The galleries are now online for our recent trip. All six countries! Amazingly, we are now completely caught up from a 10-week trip only 5 days after the end of the trip. That has got to be some kind of record for us! You can see the galleries by choosing “Travel->2019” from the menu at […]
Home After Whirlwind 10 Weeks
We are back home, and loving it! Yes, the travel was fantastic. The places were fantastic. The people were (mostly…) fantastic. But our own beds and showers are more welcome after a long trip like this. After 10 weeks covering 6 countries, we did so much that it is hard for it not to start […]
Sri Lanka 9 – Galle
Galle is best known among photographic circles for the “stilt fishermen.” These are subsistence fishermen who sit for hours on stilts in the shallow surf, casting their lines for palm-sized fish. There used to be hundreds of men making a living this way, but the tsunami of 2004 killed off most of the fish, and […]
Sri Lanka 8 – Yala National Park
We did a total of two game drives at Yala National Park, famed primarily for the 25 – 30 leopards that live there, which is the highest density in the world. The driver and naturalist guide were quite excited that we saw more than one leopard, as this was unusual. This was another park where […]
Sri Lanka 7 – Kataragama
The first unique stop today was at the side of the road, where we found a dozen trees completely filled with the biggest fruit bats we have ever seen, with a wingspan of 120 cm (48 inches!). In fact, we were told these were some of the biggest bats in the world. These bats are […]
Sri Lanka 6 – Uda Walave
Our first stop today was at a Hindu temple, Seetha Amman Hindu Temple, a colorful temple right on the side of the road. Mehmet asked our local guide to track down the resident priest we had seen earlier, who agreed to come up and let us photograph him. The priest was very handsome and charismatic, […]
Sri Lanka 5 – Nuwara Eliya
We passed briefly through Nuwara Elija, stopping first at a Buddhist temple, where we watched a priest bless offerings of the worshippers (center). A stop at two tea plantations gave us a chance to see premium Sri Lankan tea being harvested. Our most interesting stop of the day was at a tiny village, for a […]
Sri Lanka 4 – Kandy
We returned to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic before dawn to capture the blue hour, and the colors of the temple just as the sun was rising (upper-left and lower-right). We then entered the temple to photograph the morning prayer ceremony. As we were leaving, we noticed some women dressed to welcome a […]
Sri Lanka 3 – enroute to Kandy
We started today with a stop at the golden temple of Dambulla. Throughout Sri Lanka are huge statues of Buddha, but this is easily one of the largest, as seen above. To the right, there appears to be a long line of monks walking in a line to give offerings to Buddha. Upon closer inspection […]
Sri Lanka 2 – Habarana
We drove most of yesterday, enroute to Habarana. Our first stop was the fishing town of Negomo, where they dry fish on the beach. We spent a couple hours watching the colorful fishing boats (top row), the men hauling in the catch and dumping it on bamboo carpets (bottom-left), and the workers organizing them to […]