Christmas Day

Local corner market

Very ornate Gingerbread House

Christmas morning - bright blue, beautiful weather. Driving in this part of the country is really quite nice. The roads are progressively better maintained...or perhaps there are fewer people on the roads here so they don't deteriorate as quickly... The villages are further apart but there's more of a feeling of prosperity here - the houses are better maintained and businesses seem to be visited more often - at least from what we can see.

Wire and cut outs

Chicken wire with painted branches - quite pretty

I have to take a bit of a bird walk here...and talk about Christmas trees. Now, we in the good old USA...and probably most of Europe, have some fairly standard ideas about what Christmas trees look like, green, evergreen tree, size can very but tree is standard, decorations are colorful, maybe thematic but still...you can conjure up lots of ideas. Well...in Sri Lanka...there's no pre-conceived idea of what a Christmas tree looks like so...they're quite unique. We found wispy wiry trees made out of spools, wires and cut out ornaments, branches of any greenery stuck in a bucket (with lots of color), and, our favorite, a tree made out of chicken wire covered with silver painted sticks - really a stunning one.

Branches in a bucket...and the man who did it

Ella is a quaint little village, tucked up in the mountains with stunning vistas. Our guesthouse, the Ambiente, overlooks a spectacular waterfall and rolling green hills that turn purple in the distance. It's heavenly to just sit, drink some tea (I know, very British of us), and watch the water fall. We did drag ourselves away for a walk up Little Mount Adam. It was a pleasant walk and just what we needed after so many hours sitting in cars the last few day.