Dambulla Cave Temple

It begins to rain again as I remove my shoes. The open courtyard is strewn with huge puddles from an earlier downpour, and the thought of having to slosh through them to get to the cave complex fills me with despair.  Footwear, unfortunately, is not allowed on the sacred site.

'Do you want a guide?' asks a little man, coming up to me.

'No, what I want is my shoes,' I say, plaintively.

He nods and leaves me standing there like a crestfallen child.

A monkey eyes me up indifferently from the shelter of a little shrine, and I am starting to get wet. I hope the caves are worth a pair of soggy feet…

Inside the Maharaja Lena – the Cave of the Great Kings – the ground is surprisingly warm and dry. My eyes take a while to adjust to the dimness of the interior. When they do, I find myself in a large painted grotto surrounded by Buddha statues in a multitude of poses and an intriguing mix of facial features. The pair pictured above (from the Pachima Viharaya or Western Monastery) are particularly charming, with their slightly bemused looks and the playful flicker of a smile on their lips.

Perhaps if all our deities smiled more, the world would be a better place...!

Whale Watching in Mirissa

The open sea is a shimmer of silver under a blaze of blue sky. Our eyes are trained on the boundless horizon: watching, waiting. Was that the crest of a wave, or the back of a whale? A glimmer of sun on surf, or a ripple from the flick of a tail?

We've had a couple of encounters so far, but keep scanning the surface in hopes of further sightings. And all the while the sun beats down, and the boat pitches and rolls on the ocean swells, drenching us in a white salt spray.
'Careful you don't fall in,' says a man to his wife, 'you look like a giant krill.'
In our red life jackets, we all do.

It doesn't occur to me to feel seasick until somebody else is, retching miserably over the side onto the lower deck. It's always the one you least expect – in this case, a tall, solid chap built like a wrestler. A young couple rush to his side, proffering pills. 'Seasickness tablets – we took some before coming on board,' they say brightly; but it is too late, and they are waved aside. We fall silent on the journey back to the harbour.

'I think everyone was feeling a bit squeamish,' said the American lady, meaning queasy, back on shore, but thankfully the evening shadows hide how green we all are around the gills.