I write this in one of the most humid cities I have ever visited. Having just returned from a two-week long sightseeing tour in Sri Lanka, I’m finally catching up with updating this page and my other streams.
In a few days I’ll have my travel log up, but for now, this is one of my favorite photographs of the trip. Taken in Sinharaja Forest Reserve, this is a few minutes after pouring, tropical rain, and after pulling some enterprising leeches from my socks.
Compared to our usual family trips, this hadn’t been one of the more enjoyable trips, but it was truly a delight to revisit some places that I had last seen thirteen years ago, when I was but a stripling of a human.
Our rainforest trip had been steeped in uncertainty from the get-go. We knew going in that we were going to a tropical country in the rainy season and were fully expecting rain at every turn. However, the only day it actually did rain was the day we left the hotel for the rainforest (promptly at 5 am). All my weather alerts showed ‘heavy rainfall’ and I was already reasonably gloomy on the bouncy, turbulent drive there. Having already missed climbing Adam’s Peak, I was fully prepared to troop into the forest in the rain, to avoid missing it.
Once we arrived, we sat patiently through half an hour of rain, eating a packed breakfast, praying that the rain would stop. And it finally did!! My parents accompanied us for a while, and then turned back, but I continued on, with our very excellent and knowledgeable guide.
Now why did I post this photo and not the others with assorted wildlife and flora?
This is when I thought ‘Yes, this is the highlight of the trip’, this is when I felt the most relaxed, despite the near-oppressive humidity, and the frequent stings of leeches. This was a path never-traveled. I’ll probably never go back here, I won’t be the person I was then. I was different before the forest. I remember the feeling of the stones and the path under my feet, the bright yellow of the butterflies, the frustration of photographing monkeys and birds that’d move JUST when my camera focused on them, my lightest clothes sticking to me with sweat, my soaked shoes from making a mad dash over rocks in the river and protesting muscles that missed their daily runs.
This photo is the peace that came from the exertion of the trek.
saherhasnain 