Updates for 2013-2014

Its been quite awhile since we updated here- we've been busy!  In Mid 2013 Janet had back surgery from which she recovered fairly well.  Zoe had an apparent blood clot on her left front side in Sept. 2013, but with medication that she still gets she has been doing very well and showing no signs of disability.   In Sept. 2014 we made a trip back to Bangalore and then one to Sri Lanka- A place that is only a 1 hour flight from Bangalore, but we never had time to visit while in BLR.  It was great to see BLR again and many familiar places looked the same or at least similar.  Our trip to Sri Lanka was interesting, but the humidity was oppressive in most places. We started in Colombo for a couple nights and then went to the area around Sigiriya to a very nice place for 4 nights.  We took day trips from here to see various places and enjoyed ourselves, but the oppressive humidity limited what we did.  We mostly visited ancient sites.   We went on to Kandy and then the hills and found wonderful Batiks.  In the hills it was cool, but rather isolated-  the drive there at night was scary in the fog and rain. We moved to the southeast coast to stay near a national park, but it was closed- until a day after we left. We hoped to see leopards, but did not, however we did see elephants, crocodiles and many birds, so it was pleasant.  We stayed at a couple places along the southwest coast and enjoyed that- except for the humidity.  We had dinner with friends of friends from BLR one night which was great fun.  Overall we liked Sri Lanka- it is developing rapidly after the end of their civil war, which happened while we were living in BLR.   The country is not so densely populated as India, so that was a major difference- and it is much more heavily Buddhist. 
For Sri Lanka we arranged to have a car and driver- guide who was generally pretty good and very helpful.
We had a plan to go to Indonesia in Feb. 2015, but canceled that due to reasons that will be written soon.