Kandy - Nuwala Eliya - Maskeliya - Sri Lanka

After the idyll of Sigiriya we went to the former capital Kandy. I went straight to a traditional Sinhalese dance (although I'm still wondering how much tradition and how much tourist appropriation is represented) and then to my homestay. The family was incredibly nice and immediately brought me tea and the cake from the owner's aunt's birthday. Then in the evening I finished reading the book about the PCT, exercised a little more and read the Wikipedia pages on Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam until my eyes closed.

Because I was accepted to volunteer in the Elephant Freedom Project at such short notice, I unfortunately had to move on quickly, but I have decided to take a look at Kandy in a week's time.

The bus ride to Nuwala Eliya then leads further into the highlands of the islands with its hectares of tea plantations and mountains. In Nuwala Eliya I had for the first time a sensation that I had not had since my arrival. I was freezing. The city is one of the highest in the country at almost 2,000 m above sea level and it shows!

Even though the city was beautiful, it was still the region where my heart warmed the least. The waterfalls were breathtaking, but otherwise it was very European and unnaturally maintained. In the evening I talked to a traveler over a pot of local black tea for three hours about pregnancy, contraceptive methods and various similar topics. Then I unpacked “Stephen King’s Graveyard of Stuffed Animals” and fell into a deep lyrical maelstrom that ended with slight paranoia.

Now we went to an insider tip from a friend, Maskeliya. A place where no tourists walk around and is more enchanting than it should be allowed. I hiked for about five hours and watched the sunset from a tea plantation viewing platform, overlooking the village, the huge lake, the mountains and an estimated 140m high waterfall. To top it all off, a rainbow appeared.

The first few weeks of the trip are sometimes not that easy when it comes to homesickness. Don't misunderstand me now. I don't miss Germany in any way, I love it here. I just miss my family and friends back home. I think about how nice it would be to paint a picture with my best friend Malte while drinking Club Mate. Drinking cocoa with my best friend Eva in the dirty shared kitchen and chatting about our week and not being able to stop laughing, or philosophizing about life with Lara on the Rhine and enjoying being together. The list could go on and on. How I would love to hug everyone in my family right now. Between a laugh because I saw the beauty that was happening before my eyes, there were also tears that were owed to these people. Arose from an irrational fear of being forgotten by these people in the coming year.

But that is the only suffering that accompanies me from time to time. And it's just part of it, as stupid as it sounds. I'm optimistic that I'll think about it differently in two to three weeks. And what's more, I'm bursting with anticipation inside at the thought of Malte, Eva and Lara coming to visit me in December and January so that we can make Vietnam unsafe.

When my alarm went off at 2 a.m. to wake me up for a sunrise hike on Adams Peak, I asked myself whether the tuck tuck driver I had paid the day before to pick me up would actually come . Part of me didn't want it and longed for the bed, but he was reliable and drove me to the trailhead at this ungodly hour. After 2½ hours and over 5,500 steps I froze my butt off.

I have never seen such a starry sky in my entire life. As if hypnotized, I looked at the stars for an hour, desperately trying to spot the constellation of Cassiopeia. Then I thought about a letter I received before I left. One section was about how even though you're thousands of miles away, you can still see the same stars and that's just kind of beautiful. Maybe you and I both watched Orion that night.

The Buddhist temple at the top was unfortunately closed, so all the hikers snuggled up next to it like a big family of penguins to keep warm and watch the sunrise. He was fantastic! Standing above the cloud cover and watching the sun rise over the mountains in a tropical climate is simply wonderful. There I met two German backpackers again, whom I met by chance on this island for the fourth time.

After a nap, I drove to a waterfall. Simple in theory, but the practical implementation took me 3½ hours because this bus drove at walking pace, stopped every 50 meters and the bus driver sometimes got out to get something to eat or to quickly pray at a shrine. I actually wanted to take the bus back, but when I arrived the bus driver told me that this was the last bus back and asked if I wanted to get on. The 3½ hour drive there, the expectation of swimming in a 140 meter high waterfall and the thought of the possibly 3½ hour drive back probably made me just smile at him and say "No, thank you." said.

I felt like Indian Jones from here. In the middle of nowhere in the jungle, alone, 3 hours until darkness and no way back except 15km through the middle of nowhere. So I bathed around a waterfall, crawled over tea plantations, through the undergrowth, crossed a large river at breakneck speed by balancing my backpack on my head like the locals do, and finally, as darkness fell, I came to a gravel road that would eventually lead me should bring to my accommodation. In the river, five leeches must have chosen me as a convenient vehicle, because I then pulled so many off my feet, being impressed by the amount of blood that flowed from my feet and just wouldn't stop. (I actually only know such liquid blood, which simply doesn't want to clot, when liver cirrhosis is resected in the operating room.) Now I'm more than tired, but Stephen King is nerve-racking to keep me from finally falling asleep.