There are many things to do and see in the area of Ella, but we only had two days slated for this portion of our trip. “What should we prioritize?” I ask Andrew as I dab a tea bag into a mug. “Legend has it, the Sri Lankan Highlands not Africa is the place humanity began. There is a Hindu cave and tunnel network where King Ravena hid his wife, Princess Sita at the beginning of the world and the Sri Lankan Christians believe this is where Adam and Eve got their start. Sri Lanka is the garden of Eden!” I read on Wikipedia. Indeed, archaeologists have found a human scull dating back all the way to 20,000 B.C. in this cave and tunnels.

Andrew wrinkles his nose. “I’m templed out.”

“Already?” I ask.

“Well, I was temple saturated after Thailand last year, and just as I started to get over it, we went back to Bali. Now, we’ve gone to two temples here in Sri Lanka. That’ll just about do it.” Andrew bobbles his head at me as the Sri Lankans do.

So, I scroll through other options waterfalls, hikes, longer hikes, and temples. Looking at the map, we placed our finger on the evening hike least likely to need the assistance of tuk-tuk transportation.

“Little Adam’s Peak, it is.”

Once we get our second wind for the day, we scale the ravine, walk the curve of the road, and find a dirt trail cut through tea plantation grounds and up to a peak adorned with a Buddha meditating on the setting sun. Mist and smoke fill the air between layers upon layers of rolling hillside, making for a mysterious scene. Then, large speakers dotted across the valley begin the Buddhist chanting. What can be a little loud near town is offered at perfect volume from up here. It adds an exotic soundtrack to our sunset. There are a handful of other people there with us, but not many. It's just a perfect, pleasant evening.

We climb down the hillside in twilight, enjoying the stretch of our legs and the crunch and roll of small pebbles under our feet along the narrow dirt road. People ask me what I miss from home, more often than food but just slightly less often than my family and friends, what I really miss is hiking in the mountains, dirt beneath my feet. The smell of cool, high altitude air. Here, there are rows of transplanted pines and dry Eucalyptus trees, brought by the British Colonists when they found that this land could grow anything. Today, these trees bring me home with the sound and scent falling from their waving branches. Even as I tucked myself into the bed draped in swaths of mosquito net, we slept with our sliding door open to the world so I can smell the wood smoke and mist of these high mountains.

The next day, we woke early to check our targeted Ella Tourist box: the Nine Arches Bridge. The Nine Arches Bridge is an iconic part of the Sri Lankan train track. Built in the late 1800s of stone blocks, it’s beautiful nine arches stand strong to span a giant raveen. It’s scenic, especially if you can catch a train making its way across. And best of all, this landmark is also within walking distance of our hotel.

The sun is still hidden by ridgeline as we set out, and the smell of flowers and tea leaves hang in the air. We find the footpath labeled “The shortest walk by foot to the Nine Arches Bridge” and make the turn. We drop down a steep hilside into the jungle, where green parrots sqwak and flutter along a river.

“There they are!” Andrew points out as the view opens up and we can see across the raveen.

A sign with the train schedule is staked to a tree, and I see I only have five more minutes until the train comes. I hustle further along down the path, get into position for my photoraph just as the train whistle calls across the bridge. The tourist mob parts like the red sea, leaving a clear path for the train to pass through. People cheer and wave as the train arrives, and the train cars bristle with passengers dangling out doors and widows waving and trying to capture their own pictures as they cross the bridged abyss.

As fast as it came, the train is gone and we are left to explore the now empty and quiet tracks. We enjoy an ice cold King Coconut in the shade of a shack built next to a tomato garden and watch everyone getting their selfies on the bridge. The mood is cheerful.

We enjoy a King Coconut while we watch everyone. We discover colorful birds, bees nests, and the most scenic tomato garden in the world.

We take our time walking back into town, taking a different footpath back to the top of the ridge line. We walk through neighborhoods and dirt roads, just enjoying what it is to be in Sri Lanka. By the time we return to our hotel, we are warmed by the higher altitude sun and ready for the fresh plate of perfectly riped tropical pineapple our host offers us with our afternoon cuppa tea.

“So, what would you like to do next?” He asks us.

“I need a massage.” Andrew tells him.

Sri Lanka is known for having one of the first hospitals ever built in human civilization, and despite having only a GDP of $4,065 per person, it provides health care to all of its citizens. In addition to their hospitals capable of surgeries and treatments familiar to us in the US, they also carry on a long tradition of Ayruvedic Medicine. Using exercise, diet, and the powders, extracts and oils from the plants and spices grown on this jungle island as medicine, it focuses on managing the balance of “humors” or forces of energy in the body: Vata,Pitta and Kapha. The locals swear by it. So, we should have known what was to be offered our way when Andrew asked for a massage: Ayruvdic medical massage.

When in Rome...err, Sri Lanka.

Our host leads us to his family’s Ayruvedic doctor. Identifying us as tourists, this doctor skips what would usually be the medical questions designed to determine what our current balance is and instead offers us procedures for general health. I'm a little disappointed we don't get the full experience, but never mind that, I soon realize the treatment ordered is new experience enough.

We are offered a strong ginger tea and told to sit in a wooden wicker chair that is bent in permanent recline. It would be comfortable except my legs are not propped up, and so I'm bent and arched in a strange manner.

“These are very uncomfortable chairs,” I say to Andrew.

“I think you are supposed to put your feet up on these.” He says, rotating hidden slats out from under the wide arms of the big chair.

I wrinkle my nose. “That cannot be what those are for." If I were to lay back and put my feet on those, my feet would be sticking up in the air and opened wide as the open horizon. “I don’t think so.”

We never do figure out what the slats are for because at this moment the nurse comes to take us back into the “treatment room”. The room has two beds build of iron rod and topped with a rather thin rubber mat. Against the third wall is a large wooden box with a domed lid, the full length of a human body. "What is that?” I whisper and point when the ladies leave the room.

“I think it's for the steam portion of the experience.”

I eye it with suspicion.

The ladies return and we are seated for the 20 minute portion of a head and neck massage. Then face down for an oil back massage of the rest of our bodies. Then, I received a facial while Andrew was instructed to lay inside the Steam Coffin.

“PSsst! What's happening?” I ask without moving my mouth to avoid cracking the mask absorbing impurities from my facial pores.

“I told you, it’s a steam sauna.'" Andrew tells me.

“Is your head poking out?”

“Yes.”

Upon our nurses return, we were instructed to switch. Andrew returns to the iron bed for his facial, and I am tucked into the wooden box. What I hadn't seen before is the hole cut in the top, allowing the casket lid to open and shut around your neck. They tuck a cloth in the gap keep the heat and steam from leaking out and now my head is refreshingly breathing cool air while the rest of my body is heated with a propane burner and a bowl of water beneath wooden slats inside the box.

“This thing probably won't explode, right?” I feel my muscles relaxing away from my bones like the meat from a perfectly poached chicken carcass.

Once those thirty minutes are up, we are wrapped in swaths of fabric and led out the door, and down ramped stairs with a domed roof made of stone and cement. Down, down, down, we are taken into an ever darker corner of this strange “hospital”. We reach the basement, turn the corner and our lady in the lead offers an open hand with palm up into a room that can only be described as The Dungeon.

Two more beds made of iron bars lay side by side, this time, without any pad. An iron rod hangs off chains bolted to the ceiling, two large metal bowls that come to a point at the bottom with a spigot hang on a tripod of more chain over the area where each our heads would rest on our respective tables. The room smells of kerosene flame and move theater popcorn.

Is there a limitation to these adventures where I might say “now this seems too strange for me to participate, thank you”? Apparently, not today, because as instructed I lay face up on the table. I look past the spigot and bowl, along links of chain, past the iron rod and up to the ceiling. It looks structurally sound enough, it probably wont crash down and impale my face.

The nurse lights a flame and pours oil into the bowl. We wait a few moments, and then when the time is right, they open the spigots simultaneously. Warm oil drops in a light, but steady, stream directly onto the middle of my forehead, or that place where Hindu people wear their jeweled dot.

We cap off our Ayruvedic experience in a terracotta cave made into a steam room, I sit back and contemplate my review of the experience: Strange. Pleasantly strange.