Day 16: February 3

We have barely driven 5 km when the police stop us. A serious-looking cop with a bunch of stars on his epaulettes asks to see our licenses. His feigned friendliness quickly turns into aggression (right at the moment when, after his words that our licenses are not valid in Sri Lanka, I tell him that he is wrong)….

And then the threats begin, one more outrageous than the next — “I’ll take you to police headquarters right now, and we’ll settle through the courts who is right and who is not.” Volchiy retorts, “Yeah, and tell us next that you’ll throw us in jail.” The cop laughs. Then he says that supposedly we have broken the law altogether and that mopeds cannot be rented, and that he will now have our moped towed to the impound lot and we will have no way out of here (utter nonsense)…. We talked with him for a very, very long time. He kept pointing to his badges and saying how cool and smart he was and how could I not agree with him. Agree with what? I tell him directly — do you want money? How much would satisfy you? He immediately starts denying it — saying no, it’s not about money. Then what is it about? I ask him to show me his Sri Lankan license. He shows it, and his license is practically identical to ours. On the back, the same system for indicating means of transport. It all ended with him calling the man from whom we rented the moped and saying something to him in his language. Then he waved us off — all right, he said, go on then.

In the nearest village we stop to drink tea and recover after our conversation with the local police. This time the buns are not as tasty, even though they look very similar.

We keep going. It smells like tea. Wherever you look, tea is growing everywhere. On the way, we stop at a beautiful tea center — the branded store/restaurant of the Mlesna manufacturer. Everything here is so pompous; it’s clearly made for tourists.

After Mlesna, we stopped by a simpler neighboring tea center. And then another one :) There are lots of them here.

We arrived in Nuwara Eliya in the evening. We found the hotel thanks to a Frenchwoman who came up to Volchy and first asked whether he was from France. Then she recommended the hotel where she was staying. We liked the hotel right away too.

After we settled in, we went into town, thinking we’d take a walk there. But Nuwara Eliya turned out to be a small, very dusty, and crowded little town. The whole town feels like some kind of bazaar-station. We wandered around a bit here and there.

We stopped by a shabby-looking café to have some tea. There we tried a rice pancake with egg. I liked it!