A Weekend in the Knuckles

Have been sitting in the living room since I got up checking my mail and watching all the birds outside in the garden. There are always lots of birds at this time of the morning doing their thing. The other morning I saw a beautiful bright yellow bird that Maggie told me is an oriole. I know next to nothing about birds, so maybe I should buy a book.

Kiya arrived safely on Sunday evening and on Monday morning we left Kandy to spend a couple of days at Rangala House in the Knuckles. The location, looking out over a valley towards Hunnasgiriya, is stunning and I found it really difficult to drag myself away yesterday. Could have quite happily stayed for another night.

We went on 2 fantastic walks through the surrounding countryside while we were there - a short 1-hour walk on Monday evening and a longer 3-hour walk before breakfast (which ended up becoming brunch!) yesterday morning. The views were amazing - we could see all the way to Kandy and beyond.

Anthony and his partner Sam are fantastic hosts and Kiya and I had a really interesting chat with Anthony about Sri Lankan politics and the current conflict in the north on Monday evening after dinner. According to reports I've read on the internet there are currently around 250,000 displaced people caught between the advancing government troops and the LTTE. Unfortunately it's very difficult to know what's actually going on as the government only allows restricted media access to the conflict zone.

Today is actually National Day (on this day 61 years ago Sri Lanka gained its independence from Britain) and I get the impression that the government was hoping that the LTTE would have been completely defeated by today. I don't think the LTTE will hold out for much longer as they're now confined to a very small area of land and are looking weaker and weaker by the day, but what's worrying is that the government is becoming more and more jingoistic and may use the military defeat of the LTTE to avoid any kind of political situation. Interesting times here in Sri Lanka.