Route: Pollonaruwa - Dumbanagala (should have been Kandy)
Kms: approx 100.
Hrs: approx 6
Road: Before lunch - smooth roads and barely any traffic. After lunch - amazing twisties, gnarly track thru the valley for about 45 mins
Weather: warm but overcast. Pissing rain from about 4pm
(This will be relevant later on) Just before i woke up i was having the craziest dream that I saved a giant Water Monitor by relocating him, and when I went back to see him it was like that video of the dude who saved the lion cub from the circus and released him into the wild - when they saw each other again they were giving each other hugs and the lion's partner was even getting in on the action. Bizarre.
The first part of the ride today was really cruisy & scenic - we rode along the manmade lake from the ancient times, then for ages alongside the manmade canals - they went for miiiiles. The road was mainly single lane, but super smooth blacktop. Plenty of wildlife around too - first we passed a HUGE flock of birds that went from flying in formation over the lake to landing on the water to feed on whatever was in the water. Then along the sloped side of the dam wall there were dozens of peacocks all strutting their stuff - I've never seen so many.
As we rode along these man made canals, I was thinking that it's interesting an empire almost 1000 years ago built things that are still supporting civilisation today.... but today we are doing the opposite - destroying the Earth so that there won't be civilisation in 1000 years.
Further down the road Mo came to abrupt emergency stop for seemingly no reason - then he turned quickly to the right and I saw what it was - 2 huge Water Monitors. I locked up the wheels and also made an emergency turn to avoid one that turned to walk across the road. We did a u turn to take some photos - one of the Monitor a was absolutely massive, far bigger than the other one that walked onto the road... they were like the Monitor couple from my dream. Spooky. The smaller one was pretty adamant about being on the road - small trucks were approaching so I gestured for them to slow down which they did. The Monitor looked at the truck and looked at me and ran towards me which was a little unnerving, but it then ran off into the reeds on the side of the road.
We rode thru some amazing twisties up & down a mountain pass, and I saw something that truly left me in awe... remnants of possibly the longest rolling burnout on a motorbike I've ever seen. This burnout started pointing DOWN the mountain road, and snaked around corners n all non-stop for at least 4 or 5km - i was repeatedly asking myself when was it going to end?! But unfortunately we never saw the end of it as we turned off down a separate road. Devastated - there would have been a disintegrated tyre on the side of the road somewhere. I don't even know what sort of bike here would be capable of such a skid - certainly nothing I've seen!
We stopped for lunch at a little roadside restaurant, as the next part of the ride was going to be quite involving. Had fried river fish which was differnet and not in a bad way.
The next part of the ride was up the side of a mountain on a road called "18 bend road", which was in reference to the 18 switchback turns that snaked its way up the mountain. Was an absolute blast to ride, even on the gutless 250. As we got higher the view obviously got better, but I realised the top of the mountain was shrouded in cloud - so the view at the top was obviously going to be shit. I was hoping Mo would pull over for a snap but he didn't, and as expected the view from the top was garbage 😂
When we pulled over at the top for the non-existent view, we received a call from Ajith in the office about developments in Kandy. Our hotel had apparently called him saying we were not to come to Kandy, so we had to spend a night elsewhere.
I was still keen to see The Knuckle Mountains, and told Mo as such, so we took a little rough track down into the valley. The track was barely wide enough for a tuk-tuk, but we were riding like we were running from the cops! After about 20mins on this track, Mo stopped - turns out his shift lever had shit itself and he was stuck in 4th gear which wasn't an ideal gear to be in as we were riding from 1st to 3rd gear. He said he couldn't fix it as he needed a welder - as we were in the middle of nowhere I suggested we go back to one of the houses we passed, but Mo said he could push on to the next village. When I asked how far the village was he said 20km 😂 I knew he'd cook his clutch trying to get power up the tight, steep bends - and surely enough about 10 minutes later we were stopped even further into the jungle. The 10 minutes we just rode though were intense - not even wide enough for a tuk-tuk, and no sign anyone had used the track in a long time as it was covered in grass.
Mo got his tool kit out and in about 20 minutes was able to get the bike into 2nd gear which was enough to get us into the next village.
About 15 mins later (so much for Mo's 20km) we reached the village and almost instantly found the guy who fixes things - the village fixer. Our timing was perfect as he was just about to ride-off somewhere. After some grinding, bashing and welding we were off again.
The next part of the ride was definitely my favourite so far this trip - it was an awesome little track that snaked down into the valley. The quality of the track was absolutely horrific, but that's what made it so good! We were back a RFC pace (running from cops) which turned me on. We missed an epic photo opportunity at the very bottom of the valley amongst the green rice fields which was a bummer - but I'll remember to stop Mo in future.
We had mixed reactions from locals - there were mostly curious stares, a lot of kids would hear us coming and run to the edge of the road, but there more than a few dirty looks and one chap screamed-out something... if his facial expression was any indication, I'm pretty sure he was telling us to fuck off.
We took a turn up a driveway to an impressive chalet that would have looked appropriate in a ski resort - to my surprise this was our makeshift accommodation for the night! I was enjoying the riding tho and told Mo we should ditch our bags and go for a ride, so we took the bags off and I had a quick coffee on the expansive terrace to sharpen-up & get some snaps. In the space of 10 minutes though the clouds rolled-in SUPER fast, so we decided not to go for a ride. This turned-out to be a wise decision as a huge thunderstorm rolled-in not 15 minutes later with a TORRENTIAL downpour that lasted a solid 2 hours.
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Dinner was a bit lonely - I'm the only person staying in the Chalet, so ate alone as Mo ate with the guys working here. No internet means a bit of reading on the kindle app (so fkn handy), then an early night.
