2015 in review


The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,000 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people. Click here to…

Sri Lanka 2015 – Christmas At The Albatross


Originally posted on HMWS Blog:
The drive to Kandy on Christmas day took three and a half hours. We left Colombo at 5 in the morning, had seenisambal buns and tea for breakfast at Ambepussa, crawled up Kadugannawa pass and hit Kandy in the morning rush hour. Then, it was another forty five minutes to the Albatross. The Albatross…

Sri Lanka 2015 – Tea At Helga’s Folly


Originally posted on HMWS Blog:
Helga’s Folly is on a hill top in Kandy, overlooking the lake.  On Christmas morning I drove the 110 km of the A1 from Colombo to this beautiful hill town and went to Helga’s Folly for tea. ? “Helga’s Folly could easily have been dreamt up as a joint project between…

Sri Lanka 2015 – Bambarakanda Falls


Originally posted on HMWS Blog:
With a height of 263 metres, Bambarakanda Falls is the tallest waterfall in Sri Lanka ? One bright December morning, we drove from Haputale to Bambarakanda Falls. At Kalupahana we came off the main road and took the narrow, winding track up the mountain towards the falls. We passed hamlets with…

Sri Lanka 2015 – A Night At A Tea Bungalow


Originally posted on HMWS Blog:
Tea Planters of yesteryears had a taste for good things of life. They built their luxurious villas with immaculately kept gardens and orchards, in the most scenic spots. Nowadays, most of them have become upmarket boutique hotels. Viharagala in Haputale in the central hills is one such tea bungalow The…

Sri Lanka 2015 – Colombo to Haputale on Viceroy 2


Originally posted on HMWS Blog:
Last week I took the train from Fort Station in Colombo to Haputalle in the Hill Country. I stayed the night in a Tea Bungalow and travelled by train again to Colombo the next day. This is the story of that journey ? Sri Lanka’s railway network was introduced by…

Three Months In Sri Lanka- The First Week


Originally posted on HMWS Blog:
It has been an unusually colourful but cold, wet autumn. It will be a hard winter they said. I packed a bag and flew to my second home in Sri Lanka – for three months. ? Flight EK 018 On a cold and blastery November morning, I took a taxi…

One Day At The Ashes Test


It’s been some time since I went to any Test match. It was a lovely surprise when my Christmas presents last December included tickets to the Edgbaston Ashes Test in July   I drove to Birmingham, left the car in the small basement car park of the Pentahotel on Ernest Street and walked to the…

Love Supreme – Santana At The O2


Carlos Santana turned sixty eight last week. Few days later he was at the London O2. I went to see him. I drove to London that Saturday morning, left the car at my daughter’s and took the DLR to the O2. The new swish cable car they call the Emirates Air Line took me across the Thames.…

In My Time – Week 29, 2015


Early on in the week we made Harira for supper – the Moroccan thick soup with chickpeas, lentils, rice, tomatoes, garlic and ginger. It didn’t come out quite the way neither the recipe nor we intended, so we added loads of leftover roast guinea fowl from the previous evening to it and opened a bottle of…