Friday, March 30, 2012

This blog will cover our trip to Sri Lanka intended for April - May 2012.  It is mainly a wildlife trip with some fair interest in the gardens around the country and the history and architecture.

The title of the blog reflects the fact while farm ponds (in the UK) are called dams in Australia in Sri Lanka they are called 'tanks'.  At this stage I have no idea why.  That started me thinking about a famous Esso advertising slogan, but on reflection I decided it might lead to some ambiguity, and possible displeasure from the authorities,  so adapted it slightly: we are after all expecting to see a bunch of elephants at various points in this trip, but probably not any stripey felines.  Spotted felines are very much on the agenda.

I will make the linguistic/zymurgic comment that in both Tanzania and Vanuatu the local beer is called Tusker.  However in Tanzania this refers to pachyderms while in Vanuatu it is about porkers.  In neither case do they have the property of Camel cigarettes of having a picture of the factory on the packet. In Sri Lanka the main brewery keeps the feline tale lashing under the name of  Lion.  They seem to have four brews (plus the boring Carlsberg of which conglomerate they are part).  I expect there to be a fair bit of testing what it tastes like although someone else's view is not promising in terms of variety.!

After a few introductory pages those for the trip itself begin with an extract from our itinerary (which could be thought of as the theory) followed by comments on, and images of what actually happened (aka the practice).

the final section of the blog will be thematic pages covering the major subjects of the trip: various forms of wildlife, nosh, accomodation, gardens and archaeology/religion..

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