As a child in a basket through a tropical country (4).

Sri Lanka

We left South-India the same way as we arrived 6 weeks earlier -by plane- the boat connection between Sri Lanka and India is closed from November up to January, because of the monsoon rains, and had still not been resumed. We walked up the aircraft steps and saw our bicycles outside against a luggage lorry. "Don't forget the bicycles" Idhuna shouted and the man laughed and nodded understandingly. A moment later India slid away under us, with regret we saw the beautiful landscape, the rice fields and rising up from these the sculptured gopurams of the many, many temples.
"What a pity of the beautiful Nandis", Idhuna said, "but I certainly would like to see Buddha again, I have not seen him for a long time now". She already got a good globe trotter's attitude! We cycled through the mountains, up and down, very steep on this out-of-the-way road. In the valleys lay the wet rice fields, the mountains were covered with palm- banana- and papaya trees, dark bread trees and mango trees and between them proliferating pepper plants and cloves with delicate white flowers. Shining white, our goal towered above it: the Buddhist temple, a trinity of dagobar (pagoda), temple and monastery. Three monks, shaved heads and dressed in the saffron coloured cloth, lived there. They began to romp with Idhuna, who grabbed one of them by his robe playfully, which came off and slid down. He rushed inside, grabbing his cloth, the others laughed. Ananda was back with the key and showed us the temple. Buddha looked down upon us serenely and calmly, the most peaceful religion of the world in our opinion. In the monastery we continued talking. Ananda is a painter and showed us his traditional paintings about the life of Buddha. "Nice" Idhuna shouted every time, and gave Ananda a painting from her own exercise book: elephants, oxcarts and bears on bicycles.

White people

"What are you looking at" I asked her. "I look at those white people" she said. In Anuradhapura, the ruins of an old capital, we encountered again more tourists, Sri Lanka clearly attracts more tourists than India. Hurriedly they crowded out of the air-conditioned coaches, surprisedly looking around by the sudden heat, and transpiring they put their cameras to their eyes to enter the coach again as quickly as possible, incited by a tour guide, who has to visit Dambulla, Sigiriya and Polonaruwa that same day.
After a day cycling we arrive in Dambulla, a large cave temple, situated on a mountain with beautiful wall paintings inside. As we climbed up the rocky staircase - a young beggar, with his legs totally tangled up, kept an eye on our bicycles - the monkeys jumped to and fro. "What a sweet monkeys". Idhuna shouted and wanted to feed them from a bag of peanuts, before she had opened the bag, the monkey had snatched it from her hands. "Bad monkey", she cried and a passing monk gave her a new bag. Carefully she opened it, while Henny kept the pushy monkeys at a distance with his bicycle pump, and ...... put the nuts in her own mouth. "Now I am a monkey" she said chewing.

Cyclones

A whole day we cycled along the coast, however, without seeing the sea, only bare courtyards with huts. Huts everywhere. Palm trees snapped like matches, what had happened here. A cyclone, a fellow cyclist told us, had devastated this region a few months ago. He recommended a resthouse that was situated by the sea. Slender fishing boats, tree trunks with side floats only, were hauled in with all might and with the aid of the surf pulled onto the beach. A queue of cyclists was ready; a box on the back of their bicycles with the fish, to bring it fresh from the sea to the inland. "Malu - malu" Idhuna shouted, because that she knew already. The fishermen laughed.