in Aus to travel would take 5hours there.

i don't quite know where the building is from in the back of this picture... or the trees for that matter, just mucking around with double exposure again ..

this one's pretty cool, we were along side this lake at the national park and i took a photo of it then turned the camera upside down and took the same photo, surprised it turned out so symmetrical though! it was an exquisite lake too - quite grey with dead trees rising out of it here and there.

on the road as part of our daily safari adventures, one of the best parts of sri lanka - we always got to stand up in the back of this massive jeep and get chased by elephants. if you can see, there's one just behind that 4wd there, actually i think it's 2 - a mum and it's kiddo.

and this elephant wasn't particularly nice and totally tried to kill us ... it flung mud at us and yelled a bit, but our tracker guy held out his hand and said something in sinhalese loudly and the elephant just turned it's back and walked off. that was just weird, i suppose it's something to do with asserting authority..

postcards from heaven

favourite part of the trip (apart from water skiing) was the beach, clearly...





the view from this skinny rickety four-storey cafe/motel jig we stayed at on the beach - literally two metres from the water.

this was the balcony of the same place, Shane on the left darren (the brother) on the right and dad's legs in the background. lol. . Darren, pretending to be the brother of Shane got us discounted prices for everything (Shane knew the owners well). we had two rooms just round the corner...

this is the view from the other side of the balcony, pretty, no?

and the weirdo (in a good way) rastafarian guys who charged too much but took us on this awesome snorkelling trip (on that boat) to the other side of that jutting out island bit you see in the distance. sadly the corals were mostly dead though because of the warm currents el nina or something... i don't really know.

Darren, the figurehead of another boat that took us on this adventure across this lake to a crazy island where a book was based, i read the book but totally can't remember the name... it was fun being on the bow though..

Count Demoney's island, apparently you can book out the place for a thousand bucks a week, you have to wade out a bit to get there and i think it fits a fair few people. we didn't stay there though, nevertheless it's a pretty cool concept.

that's me in a blur on the snorkelling boat, i think Darren wanted me to be to be placidly looking out to sea or something, but the boat rocked. i suppose blurry doesn't really suit me.

i reckon this is the most awesome picture of the lot (cos of the vignette retro effect). anywho, that's darren and i at this tucked away beach somewhere down the south coast. we ate from this italian lady with long white hair who had a property there, and charged us too much for not such great pasta. i made a temple (as you can see) instead of a sand castle cos i was staying with the theme of the country. darren attacked it with sand bombs cos his wasn't as cool.

in the family

meet the family i suppose...

that's Amanda and Darren on the way to ... can't even remember, fun journey though - we were completely hysterical for the most part.

on the way out from colombo where we stayed with my aunt Anto (who is actually in australia with us now) and Amanda; they are out front of this über four story building that was their house. it was right next to this army air base so if you went to the top of it you could see the planes flying out a few metres above you.

dad standing serenely at the door to the Kandy house. round the corner was a milk bar or 'kadday' as they call it there where there's these really nice chocolate finger biscuit packs. they were really yum and cost only 10 cents! so i went through 'bout five packets that day.

my uncle Russell and aunt Chandrani at the house in kandy (front view), upstairs is where these two live with their three sons (my cousins), and downstairs was where my nana lived and my other uncle Alcon along with the servants.

uncle Tresil and aunt Sarojini at their house on the way to Peradeniya university. The uni is absolutely beautiful (which i tried to capture but failed due to lack of light) anywho that's in a different post.

there was also a pic of me and my bro and my uncle Emmerson (who i adore!), but it's way dark and has absolutely no photographical merit. sigh.

intro

exactly a year later i find the time and energy to develop and scan the photos i took from sri lanka. (all courtesy of my best buddy HOLGA from the land of Lomo).

anywho they're completely raw and untouched and here for your merriment.

chow!