Back from my South Asia trip - Part 1, Singapore & Sri Lanka

Jimbojack

I just came back from a 7 week trip to South Asia. I've taken thousands of photos and it will take me forever to go through them but I thought I'd post some of the more interesting ones here while I work on updating galleries on my website.

I started by flying from Los Angeles through Tokyo to Singapore where I spent a couple of days. From Singapore I flew to Colombo, Sri Lanka. After spending some time in Sri Lanka I flew to Cochin in the Indian state of Kerala. I traveled around the coast of Kerala before making my way through Tamil Nadu to Chennai. From Chennai I flew to Kolkata for a few days before going to Bangladesh. From Bangladesh I went back to Kolkata and flew to Delhi. Afterwards I went to Varanasi, before going to Hyderabad and flying back home through Colombo/Singapore/Tokyo.

Here is a rought map of my trip, flights are in blue overland travel is in red:


Here are some photos from the first part of the trip, Singapore & Sri Lanka:

I only spent a day in Singapore, I've been to the city before and decided to take the very first flight I could get to spend more time in Sri Lanka. I spent about half of that day in the wonderful Singapore botanical garden, trying to get over my massive jetlag


















Sri Lanka:

People working in tea fields. The women pick the green tea leaves and take it to the tea factory. The tea leaves are then placed in a machine that twists the leaves for a few hours and are then dried for another 4-6 hours. After that, the tea is usually taken to another factory that will put it in tea bags and package it for export. The tea picked here is often branded as “Ceylon Tea”, which was the former name of Sri Lanka. I will do a whole page on my site sometime soon (hopefully) about the tea process.














I took a train from Galle to Colombo and spent the entire 3 hours hanging off the side of the entrance on the outside fo the train (It was great!). I took this photo of a child and sleeping woman through the window of the compartment in front of me.




Owner of a small roadside restaurant, the food was very good.




Stairs leading up to and from the top of Sigirya





Monkey





Kandyan Dancing performance, dancer wearing a mask




A 1 day old (right) and a 3 day old (left) turtle at a Turtle hatchery in Kosgoda. The hatchery buys turtle eggs from local fishermen for around $0.11-$0.20 a piece (a couple of cents higher then the market value, which ensures the eggs don’t get sold for food), keeps them until they hatch (around 5 weeks, depending on the species), waits 3 days, and releases the turtles into the sea after sunset so that birds don’t eat too many of them. Below that is a picture of turtle eggs (they are very soft), and newborn turtles. I'll write and post more pictures about the hatchery once I have more time to go through them.








Painted cave in Dambula. There are 5 caves, each very carefully painted. Their use as a place of worship started around the 1st century B.C. when King Valagamba took refuge here after being kicked out of Anuradhapura.




Woman praying at a Buddhist temple




Inside of the Sacred Tooth Temple in Kandy. Sri Lanka’s most important Buddhist temple, this is the place where a tooth of Buddha was taken after being extracted from his funeral pyre in 543 B.C., and smuggled into Sri Lanka in the 4th century A.D. hidden in the hair of a princess. The temple was bombed in 1998 by Tamil Tigers, but has since been repaired.






A wall painting depicting slim-waisted, well-endowed women halfway up the Sigiriya rock. They are believed to be either asparas (celestial nymphs) or the concubines of King Kassapa. Out of a total of 500 original portraits, only about 22 remain today. Nobody knows exactly how old they are, but it is very unlikely they are from the time of King Kassapa (who ruled in the 5th century).




Mist in the forest around the tea plantations




The first of the following photos shows the lit up trail to the top of Adam’s Peak, the second shows Arvo and me eating breakfast at the top around 5:00 A.M. The next photo shows monks making tea before sunrise, and the rest are on the way down. Adam’s Peak is the highest point in Sri Lanka at 2243 meters above sea level. It is believed to be the place where Adam first set foot on earth after being kicked out of heaven. Others believe that this is the place where Buddha took a last step on earth when he was on his way to paradise. It is also known as “butterfly mountain”, a place where butterflies go to die. There is a giant footprint at the top (although it was locked, inside a Buddhist temple so I was not able to see it) which supports these theories. Yet another belief is that the footprint belongs to an early apostle of India, St. Thomas or even that of Lord Shiva.

After going to sleep around 22:30, we woke up at 1:30 and started hiking around 2:30. The hike up to the top is very painful as it is almost completely vertical in some parts (In addition to the incline, there are around 5,200 steps to the top). It took Arvo and I about 2:40 to get to the top with plenty of stops and some chai. We got there a bit too early and had to wait for the sunrise inside a shelter area built for pilgrims. Coming down was nice as we were able to see the beautiful views of the surrounding areas and didn’t need a flashlight for the steps.















I hope you enjoy these photos, more are posted on my website for those interested. I'll be going through the rest of the photos from my trip soon and I'll post the more interesting ones here.

nightspidy

Very neat
Wow, these photos were like opening a National Geographic mag for me. Thanks so much for sharing them along with the dialogue.

1andyw

Very nice work. I especially like the portraits in Sri Lanka.

Thanks for sharing your adventure.

Andy

Panther

Howdy Phillip,

Thanks so much for sharing, this part of your Wonderful Journey, it is such an interesting look at places I can only hope to get to see, if not, I have seen them through your eyes and for that Thank You!!

Looking forward to more of your Journey.