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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 4, 2018 20:48:41 GMT 2
I threw my bag in the back and slipped out onto the main road to head south. At an awe inspiring speed of 40km/h. There are different speed limits as normal for different classes of vehicles, but for tuktuks and tractors it is a blanket maximum of 40km/h not matter what road you are on. They say driving one is like a motorbike. If you are familiar with motorbikes you'll do ok. I don't actually think so. Imagine a cross between a quad bike and a Vespa scooter. A quad bike because of the width and length, but mainly because you don't need to lean to take corners, you have to drag it round to a certain extent. Leaning and cornering is not the thing, it is pulling the handlebars right or left.
A scooter because of the gear change. On motorbikes you change gear with your foot after pulling in the clutch. On a bike you have at your feet on one side a gear change and on the other a rear brake. On the handlebars you have a clutch and a front brake, the accelerator being to twist the right hand grip. On a quad bike though the accelerator usually is a thumb operated lever.
On a tuk tuk you have one foot brake, by your right foot, which is as effective as you want depending if you stamp heavily on it. I only locked the brakes up once on the trip and that was due to an animal. There is no lever on the right side of the handlebars, just the twist grip accelerator. On the left side is the clutch lever and twist gear change – just like on a scooter. If you are not familiar with these they can take a bit of getting used to.
To change gear you come off the revs, pull the clutch lever in and then twist your wrist to twist the whole grip including the clutch lever, to engage the next gear. They have four forward gears and a reverse gear. From neutral you twist up to get first, then down, back through neutral, to get second. Then down and down again for 3rd and 4th. For reverse you engage neutral, pull up another lever that is down on the floor like a handbrake, select first and go backwards. To go forward again you can just return the reverse lever to its original position, leaving the gear shift in 1st, and then pull forward. But, the whole tuktuk is easy to push, and that is what I did more often than not.
Most tuktuks are now 4 stroke instead of the older two stroke and run on normal low grade petrol. Every 1000km you need to do a complete grease of the vehicle and the fuel tank will hold, depending on model, between about 6 and 10 litres – though the last 1½ litres is designated as a reserve and you have a small twist knob to change between the main part of the tank and the reserve. Fuel consumption, I was told, would be about 25km to the litre. I never got that. I always got a lot more. Only once dropping below 30km/l and odd days up to 40km/l. I tended to work out on the middle of 35km/l. Petrol was 117 rupees per litre (0.63 euro, $0.75), so each day I would spend the grand sum of 2½ euro (ish) on fuel at the most.
Enough of the blurb.
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 4, 2018 20:51:00 GMT 2
After battling through several rain showers I parked up outside my home stay/guest house for the night in Bentota – The company I rented from doesn't own their own vehicles and purports to use those owned by private individuals and give them a proportion of the rental fee. What percentage this was, funnily enough, nobody seemed to be able to clarify. The one I had was 'well-used' and had already done forty thousand kilometres, but never missed a beat. I never called it by name, it never told me what it was, but I would refer to it as "Crunchy" because of the worn gearbox. Going uphill for example it would, if left to its own devices, drop down a gear by itself under load. I had to hold it in the gear I wanted. Nevertheless, I did 2055km in it without a problem other than a broken stop light. This was the route I took. Anti-clockwise from the middle of the west side, round the bottom, all the way up to the top, down through the middle, then veered back to the coast for the last couple of days –
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 4, 2018 20:53:21 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 5, 2018 18:18:29 GMT 2
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Post by tzarine on Mar 5, 2018 18:24:23 GMT 2
gorgeous photos, mark!
want to go! except i spent $$$$$$$$$ on an indian visa that's still good, so maybe we'll combine the 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 5, 2018 18:25:48 GMT 2
And then reached my next destination, Talalla Bay. During that day I'd wondered why there were so many army and police about. I later understood it was a voting day and it was quite normal for them nowadays to provide some security at the polling stations. I stayed in the place in the next photo which was one of a couple of disappointing ones. I'm not sure what people are thinking when they write reviews. Nearly all sweetness and light and the odd one might point out a little something like, in this case, the mosquitoes. Never mind the room I had was the same price as many others and of a lot poorer standard. See the soft comfy chairs to the right of the photo? There was no base to the seat. It was just the cushion resting on the frame. I sat down on one and my arse went straight through. The mossies were very aggressive and were biting through my shorts. Instead of being a pale grey colour they were nearly black and moved quite fast. I wondered if they were something else, but thought probably not, they were mossies I'm sure of it. A double blow was that went I went for a walk on the beach I was bitten also by sand flies. I ended up buying some calamine lotion to alleviate that. I did have with me several types of mossie repellent. A spray can from Zambia, a cream from somewhere and can't remember, and the best of all is a soap used by the Colombian military. That is good stuff. This was about the only place I got a few bites though - It was this room that convinced me I had to buy a couple of things. One was another power point adapter. The one I had, which is supposed to be universal and has always worked before, didn't fit the power points, which had circular holes. I had this problem I remembered in Namibia and bought another adapter there. But even though I'd looked up what points they had here, somehow it slipped my mind. In some newer places they had the UK type sockets and often also sockets that had USB ports. Ideal. The next thing was a kettle. Nearly all the rooms I booked advertised they had "tea and coffee making facilities". Most didn't. In fact most of the stuff they said they had, they didn't. I soon came to realise, even after just a handful of nights, that when the owner made the advert he had a load of ticky boxes for what was in the room. He then proceeded to check every box to cover all bases. That meant that, no I didn't have a fridge and cooker and a kitchen in there – plus every other thing like a sitting area, a kettle, an iron, bidet etc etc. I don't need all this stuff but often all that was there was a bed, a wardrobe and a plastic chair. Yes, there was a shower and a toilet, but hot water was often hit and miss. So I stopped off at a place I saw at the side of the road selling kitchen stuff and bought an electric kettle for about eight Euros - plus a spoon, a knife, a fork (referred to as "eating irons"), a mug, a plate and a bowl. Everything together, accurately or not I referred to as my "mess kit". You could buy coffee, tea, sugar, milk etc but in most supermarkets was something ideal for me. A large packet containing sachets. In each sachet was a portion of Nescafe, sugar and milk powder and just enough for a mug full. This and the kettle and mug/spoon were referred to as my "brew kit". Are you following so far? So when I tell you to fetch the right kit out of the tuktuk, you'll succeed and not bring me the wrong one or all of it that I don't need? Good. Stand at ease. One thing so far I've forgotten to mention is navigation. A good road map is like rocking horse shit, so don't expect you can pick one up anywhere. Normally they are just tourist maps with vague directions, scales and pictures. Not very good when you want a particular road/street where you mean to stay that night. What I've used in India and a few countries is a pure point and shoot Garmin eTrex handheld GPS. Robust and accurate but just points in the direction of your destination. Works off two AA batteries and a good tool, but has had its day really. I bought it more years ago than I can remember when I started hanging round by myself in the deserts of Namibia and then Egypt. A real life saver. It was the basic version and you can get them with a screen now like a satnav. In my car I use a normal satnav and have done since before the rise of the machines. Sorry, the rise of the electronics, like a smart phone. I didn't want to bring a satnav with me, which could entail buying a map for it, though there is something called "Open Street Map" which is free and reasonably accurate. Plus it would just be another device to look after. I have a basic smart phone but I won't connect it to data. Thus using Google Maps is not on unless I download an offline map. Unfortunately these are quite big in size and my poor little phone, with its small memory card, can't cope with it. I tried it once and heard it groaning, huffing and puffing, only got halfway through and then wanted to go lie down in a cool darkened room for a few hours to let it settle. The solution, and I expect I'm telling you something you know, is an app called Maps.me Each map is a lot smaller than the Google alternative, has fewer features and so on, but is still quite comprehensive. In fact in all the places/streets/accommodations I wanted were all on there. So I downloaded that, my phone asked if there was a dessert because it still had room for more, and cheese and biscuits, and with a phone holder and usb cigarette point supplied by the tuktuk company (I had to supply the charge cable), off I went.
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 5, 2018 18:29:38 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 5, 2018 18:32:14 GMT 2
Quite a lot to see though tzarine.
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Post by shrjeff on Mar 6, 2018 5:42:28 GMT 2
maps.me is a great app... i've used it while walking in unfamiliar places such as singapore... so many subway exits! also in cabs to make sure that the cabby is not taking us on the 'scenic' route...
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Post by shrjeff on Mar 6, 2018 16:36:02 GMT 2
just declared a state of emergency due to moslem/buddhist violence... got out of there just in time, mark... shades of cairo
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 6, 2018 17:18:16 GMT 2
It's being put down to religious reasons, but actually the news I've left the country has just filtered through. Some wanted me to stay, some for me to go.
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 6, 2018 20:01:49 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 6, 2018 20:04:47 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 6, 2018 20:06:32 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 6, 2018 20:21:08 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 7, 2018 18:27:39 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 7, 2018 18:30:33 GMT 2
They are Hindu temples with Dravidian architecture. Plenty around here. This guy needed propping up after getting too close to Big Ben at noon – There were quite a few of these statues in the middle of the road as I was going all around the country. Some were national figures, some were religious and some local. Nearly every time though the plaque was unreadable to me. I must admit that normally when driving the tuktuk I kept my camera away in a bag and often couldn't be bothered to fuss about getting it out just for the one shot. I tried slinging it around my neck on the strap for instant access. But after an hour or so of nothing, with a sweaty sore red mark, I'd put it back away again - The odd occasion in my route I needed to accomplish a certain distance but was not really doable in one day. Well, I could have done but wasn't inclined to do it. That meant I slipped past a few probably decent places and ended up somewhere roughly halfway. Another time I'd have stopped here – But I didn't. I moved on to a place called Kalkudah. That also was a place talked up by people but again, I couldn't quite see the attraction of it. It also was one town I thought of having a day at, but I was glad I didn't. However, I did have one of the nicest accommodations out of the lot. It was a bit cheeky with the photos on the booking website because they'd angled the camera to miss out on the not yet built bit. The room though was excellent for the same price as other times and after a walk round I spent quite a bit of time getting even wrinklier in the pool. The view from my balcony –
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 7, 2018 18:32:16 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 7, 2018 18:36:05 GMT 2
Whilst I was having lunch in the other town, just by the road, I saw a western cyclist come past loaded up with panniers and heading in the direction of where I was staying. In fact I saw quite a few over time having cycling holidays in the country with their own bikes and equipment. Camping is not a concept there but it would be easy enough, especially around the coast where it is flat, to do a tour without much problem. I drove back a short time after but missed the man until walking back from the beach when he was walking the other way. We stopped and had a short conversation. He was Dutch (not a surprise really) and had had a couple of weeks with his wife doing the normal stuff. Both were retired but she wasn't much of a cyclist, so they had used normal transport. She then flew home, leaving him for the next two weeks to knock around how he wanted. Nice bloke. But, he had fallen into the sort of trap I had. Luckily I had the tuktuk if needed. He was disappointed there were absolutely no beach bars and restaurants and wondered if he'd have to cycle back where I'd been for a meal. I didn't see him that night, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But he did say that he'd tend to do sixty to seventy kilometres each day at a steady pace, which was fine by him, and he sometimes had to end up also in the middle of nowhere - That evening I couldn't be bothered to drive again so I walked back to the village as I'd spotted just a small local place that would have been good enough for me. It had about three tables and the menu didn't exist. One of those places where you ask what they have and you take it or leave it. I took it without a problem as one option was my usual veg fried rice. On the way walking there I was stopped by a Russian couple who it turns out were having their holiday in one of the resort hotels. They'd been there several days, all inclusive, and decided to that night go out for a meal. Apparently they'd walked up and down, back and forth for over an hour trying to find somewhere. He spoke good English. Accented for sure, but still very good. I pointed out about the only restaurant there was within walking distance, the one I was heading for, and after a short conversation between them, they headed back to their hotel. They were having two weeks in the same place. I wasn't envious. I sat down and ate and just before I left three middle-aged women, obviously western, came in. I'd seen them eyeing me up from outside. They were just discussing though that if I was there, it couldn't have been too bad. And as there seemed to be nothing else, they thought they'd risk it. The three were Spanish. The one who was the most fluent I found out lived a short distance away from my brother and knew his apartment block because she had a friend living there as well. One of those 'small world' moments. Before they sat down they were asking me about other restaurants around. I told them that the choice seemed to be either here, in one of the big hotels or make their way to the next town. They were using public transport for a few weeks, seeing all the normal sites and she told me, they had decided to spend six days here. Quite why I didn't ascertain. Maybe they had read the same bumf I'd read. They fervently hoped there was a lot more to do and were quite disappointed when I expressed my opinion that I'd seen nothing much at all. They wanted to spend the day on the beach and their nights restaurant/cafe/bar hopping. I bid them goodbye and good luck as I'd just paid my bill, and left them speaking rapidly to each other, plenty of hand gestures, all talking at the same time and each pointing in a different direction.
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 8, 2018 18:52:01 GMT 2
My area in Lusaka has had no electricity for the last four days because of heavy rain and storms. Thus no internet for most of the day. I'm getting a little behind in my report but bear with me. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 9, 2018 9:37:45 GMT 2
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Post by Voy on Mar 9, 2018 15:26:27 GMT 2
Mark - thank you. Those cemeteries are beautiful ! I remember one in Lae , New Guinea that looks almost identical. And, fwiw, one of my grandfather's brothers was born in Trincomalee, my ggf being stationed there - In about the 1860s. i wonder where those old-time army guys are buried, because lots of them have to have died out there - "fevers" if nothing else...
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 9, 2018 17:49:31 GMT 2
Bear with me on the graveyard photos. I have a comparison yet to come and later another one that is interesting. Do you have a name for the brother? Post or pm just out of interest for me?
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Post by Voy on Mar 9, 2018 18:37:45 GMT 2
last name was Palmer... dk first name. sorry
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 9, 2018 18:38:55 GMT 2
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 9, 2018 18:45:50 GMT 2
It is a Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Bhadrakali, a form of the goddess Kali Amman. Dravidian architecture as before but no doubt has had substantial changes as a temple has been here since before the 11th Century. One unusual thing, as if the whole thing is not unusual enough, is that it was mentioned in a Wilbur Smith book, Birds of Prey. I was not really dressed properly for temple attendance but as I was taking a few shots of the entrance, one man who was exiting told me it was ok to go inside. Another man just inside also beckoned me in. I pointed to my mode of dress (shorts and T shirt) and he just shrugged and said it was fine. Photos also, which is often not the case. So inside I went. Jeez, talk about decorated. By the way, if you get confused and occasionally forget the name of one of their Gods, you can be forgiven because even though there are but few main ones, in theory there are 33 million of them. I will let you feast your eyes - All I can say about that is if you are going to celebrate a religion, make it LOUD. Not for me those cold, imposing, reverential and barely interesting churches. Let's have a bit of colour and something to look at. That'll do as a bit of an eye fest for now. I still have a fair bit to post from around the country, but more when I have a bit more time.
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 9, 2018 18:46:45 GMT 2
Voy, understood.
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Post by kuskiwi on Mar 9, 2018 21:55:24 GMT 2
They are fantastic and make my eyes hurt. Actually I know a male friend of mine who may have been the model for some of those, particularly when it comes to the girth Thanks
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Post by OnlyMark on Mar 10, 2018 11:45:04 GMT 2
I see resemblances, with the outside big belied ones, to me as well.
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Post by shrjeff on Mar 10, 2018 14:22:19 GMT 2
when i googled hindu god with trident and lions i was rather surprised to discover that it was not a god... rather a goddess!
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