The rather spontaneous decision of taking the train at 7 am instead of the planned 9 am was one of those “decisions” (if you can call being woken up by someone else accidentally a decision ^^) which lead to a lucky coincidence in Kandy.Lucky coincidence or strokes of fate as Sadri (a person you’ll get introduced to in the very next post) would have said are something that happens to travelers a lot. Even if things do not work out, they somehow work out in the end in a way you did not expect.

The same was true for our coincidence in Kandy. During the last two hours of the train ride a German family consisting of seven members hopped onto the train and at first, they did not catch my attention even though they were speaking German, but when I heard them wondering about my ukulele and to whom it belongs I started to get curious. People, interested in my instrument and obviously into music as well, should be good company, I thought.

Other German musicians

Because they did not know that I spoke German as well they talked about my ukulele for what felt like an eternity until I could not stand it any longer and started a conversation with them. That’s caustically how we came in touch with Ada and Ansgar, two Germans our age, and their family, who actually live quite close to Berlin. What a funny coincidence once again. The best of it: Ada had brought her own ukulele to Sri Lanka with her and so we actually HAD to have a jam session in Kandy somehow.

An agreement and a meeting

After the train ride, we parted again, not knowing, whether the jam session we planned would take place. So we wandered around Kandy on the search for our hotel. At least we had Ada’s business card. She is a singer-songwriter and has her own website and a YouTube channel, so we were quite sure, that we could at least keep in touch with her. Luckily the Kandy jam session plan worked out very well though and we met them in the evening at the Temple of Tooth, one of the most famous sights in Kandy. Rico even got into the temple for free for a short time, because it was about to close and someone gave us his unused ticket, just to make us able to take some photos there.

We nearly missed Ada and Ansgar due to that because they were hungry and bought something to eat, but in the end, we spent the whole evening together with them. First, we went to a nice viewpoint, from which we saw the whole city or at least the lights in the dark.

Kandy at night

After that, we ate some really good chicken Kothu in a nice restaurant. Our crazy tuk-tuk driver from the hotel recommended it to us. We had been talking about music along the way to the restaurant. So we decided to look for a nice place to make our little jam session happen directly afterwards. While wandering around the Kandy lake, we found a rather magical place right on it. What we found was an abandoned little boat with nobody around to worry us. There was no noise from the streets and no people telling us that we were not allowed to sit there. I have no idea for how long we sat there, but it did not matter.

It was just one of those moments, in which you lose track of time. One of those moments, where time itself ceases to exist… Where one is completely lost in the magic of the now. What I know for sure is that it was really late when we came home. I was happy, because we found good new friends. Even more so because I found the first person, with whom I could really jam after three weeks of traveling.

The Royal Gardens of Kandy

That was why we agreed on meeting the following day as well and decided spontaneously to stay one more night in Kandy even though the city itself wouldn’t have kept us there any longer.
The following day we went around the botanic garden of Kandy with Ada’s family and of course jammed there once again.

We even sat on a tree, 3 meters above the ground, playing music until a park-ranger told us to stop. It was actually not allowed to climb trees in that park. Even though every single tourist and local around took a picture of us, we have not even a single one. Us sitting up in the tree, playing ukulele and singing would have made a great picture though. It would have been such a nice memory and souvenir of our little group…

A last evening

Following an invitation to a dinner cooked by Ada’s stepmother, we went to their apartment in the evening rather spontaneously. We then jammed there most of the time. Two ukuleles and the incredible voice of Ada. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed playing together with her, interacting with each other without any words. We communicated just through the music and got completely carried away by the flow of it. We stayed there late into the night, even though we had to get up early the next day. The hours passed by like mere seconds and we really did not know how to get home at this time. … It somehow still felt too early when we left them.

Somehow we managed to get a Tuk Tuk home and arrived at the hotel safe and sound. Otherwise, we would have had to walk one and a half hours without a proper GPS tracking device. (Google maps on my phone somehow loses GPS from time to time) so it would have been a real Odyssey 😉
However, meeting this family was one of those lucky coincidences. It resulted in having new really good friends. I am really looking forward to seeing them back in Berlin and have a nice little jam session (or several).