Stargazer4moon's blog: "It depends on what occurs on the way."

I apologise, it was not the man of Richmond Castle who liked baby boys, it was the lady of the house according to the Man with the Limp and most likely the lady who did the guided tour of the Castle/Palace told me too. It reminds me of Buckingham Pallace, quite long and square. ++++ Tonight we have been totally deaffened by an elephant procession that we attended. We left the hotel at 7.45 and had to drive quite a distance to get to the procession where we clambered off the coach, an ancient affair with windows that opened. I took a blouse/jacket in case the aircon was too cool, how silly was that. +++ Here the evenings stay warm so any breeze is pleasant, especially in an ancient coach. +++ The coach was 2/3 full and majority were Russian, as are the guests in the hotel now. There are just six of us left from England and when the other couple go home on Monday we will be alone. Luckily there are some nice Dutch, Germans & of couse Sri Lankans. +++ The parade was long and I mean long, very noisy with drums, pipes, whistles and of course the usual noisy toys that throngs of men walked by selling. It was heaving there but we had seats which the Russians did not use, they went down to the front and stood in the way of those seated whislt they took their photos or just gawped in awe. Then there was the security guard or policeman, he stood right in the middle of an excellent spot where I could see the parade to get good pictures. Plus there were three white robed men who just loitered around generally getting in the way of photographers. However we did get some excellent photos of the elephants who lumbered along elegantly dressed in various costumes. It was not easy getting photos of the parade itself due to the movement especially the dancers but the fire dancers were quite photographable so we got spectacular ones of them throwing four foot rings of fire up into the air and catching them like hoola hoops. ++++ As I said, the parade was endless because as soon as the main parade had passed by the followers followed up at which point we were told to move back to the coach and the endless journey back to the hotel began in the heat of the night. It took us half an hour to get there and two hours to get back, probably due to being behind the procession for a distance before turning off onto the beaten track to let the courier, in inverted commas, off at his home. From there we were stuck on narrow back roads and beach tracks which we had to reverse back along several times to let things pass. At one point we were stuck completely at a standstill just outside a hotel whose entrance and exit the coach had to reverse back to in order to enter the grounds to turn round in. The hold up was getting the car park emptied, I believe, in order that the coach could go in and out as it seemed the only way to get it turned around. Passing the hotel reception area we noticed a wedding party and they waved and cheered at us as we passed them in our ramshackle coach. Everyone waved at us as we drove along the tortuous journey, they were that close that we could have shaken hands with them but we just waved and said our Hello's back. +++ The road seemed to get worse and it was apparent that we had driven miles and not really got out of the Waduwa area as we drove along its beach road before heading back onto a road where civilisation existed, some awake but many gone to bed following the procession. Many people still had to wend their way home if the Tuk Tuk park was anything to go by although their journeys were probably quicker in the end than ours. After two hours we were back at the hotel and wide awake from the events of the night. Hopefully there will be some memorable photos to remind us of the festival of a lifetime, I doubt we will visit another one here in September, it is not a settled month anymore for holidaying in.