After two nights “camping” with the wild animals in Udawalawe, we returned to Tea Trails for two more nights of luxury.

We had to catch the Rajadhani Express back to Colombo at 3:28 in the afternoon, so our butler arranged for a car to drive us back to the Hatton train station. We spent a leisurely morning puttering around Tea Trails, enjoying a final lunch, and packing our bags. We were eager to get back to Colombo, so we were ready early, sitting in an alcove just off the lobby for our 2:45 pick-up.

Of course, I’m always a little nervous, so I asked the butler if, perhaps, we shouldn’t leave at 2:30 instead of 2:45 just to make sure we got there in time.

“No problem,” he said with a big smile. “The driver will be here at 2:45 and that will give you plenty of time.”

At 2:50 the car and driver still had not appeared, so I went searching for the butler.

“He will be here in five minutes,” he said reassuringly.

“Will that give us enough time?” I asked.

“Oh, certainly. No problem.”

He seemed calm, but little rivulets of sweat were beginning to dampen the hair at the base of my neck. The way Jamie and I recalled the drive from the train station to Tea Trails, it had taken about 30 minutes and it was beginning to look like we were going to cut it perilously close.

At 3:00 I went searching for the butler again. I found him talking on the phone in his small, cluttered office. I could be wrong, but I swear I saw rivulets of sweat were now beginning to dampen the hair at the base of his neck. He turned to me and attempted to exude confidence, but it seemed to be a bit forced to me.

“No problem,” he insisted. “The driver is on his way. You will have plenty of time.”

Jamie and I were far less confident than the butler, so we toted our luggage out to the front portico so that we could load it into the car quickly if and when it arrived.

I looked up just as a Tea Trails car came careening around the corner and sped up the long driveway. It pulled up in front of the bungalow and I threw open the trunk almost before it had come to a complete stop. I tossed in our bags, slammed the trunk, and we jumped in the back seat. I clicked on my cell phone to see the time. Three oh five.

“Drive fast,” I said. “Our train leaves at 3:28.”

“I’ll get you there,” he said. “I’m a good driver. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years.”

And thus began the most harrowing twenty minutes of our lives.

The road between Tea Trails and Hatton has more twists and turns than a season of Game of Thrones. The single lane road is filled with pedestrians, plantation workers, busses, mopeds, trucks, and hundreds — maybe thousands — of the inescapable Sri Lankan canines.

Our driver gunned the engine and sped around one hairpin turn after another, honking his horn to warn any oncoming traffic that we were coming through no matter who may have rightfully had the right of way. He laid on the horn and swerved around anything that had the temerity to slow down in front of us. In fact, he appeared to be steering with one hand while using the other one to honk virtually non-stop.

At one point he turned to us and screamed, “Road very bendy!” I guess that’s Sri Lankan for “one insane hairpin turn after another”.

We had close call after close call, near wreck after near wreck, all accompanied by the incessant warning honks from our driver. Pedestrians scattered to save themselves. Huge busses swerved out of our path. Mopeds hugged the edges of steep cliffs to avoid us. Sonambulant Sri Lankan dogs that hadn’t run in years suddenly leapt like greyhounds out of the starting gate.

I actually thought, So this is how it all ends — in the back seat of a Nissan in Sri Lanka. Jamie later told me that she thought the same thing.

After all that death defying driving, we finally sped into Hatton just as rush hour (such as it is in rural Sri Lanka) began. The streets were packed with people and vehicles and the people were moving faster than the vehicles. Despite the fact that the roads were full, our driver continued to honk and risk all of our lives in an attempt to get to the train station in time.

Jamie and I kept checking the time and muttering, “We’ll never make it.”

Just as we were giving up hope, the driver screamed, “Short cut”, and jetted up a hill onto a narrow alleyway. I’m sure Jamie and I were both thinking, Where is this guy taking us?, when he calmly turned to us and said, “Train station!”

Son of a bitch. It was 3:25. Our train had not yet arrived. We had made it with three minutes to spare.

Yes, we caught our train, but it was the most harrowing twenty minutes of our lives. The wonderful sense of calm that we had experienced in the previous 48 hours at Tea Trails was gone, but it had been replaced by a new sense of wonder brought on by the fact that we were still alive.

I handed the driver all the Sri Lankan cash I had in my wallet. He had earned it.

Our accommodations at the Mahoora Safari Camp could barely be called camping.

We’re getting toward the end of the season, and perilously close to the monsoon season, so we were the only guests. We had the entire camp to ourselves and that also means we had 100% of the staff’s attention.

At Mahoora, roughing it means having a luxury tent with an indoor shower and toilet, three delicious multi-course meals served daily, and two guided safari excursions daily. When we returned from our safari excursions and climbed down out of the safari truck, we were greeted by an attendant bearing hot towels. When we reached our tent, we found coffee and tea, ginger cookies and, believe it or not, hot foot baths awaiting us.

We could get used to this.

Breakfast at the Mahoora Safari Camp. This ain’t camping. It’s not even glamping.

“Sandun, my footbath is too warm and my tea is too cool.”

Jamie relaxing in front of the Mahoora Luxury Tent. It didn’t seem all that luxurious after arriving directly from Tea Trails, but it must have been because I never whined once.

This is not a roadsign often seen by Americans.

Fans of the Simpsons TV show will surely recognize the illustration at the top of this story as Bart Simpson’s dog, Santa’s Little Helper. So what does it have to do with Sri Lanka?

Simple. Every dog in this country looks EXACTLY like Santa’s Little Helper.

There are about 20 million people in Sri Lanka and I would estimate that there are at least that many dogs. Maybe more.

They walk down every street, even the ones with the wildest rush hour traffic, and sometimes they even walk right out in the middle of traffic. They don’t just walk down the middle of the road, they lie down right in the middle it.

And yet they never get hit. (Well, almost never. I’ve only seen one dead dog so far.)

Today, for example, we traveled about 80 miles from Tea Trails to Udawalewe National Park and saw about ten thousand dogs in the road. Sri Lankan drivers just give a little beep on their horns as they approach a dog in the middle of the road and the dog casually picks itself up, stretches, and leisurely moves just far enough to avoid getting run over. It’s a delicate balancing act for drivers and dogs.

I asked Rakhitha, our naturalist and guide at Udawalawe, to explain the huge number of dogs — many of the apparently homeless.

“Sri Lankans love animals,” he said. “We make sure none of them ever go hungry.”

We know that Cricket, our oblivious little Shih-Tzu, wouldn’t last ten minutes before darting into the road and getting flattened by a car or truck or tuk tuk. But here, the dogs are so relaxed and so comfortable with traffic whizzing by just inches away that I have used my vast education as a geneticist to develop a theory as to how they survive:

I believe all the nervous dogs (like Cricket) were killed off in traffic accidents long, long ago. Therefore, according to Jimmy’s Theory of Sri Lankan Canine Evolution, only the coolest, calmest dogs remain.

Makes complete sense to me. Even if it’s completely wrong.

Unfortunately, I have no theory to explain why all Sri Lankan dogs look like the Simpsons’ dog.

Udawalewe National Park is a four hour crazy drive south of Hatton. It’s a 75,000 acre reserve that’s home to 400 Sri Lankan elephants, crocodiles, water buffalo, monkeys, eagles, and a lot of other animals you don’t often see.

We stayed at the Mahoora Safari Camp, which is located adjacent to the park, so our guides took us out into the park for three hours at sunrise and again three hours before sunset.

Here are a few of the photos:

Our camp was right next door to Udawalawe National Park and at night we could hear angry bull elephants trumpeting to each other across the park. Last month one bull broke down the electric fence and destroyed Mahoora’s kitchen facility.

Mom and baby elephant passed so close to the safari mobile that Rakhitha, our naturalist and guide, had to warn us not to reach out and touch them.

Look closely and you’ll see a family of monkeys hiding in that tree.

Here’s the Mahoora SafariMobile with Piyiumal, our driver, and Rakhitha, our naturalist and guide. The dirt roads took so many twists and turns that we never knew where we were, but Rockitha said that Piyiumal knows every inch of the national park.

You, too, can speak Sinhala. Let’s do a quick lesson in how to pronounce the name of the town in this story — Udawalawe.

Ooh-duh-wall-away

See, I told you it was simple. But not so simple that we didn’t embarrass ourselves a few times before we mastered it.

Hey, speaking of languages spoken in Sri Lanka, Sinhala and Tamil are the nation’s official languages, but almost everyone we’re run into seems to speak at least a little English. Maybe that’s a holdover from the days when Sri Lanka was a British colony or maybe it’s because English is the international language of business or maybe a little of both.

Luckily, almost every road sign has all three languages or we’d never know where we are.

Let me make this a clear as possible: If you ever want a once in a lifetime vacation, head for Sri Lanka and Tea Trails. (More photos at the end of the copy)

Tea Trails is absolutely amazing. It has five “bungalows” scattered across a 300-acre tea plantation that fills one end of a valley and hugs a sparkling blue lake. The bungalows were the homes of the tea plantation managers back during the British colonial era. Each of them is a work of art from a bygone era.

We’re staying at the bungalow called Castlereagh, which has five guest suites. We have our own butler and every morning he brings tea to our room at whatever time we requested the night before. After breakfast he asks what we would like the chef to prepare for lunch and dinner. After dinner, the chef comes out to accept the accolades of the guests and to ask each of us what we would like for breakfast the next morning. Each of the meals is beyond your wildest expectations.

And, of course, we mustn’t forget tea time at 4:00 each afternoon, when we’re served our choice of teas along with an array of homemade scones and cookies and cakes and tarts.

Want your laundry done? Put it in a basket in your room. It will disappear while you’re at dinner and reappear the next morning. Want orange juice in your room? Today’s Colombo newspaper? A guide to lead you on a walk around the plantation or to take you kayaking across the lake? Just ring the bell in your room and someone will come running.

It’s a warm day and the window is open in our suite and the gentle breezes not only cool the room, but carry the faint chants from the Buddhist temple across the valley.

Of course, the best part of traveling is that you get to meet really interesting people. Like Graeme, the mountain climbing dentist from Sydney, and Cate his non-mountain climbing wife. And Tom, the gas and oil industry attorney, and Kelly, his interior designer wife, who are Aussie expats now living and working in Singapore. You get to have conversations about subjects that just never pop up over dinners at home.

Rather than me blathering on and on about Tea Trails, just go to TeaTrails.com and check it out for yourself. You will not believe how incredible it is. (I guess that fact that you won’t believe it makes “incredible” an accurate choice of words.)

I particularly like the way Jamie framed this photo to make my bald head line up with the scones.

We have three destinations in Sri Lanka — Colombo, the capital city; the Tea Trails resort high in the interior mountains; and the Udawalawe National Park, where we’ll supposedly see herds of wild elephants up close. So after deciding where we’d go in Sri Lanka, the next question was how to get from one place to another.

For the first leg from Colombo to Hatton, we chose a train called the Rajadhani Express, which bills itself as “Luxury on the Move”. This better be luxurious, I thought, because I shelled out a total of 5200 Sri Lankan rupiahs ($37) for two round-trip first class tickets, and rupiahs don’t grow on trees.

The Rajadhani Express’ website paints a beautiful word picture:

Welcome aboard Rajadhani Express, your ultimate choice to travel in Sri Lanka with the most comfortable train journey you will ever experience in Sri Lanka.

Step on board our fully restored, air conditioned and wood-paneled coaches and recapture the experience of a bygone era, offering a luxurious, scenic and relaxing way to travel to some of the country’s most enticing destinations.

We believe that the journey is as much to be enjoyed as the destinations. The glamour of this train lies in the experience and in the journey, in the allure of adventure and in the style, comfort and service on board.

Sound’s pretty damn impressive, doesn’t it? And you’ll surely plunk down your money after seeing these luxurious photos on the website.

I’m a freakin’ advertising copywriter. When will I stop falling for this stuff?

No, the car was not the modern, high-tech carriage shown on the website. If I had to guess, I’d say it was 50 years old. Maybe more. It was a bit shabby, but still far superior to the economy cars that were jam-packed with poor Sri Lankans and western backpackers.

We opted out of the morning tea because the car was rocking back and forth so wildly that we knew most of the scalding hot water would have ended up in our laps.

But we did get the latest entertainment on the flat screen TV at the front of the car: The most recent Sherlock Holmes movie, a Mr. Bean comedy, and some preposterous Liam Neeson shoot-em-up. Unfortunately, we couldn’t actually hear any of the dialogue because the noise of the train was considerably louder than the movies’ soundtracks, but this is an adventure, damn it.

Here’s how Jamie described the noise: “It sounds like riding on one of those old wooden roller coasters that carneys take apart this week at one fair and put back together again next week at another fair.”

Perfect.

Truth be told, we didn’t really care that the train wasn’t everything that was promised because of the sights we saw along the way.

We saw rivers and waterfalls and lush rain forests and jagged mountain peaks that disappeared into the mist. Sri Lanka is even more beautiful, I think, than Hawaii.

Right alongside the beauty, we saw horrible, gut-wrenching poverty. You can’t help but feel badly for people this poor, but you also realize that there’s nothing you can do to alleviate their situation.

Despite that poverty, we saw happy, friendly adults and smiling children waving at us from every station, every village, and every road crossing.

We’re experiencing incredible luxury here in Sri Lanka, so it’s probably good that we’ve been reminded of the incredible poverty that afflicts much of the world. It helps to keep us anchored in reality and grateful for everything we have.

The bottom line: The Rajadhani Express wasn’t quite what we were expecting, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. We saw some incredible sights and some incredible people.

And we had an incredible day.

Twenty years ago tonight, I took Jamie on our first date. We both say it was the best first date we ever had. (Of course, that statement means a lot more coming from me because I had gone on a lot more first dates than she had. The problem for me was always getting second dates.)

Here’s one of my favorite stories about Jamie:

I had a client who was very involved in a charity. She invited me, my business partner and our wives to the charity’s big annual fundraiser at Merv Griffin’s Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a Hollywood-ish kind of event and a number of big stars and not-so-big stars were in attendance.

Early in the evening, during the cocktail party preceding the dinner, my partner nudged me and said, “Hey, there’s Louis Nye standing over there all alone. Let’s go talk to him.”

If you’re old enough, you’ll remember Louis Nye. If not, he was a comedian famous in the mid-50s for being part of the Man on the Street interviews on the old Steve Allen Sunday night variety show. He became famous for playing Gordon Hathaway, a pretentious country club braggart, and creating the catch phrase, “Hi-ho, Steverino.” I worshipped Steve and Louis when I was a kid.

“Sure,” I said to Dan, “Let’s go.”

Of course, we gushed over Louis. He was in his 80s by this time and seemed very happy to be remembered and venerated by two fans.

As we spoke, Jamie walked by in a slinky black dress. She didn’t know who we were speaking to, so she just continued walking to wherever she was going. Louis clutched his heart, looked at Dan and me and said, “Do either of you know her? She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

We laughed. I called her over and introduced her to Louis Nye. She had no idea who he was, but was embarrassed by his gushing compliments.

A year went by. The annual charity event came around again. We were again invited and attended. It was a wonderful event that raised money for a worthy cause. Merv Griffin got up and told hilarious stories. Carl Reiner got up and told even funnier stories. John Lithgow received an award and told even more hilarious stories. A great time was had by one and all.

After the event ended, we were walking out of the ballroom and who did we run into passing in the other direction but Louis Nye and Anita, his wife of more than 50 years. This 80-something year old man, who had not seen Jamie since he spent one minute with her twelve months earlier, again clutched his chest. He turned to his wife and said, “She’s here. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

This is not an unusual event. Complete strangers often approach Jamie on the street and tell her how beautiful she is. Or they tell me how beautiful she is as if I don’t have eyes. I always tell them the same thing:

“She’s even more beautiful on the inside.”

That’s my wife. Happy first date anniversary, Poochie Baby.

The ride yesterday afternoon from the airport to our hotel in downtown Colombo was memorable if for no other reason than that we survived to tell the tale. The same goes for our ride to the train station this morning.

The roads seem like absolute chaos, but after two rush hour drives under our belts, I’m convinced there’s a system. I just don’t know what it is, and with my American perspective, may never fully comprehend it.

Here’s what it looks like:

There are supposed to be two lanes of traffic in each direction, but somehow four lanes of traffic crowd into those two lanes. Theoretically, the slower vehicles — tuk tuks, motorcycles, busses, bicycles — should stay in the outside lane and the faster vehicles should stay in the inside lane. Except that everyone is wildly weaving in and out of the four lanes they’ve created and they’re all honking at each other incessantly. Let’s call it the Colombo Cacophony. I guess that it’s either exhilarating or terrifying depending on your temperment.

Our driver this afternoon said, “We honk to say watch out, to say slow down, to say hello, to say thank you.”

In the midst of all this you have pedestrians. During dinner tonight at Tea Trails, I made the observation that Sri Lankan pedestrians do something I’ve never seen anywhere else and all the other non-Sri Lankan guests all laughed and agreed:

No matter how fast and heavy traffic may be, pedestrians walk across the street without looking either way. Whether they’re in a marked crosswalk or jaywalking, they look straight ahead as if there’s not a car within ten miles. Their gaze never varies to one side or the other to judge the likelihood of their stepping directly in front of an oncoming vehicle nor to assess their own safety. It’s as if they have some sort of super power that will keep them from suffering any harm, but that power will be lost if they so much as look at an oncoming car.

Somehow it all works. Cars come within inches of each other at speeds far too fast to be safe, but we saw no accidents and no angry drivers. Pedestrians walk through it all with no apparent fear.

It was crazy and spine-chilling and fun all at the same time.

There really is something very special about the Sri Lankan people. They are so happy, so helpful, so friendly. One of their smiles can light up a room.

I headlined the previous blog post “Sitting in the cheap seats”, which is what we did on the 10-1/2 hour red-eye flight between London and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Instead of dining on fine food and sleeping for six hours in the comfortable, fully-reclining business class seats I’d hoped for, we were back in economy, eating regular folks food and sitting in seats that reclined just enough so that your mouth falls open and your head bobs around when you try to sleep.

Except something funny happened. Instead of being a horrible flight or even an average flight, it was one of the best flights either of us have ever experienced.

How is that possible?

Simple. The service was so tremendous that the time just flew by (you’ll pardon the expression).

The flight attendants were all gorgeous. It was like they recruited the entire crew from the Miss Sri Lanka competition. And their smiles. I don’t know how to describe their smiles. They are just so warm and big and so natural and so absolutely effortless.

As I said in the previous post, economy class was jampacked. Far as I could tell, there was one empty seat in the whole plane. Yet, the flight attendants never lost their cool, never lost their composure, never lost those smiles.

Since I’m not a drinker, I asked for water when everyone else (including Jamie) was having wine. Our flight attendant said, “I feel bad if I can’t give you more.”

That was the start of a beautiful relationship. She literally fawned over me the rest of the flight. In my younger days, I would have convinced myself that she had fallen victim to my charisma and raw animal magnetism, and that she could resist neither my sexy, boyish charms nor my sparkling blue eyes. At this age I fear that she was merely being kind to an elderly American gentleman.

Whatever the reason, the flight attendant and I made some kind of connection and the less I asked of her, the more she wanted to do for me.

I just asked Jamie to describe the relationship I struck up with the flight attendant. She said, “She was giddy. She was awestruck. She couldn’t do enough for you.”

On one hand, I know we received very special treatment, but on the other hand, I suspect that every other flight attendant was giving the same treatment to every other passenger.

As a result, the red-eye flight we were dreading ended up being a wonderful surprise. In addition to the incredible service, we had a choice of English or Sri Lankan dinners right after take-off and the same choice of breakfasts.

But that brings up a question.

If the schlubs back in the economy seats were getting this kind of service, what were those lucky bastards getting up in first class?

UPDATE (JUNE 1, 2023): It’s been eight years since I first posted this story and now I’m finally going to reveal a detail that has gone heretofore unmentioned. I know you’ll think I’m delusional, because Jamie certainly did.

Every time the flight attendant bent over to serve the passenger across the aisle, she rubbed her butt on my shoulder. The first time it happened, I was a bit embarrassed, thinking that she had done it by mistake. The second time I thought This is a little odd. The third and fourth and fifth times she did it, I knew it was definitely not accidental and, quite honestly, I could not help but enjoy it.

I finally leaned over to Jamie and quietly told her what had been going on. She, of course, rolled her eyes and told me I was a dirty old man who was misinterpreting some clearly innocent contact. “Why would that beautiful young girl rub her butt on your shoulder?”

“If you don’t believe me,” I told her, “just watch the next time she comes down the aisle.”

A few minutes later the friendly flight attendant came down the aisle again. She stopped at my seat to ask if I needed anything and I said I didn’t. She quickly turned to the passenger across the aisle and did it again. She rubbed her butt on my shoulder. It wasn’t an accidental brush of her gluteal region against my shoulder, it was a full on massage.

When she finally walked away. I turned to Jamie and gave her one of those looks that say, “Well? Was I right?”

“I’ll be damned,” she exclaimed. “You weren’t exaggerating. That woman was rubbing her butt against your shoulder.”

Best damn airline in the world, if you ask me.