Day Twenty: Wallowing at Wallawwa and heading home

Our one day at Wallawwa started with a walk in the back blocks passing huge mansions on big blocks of land. There was plenty of waving and smiling and honking of horns, especially from the buses racing along at a terrifying speed on the main road. It will be very strange to walk along the quiet Darebin Creek trail in the mornings when I go home. The absence of uncontrolled street dogs, cows and the occasional water buffalo, cat or goat will be very weird. But the lack of honking horns will be the most difficult aspect to adjust to. 

Even early in the morning the humidity is high so Jan and I opted for a swim in the cool pool. On her way Jan spotted an enormous water monitor next to the path. It completely ignored her and wandered off at its own pace. 

The pool is surrounded by lush green tropical trees and palms. The tiles in the pool are mottled green and brown and the effect is much more in line with nature than other pools with bright coloured tiles. Interesting how a small change in landscaping can contribute to the contemplative mood of a place.

The Wallawwa is the perfect example of a minimalist but inspiring design with lots of wood, huge pots, ponds and greenery to soothe the soul, and all without the pretentiousness of the Bawa Gardens. 

We had all day to hang around at Wallawwa before Udaya was due to pick us up for dinner. We had to focus on getting packed and on the plane and home, but it felt sad to be leaving. Many decisions needed to be made about attire for the plane trip (as the flight over had been freezing!) what to store in carry-on baggage, what should we declare at Customs, were our shoes clean enough ( as we had been on a farm), what to throw away when space was scarce and so on and so on......

Sid had organised for Jan and I to buy some beautiful wooden painted masks. You never know how Customs will respond to wooden objects so we rubbed coconut oil into the raw wood backs so they looked coated (and they passed Customs later so all good!).

We were looking forward to finishing this trip with dinner at Chandana's house but unfortunately there was a death in his family earlier that day and it wasn't possible.

He booked us into a funky restaurant  called Boho Negombo and Udaya picked us up from the Wallawwa for the last time. We were due to fly out at 12.30 am. so the plan was dinner and then the Airport.

It was quite a trip to Negombo which is a coastal city north of Colombo. The young things were out in force at Boho, but it had a great vibe to it and lots of choice in the menu. I thought it was my last chance for Sri Lankan food so I ordered prawn curry and accompaniments and it was delicious. I'm going to miss the spices and multi-dish meals that are Sri Lankan food!

As we were preparing to leave Udaya suddenly stood up and went to the van and came back with a bag full of boxes. He presented one to each of us and we were delighted when we realised that he had made a collage photo mug for each of us. There we all were in our saris and at the dancing performance. He'd personalised each one by making sure there was one photo of us alone on our own mug too. He'd gone to such a lot of trouble and we were very touched.

(The photo of four of us with our mugs was taken after we returned to Melbourne which explains the cold weather clothes!)

We had already decided to give him the gin we hadn't managed to drink (it turns out three bottles was too much for 5 people and three weeks!) It was about a 3/4 full bottle and he had enjoyed joining us for G&Ts, so we knew he'd be happy with it.

His last duty was to get us safely to the Airport and we were so sad to say goodbye to him after 21 days. He deserves a medal for putting up with us!

Then we were back on the plane .....and it was still cold!!!

Just to add insult to injury when we got of the plane it was 14 degrees and raining. Oh no!!

Welcome home!