A Python in a bag, a Cobra in a box and a Baby Torque monkey on a leash in Anuradhapura. The baby monkey is terrified. Wouldn’t you be if you were tied up right next to an animal that could easily swallow you whole?

This guy was near the entrance of the hotel that we stayed him, there are plenty of others like him all over the city. There was one even at the Sri Maha Body (the Sacred Bo Tree) car park. In Sri Lanka it’s illegal to capture wild animals, yet these men operate in full view of the police, the priests and the thousands of devotees who flock to Anuradhapura during the weekends.

Many of these devotee pay the snake charmer money to see the monkey or the cobra perform. Some even pay to have their photo taken standing next to the python. (this photo was snapped surreptitiously)

Yep, everyone should have in their collection a photo of a bee and everyone should have a photo of an Agapanthus flower as well. So it’s two in one

The Shoe Flower is a member of the Hibiscus family and can be seen all over Asia. Here in Sri Lanka it’s known as ‘Sapattu Mal (සපත්තු මල්)’, and you can see many differently colored varieties.

What you see in the first picture are the opposite sides of a fiber glass water tank being pressed together, separated only by a 50mm PVC pipe and a float switch. They were originally about a meter apart but now they are being crushed together. The tank has imploded. A fiber glass water thank isn’t all that easy to crush. If you roll it on to it’s side and stand on it you will only make a small dent that springs back the moment you step off. It takes a truely massive force to do this and that force was generated by water itself. No not water inside the tank but outside!

This fiber glass tank is an underground water storage tank. It  was placed in a concrete enclosure. Ground water or rain water had gradually crept into the enclosure. That in itself is not a problem as long as pressure inside the tank is equal to the pressure outside. Water from this tank is pumped into an overhead tank the process being automated with float switches. When that happens fresh water flows into the tank from the Municipal supply albeit at a lower rate than the outflow. As a result a pressure difference builds up and the tank shrinks a little bit The process continues until the pipes are damaged and the system stops working. That’s when you discover that something has gone wrong