Books Read During our Travels

 We did manage to go through a lot of books during our travels. Some aren't even covered here. But few that I did manage to take picture of and are part of my memory are listed here. 

1. The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. 

This book talks about Ramayana from Sita's perspective. We have all thought of Ramayana as Ram's story, but what about Sita, her pain, her loss of husband, she leaving everything and coming to Ayodhya and then living along when captured by Ravana, What's her pain? Who else can tell it better than Sita herself. Worth a read. 

2. Aazadi Mera Brand in Hindi by Anuradha Beniwal. 

She gets influenced by European friends whom she meets in Pune in India and has a travel bug that she is able to fulfil when living in London. She now lives in London and travels all around Europe, which indeed is a thrilling way to see the world and meet people. A very relaxed and lovely read. It's in Hindi though. 

3. Short Stories by Sharatchandra Chatterjee. 

Lots of stories from the 20th century, which I think are lovely, however they are so old, that one needs to transform themselves back to that century to go through them. It was a slow read for me, and the stories were quite dramatic sometimes. 

4. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Oh what a lovely read. It's about an AI Robot who is brought home to a house and she befriends the family's child. Klara is full of hope and helps the child back to health and happiness. The ending isn't great or rather not what I would imagine to a positive novel.

5. Human Kind by Rutger Bregman

A book with lots of hopeful stories and how humans generally are always there to take care of each other. 

6. Before the coffee gets cold by Toshukazu Kawaguchi

Oh what a lovely book. It's full of imagination and full of drama. Now the question is: "If you were given a wish to fulfil and you could do one thing, what would that be if you had 5 minutes to live that wish?" Only 5 minutes to live like a Billionaire or meet your lost friend or meet your dead parent? 

I personally wouldn't take that wish. 

7. Tuesday with Morrie by Mitch Albom

It's a lovely book where one talks about the world, the sorrows, regrets, death, family, emotion, etc. 

What would be your perfect day? Mine: A nice sunny day, with 23 deg C sunshine, my partner & I walking together, then have lunch by the calm river, rest in the afternoon and another nice walk in the evening with a lovely dinner and sleeping with content.

8. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Set in the Victorian Era, this is his only novel. I found it a very difficult read and kept getting distracted with how the novel was flowing. PProbably this chap should stick to poetry & plays! 

9. The Kaurs of 1984 by Sanam Sutirath Wazir

This is a sad book, where they talk about the atrocities against the Sikhs in 1984 and the pain of wives, mother, sisters and children. It was an eye watering book and I only completed half of it. 

10. Turf Battles by K Arumugam

K Arumugam has written about hockey for more than 3 decades. He is an engineer by trade but a hockey player by heart. His book talks about the victories of Indian Men's Hockey team in the Asia Cup hockey. India was a power house of hockey, but from the 1980s and till 2015, they had not won a single world level medal. Slowing the team's coming back to it's previous World Level glory days and this book talks about the glory days in Asian Continental Championships. 

11. Best of 0 Henry 

Collection of many short stories. This book was gifted to us by my Dad's friend and has lots of lovely short stories. Stories as 5-6 pages long and they are a quick read. 

12. Why Nations Fail by Prof Acemoglu and Prof Robinson 

Anyone who is interested in Economics and Politics must read this. It's a brilliantly written book, long but worth a read. I managed to get an Audiobook through Spoitify and it was worth listening to. 

It's an eye opener to why Nations will survive: Strong Political Institutions, Strong Judiciary and Honest Bureaucracy; if a nation can get these strengthened they will survive amongst all the turmoil that can happen around the country. The biggest example is the USA, it's survived civil war and came out stronger. 

13. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Now this was a weird novel. The lady becomes a vegetarian because she gets a dream and that's it. She then completely transforms herself and becomes this weird person. Sometimes, we search for "why?" but there are no answers. 

I also read some more books but haven't captured them here. 

I'm currently reading this. Set in London's west district where a lot of Indian origin people live, this is quite a hilarious read. Still reading... 

Sri Lanka - Surprisingly Stunning!

We got a chance to visit the Pearl of Indian Ocean, and it didn't disappoint us. 

Our route: Colombo --> Ella --> Nuwara Elia --> Kandy --> Trincomalee --> Colombo 

Here we are in front of the Colombo's National Museum.

A massive tree greeted us. Colombo is very different than many metropolitan capital cities. It has a lot of green space, hundreds of year old trees, lots of green spaces, traffic that moves, not overcrowded and very clean streets.

The golden chair of the previous king. 

We also went to the Independence Square / Memorial Hall.

The traditional "I was here" photo. 

Statue of Senanayake. The first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

The Arcade Clock Tower Building. The architecture of Sri Lanka is still very colonial, and they are fine with their colonial history. The other sub-continental countries want to get rid of their past, however Sri Lanka wants to use that to their advantage. I see a lot of British tourists visiting Sri Lanka, probably because it's more welcoming than India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Gangaramaya Buddhist Temple, was very beautiful, however very different than Thai temples.

Location:Gangaramaya Temple

The stupa was an extremely simple one, compared to rest of South East Asia.

And here we have the Greens and Cricket in Whites!

Victoria Memorial, a bit less flamboyant than the one in Calcutta.

We also saw the flag lowering ceremony on the Colombo Beach.

The Lotus Pod!

We were staying on this lovely quiet street. Green trees and blue skies!

From Colombo we made our way to Ella. The food, the weather and the sky had all changed. 

We saw the famous bridge: Nine Arches Bridge

Location: Nine Arches

And also saw a passing train

We climbed more hills and had stunning views all around the hills of Central Sri Lanka.

We met some Indians and they were kind to click some photos.

We also saw the Ravana Waterfall. It's water from the spring on top of a massive hill. 

Location: Ravana Waterfall

We also visited another waterfall, however to go there, we had to pass through lush green rice fields. It reminded us of Bali.

Next: Pallewela Waterfall

Sri Lankan scooter rental also allow tourists to hire and ride Scooter Rickshaws! It's quite annoying for the taxi drivers, because the tourists slow down the traffic. 

We then went to Nuwara Elia, from Ella. 

Enroute, we also crossed the Ashok Vatika, from the Hindu Mythological Ramayana Story. There is a Sita Mata Temple, where many Hindus across Sri Lanka visit and pray.

This is the garden, where Ravana (the demon king) kept Sita (the queen of Ayodhya) before Rama (the king of Ayodhya) rescued her from Ravana's clutches. This place also has a lot of monkeys, signifying the story that Hanuman (the monkey god) once visited Sita, when she was kept here. It's beautiful and is worth visiting.

The Sita Ma Temple also has a big mark on the hill, signifying the place where Hanuman landed and met Sita. It was very peaceful and the river water flowing near the temple was very thereputic.

Nuwara Elia's post office took us back to England.

The tea gardens at 1800 meters above sea level, with white clouds and blue skies was beautiful. the air is clear here and the the temperature is around 13 degC in the morning and 20 deg C through the day. Which place does it remind us off? ENGLAND! And so, it's called Little England.

Gregory Lake.

We visited a tea garden and crossed Inverness, in Sri Lanka.

Damro Tea Factory.

The smell of fresh tea leaves, ummm lovely!

It was foggy morning and one couldn't see the Labookellie sign.

The fog cleared for a nice photo. Could one imagine, that one would wear jackets in Sri Lanka?

We were served different types of tea and cakes on our visit.

We also went to Lovers Leap Waterfall.

The estate reminded me of Lake District in England.

Big trees and winding roads.

The flower gardens of Lake District I mean Nuwara Elia.

Fountains greeted us.

The rose garden of The Grand Hotel.

We then went to Kandy and saw the temple where Buddha's tooth relic is kept.

Location: Sri Dalada Maligawa

A lone monk, after selling his Ferrari!

It was very beautiful and peaceful inside.

Lots of people were praying here.

There is also a museum along the temple.

Bless us Buddha photo.

Colonial Architecture is everywhere in Kandy.

It's also got a huge lake, in the centre of the city.

Everyone does remind you of: Kandy is at 500 meters above sea level, and so the weather is nice.

If you are in Kandy, there are 2 things that you must do.

1. Visit the Dambulla cave for Buddha's statue & paintings 

2. Visit the Lion Rock in Sigiriya Village 

This was the view from Dambulla Cave, that's on a hill top.

The cave is carved from a rock, and has four chambers.

One of the cmabers has a Buddha Statue carved from the rock within the cave. This was not brought here, but as the cave was made, they made a Passing Buddha statue.

The cave painings are many hundreds of years old.

Because of the dampness and moisture, the paintings need regular care.

It was matchings outfit day!

From Dambulla Cave Temple, you can see the Sigiriya's Lion Rock.

It is stunning as we came closer to it.

The sun was beating down at 3:00 PM.

Now if you are scared of heights, this is not the rock to climb.

The views from the top are "voìla"!! You stop there and just take it all in.

And we also had a protector of the rock, Mr Doggo on top of the Lion Rock!

Trupti made sure we had everything secured, from the east to the west.

We realised, that we were in the middle of a national forest.

Some where not scared of heights, whist others were happy to click photos.

We came back and clicked some more photos.

You could see different gradients, colours & layers of the soil through millenia, that made this rock. 

A video of our Sigiriya Lion Rock climb and descend.

We came back to Kandy later that evening and saw the Cenotaph, for the 1st World War. Everyone whose name was on this monument, were between the ages of 19 and 25 years. So unfortunate.

View from our guest house.

We were on our route to Trincomalee and stopped at Nalanda Gidige.

This is supposed to be the centre of Sri Lanka.

It's the only temple where Sri Lankans pray to Shiva, Parvati and Buddha under the same roof.

The beaches of Sri Lanka, finally! The Sri Lankan flag, we loved it.

Trincomalee has a huge Tamil Hindu population and a big Ravan statue in a Shiva Temple.

The Statue of Shiva.

Another Hindu Temple

This was very different than many other Indian Hindu temples, with colourful statues and gothic interiors.

Clear blue evening skies & a huge blue temple.

Last day in Trincomalee and we went out onto the beach to see the sunrise.

On the last evening in Sri Lanka, when we came into our guest house in Colombo, we saw this procession passing in front of the house. What a lovely ending to our journey in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka and Lankans we loved every moment we spent there. 😍