5-2-2 Saturday 25th Feb
Riding on a tuktuk is part and parcel of getting around Jim's Farm Villas. The charming traditionally dressed staff obligingly take you down to reception, Cinnamon, or up to the pool at Hilltop - negotiating the steep narrow single carriageway estate roads that criss-cross the 50 acres of coconut plantations with ease - in the farm's tuktuks. In fact nothing is too much trouble at Jim's Farm.
We were staying at the recently constructed traditionally styled "Mango Villa" which is situated on a hilltop. Our lovely room gave gorgeous double sided views from both our balcony and veranda.
So after a little exploration of the estate we set off early with Sumith (Graph) Samaradiawakara at the wheel, on Saturday 25th after a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit, freshly squeezed juice and Sri Lankan omelettes, to drive through the countryside and villages to Matale to visit the rock temples of Aluvihara.
Discarding our shoes at the bottom of the temple steps we walked up to the temples where we found gorgeous narrative wall paintings on the cave walls and impressive recumbent buddhas in large grottos of cool painted caves.
Many Sri Lankans make pilgrimage visits to the caves leaving carefully placed floral tributes to Buddha on special height offertory tables, including the delicate pale yellow blooms from the aptly named temple flower tree.
When you have finished soaking up the Buddha statues you can turn your gaze to admire the beautifully painted ceilings, I really liked this example in Kandy style.
After a visit to a Matale batik factory where I learnt how hard it is to create the fine designs of the batik patterns we succumbed and drove back to Jim's Farm with a new batik panel or two!
As we drove home again through the lovely countryside Sumith was full of lots more information about the Aluvihara temples - the first of three days of our holiday was to be spent almost exclusively on a cultural tour of central Sri Lanka
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