(Katunayake – Negombo - Colombo – Anuradhapura - Ritigale Mountain – Habarana - Nilaveli - Trincomalee – Minneriya – Koneswaram - Dambulla – Kithulgala – Colombo)
Friday: The hotel “near” Colombo was actually about a grinding stop-start two hour bus ride north of the city in the sprawling “village” of Katunayake, but close to the airport for a post-midnight arrival from Singapore. The closed restaurant greeted you with a “THANK YOU FOR PATRONISING” sign as the check-in clerk was doing precisely that the new arrival. To escape further patronising and to see a bit of west coast Sri lanka I was directed in the morning to “the tree where buses stop” to travel an hour north to Negombo. In a roar of dust a bus rattled up and slowed a bit so I could jump in the back door at a medium run, and then charged off as I catapaulted into the seat. A 20 cent fare to a tired-looking conductor gives you an hour of episodic rolling along the Negombo Road with Sri Lankan “doof doof” music echoing through the bus.
Negombo features life sized Christian saints-in-glass-cases gazing benevolently down at passers-by through the town as well as colonial buildings, well preserved. While gazing down from the Dutch canal bridge I was offered a Sri Lankan wife by a man whose brother lives in Sydney: “I marry them up with Europeans…”
After leaving the entrance of the 17th century Dutch Fort (now the local gaol), I was picking my way towards the beach through the acres of fish laid out on hessian and plastic to dry, and I was yelled at from a distance: “Helloa! You are from where? Germany? You need guide to explain species of fish?”
Lunch was the first of many “devilled” dishes at the Ice Bear Café. If it swims, walks or crawls in Sri Lanka it can be “devilled” for your next meal. On the wander back to the bus station I looked in to the inevitable Cargills Food City “On You Way Home” to be greeted by large cardboard red hands informing me that “Prices Are Down”… The bus back to the pub was extensively decorated with primary coloured Buddhist imagery and plastic flowers and a large sound system broadcasting music related to the decore, very LOUDLY! A succession of friendly people (school and university students) sat next to me to practise their Engish or just to stare close-up at the foreigner.
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Saturday: the local train to Chilaw (chugging up the western coast through jungle, rice paddies, cornfields and temples and mosques) and back. Memo to self: the bus into Colombo Fort station takes more than the two estimated stop-start hours packed three-to-a-seat… It’s not a great idea to run to catch a basic local train (plastic benches down the sides) for a bumpy three hour trip with a full bladder…
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Sunday: stuck at the remote hotel as I was to meet the rest of my group and leave at midday. A quiet stroll around Katunayake away from the dusty traffic of the Negombo Road was among sleepy kelpie dogs dozing on the riverside road, a quiet background of hymns from the local church as kids from the village and people in canoes or on bikes said quiet hellos. In the shadows of small houses, families relaxed, dozing or watching Sunday morning TV or broadcasting loud local pop from huge sound systems or washing tuk tuks or collecting firewood or laundering at the riverbank. Back across the main road, in an open shed in the quiet cul-de-sac, the local blacksmith, assisted by his wife, was hammering hot metal next to glowing coals and adjacent to a line of knives hammered onto a street sign, advertising his business. Back and along the main road to Negombo, greeting new arrivals from the airport, are many poster portraits of the President Rajapaksa with, or welcoming, various world dignitaries or with optimistic public works. The more (and more, and more) one sees the graphic poster portraits of the esteemed President, them more he seems to “morph” into a well upholstered version of Orwell’s Big Brother, or perhaps Gomez Addams…
At lunch time I met the rest of my group. Her name is Eve. She’d just completed 4 weeks on a very basic tour of Northern India and Nepal and was not yet quite coping with the relative luxury and processed foods of a Peregrine Tour in Sri Lanka. We were transferred in “our van” to a rather grander and even more remote resort hotel. We knew we’d be getting on ok when we ran into each other later out on the street, escaping the lovely resort (which seemed otherwise populated by corpulent German men-of-a-certain-age with slim wives who looked like their daughters) to see a bit more of the reality of a Sri Lankan township on a scruffy local highway.
Monday: On the road: the two of us with Tour leader: Raj and our own taciturn driver Sunil in our comfy air-con van.
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"Imbulgoda, Kadawatha, Pasyala – the suburbs squeezed out of the rear end of the van like toothpaste out of a tube. Viraj drove like a true three-wheeler kariar, cutting through the middle of village markets, bus queues, election rallies. No gap was too small to sneak through, no vehicle too fast to overtake; and all the while that rocking motion – accelerator, brake, accelerator, brake – like the cantering of a mechanized horse."
- Ashok Ferrey: Serendipity
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The first hour of charging into any traffic gap against oncoming buses and lorries and tuk tuks and mongooses [mongeese?] skittering across roads confirms the wisdom of leaving it to the local driver… Meanwhile we were being introduced to any flora or fauna and passing eagle by Raj who appeared to know them all personally… It took a while to get used to water dragons, peacocks crying in the wild and farms with large scarecrows and “hides” so crops could be protected at night from local wild life: like the elephants.
It also took a while to get used to the hundreds of pariah dogs of an indeterminate mangy brown colour that doze on the asphalted roads of Sri Lanka, grudgingly lifting their butts to mope off the road for beeping passing traffic, then returning to loll the warmth of the road surface, daring passing drivers to run them down. In two weeks, our driver “collected” only one grumpy dog. We heard the thudding impact. We stopped. The prone body, got up, scratched itself and glowered back at us from under lopsided ears before wandering off to lurk under a convenient durian stand amongst the red spatterings of local betel chewers. Meanwhile, our intrepid driver carried on, avoiding large deposits of “elepant ships” on the road out of town. The pariah dogs wandered back to settle on the asphalt behind us. We also became very used to pairs of brown-uniformed motorcycle police watching traffic from the roadside shade about every 10 kilometres. It didn’t seem to do a whole lot to modify Sri Lankan driving habits.
There followed several days of wandering (accompanied by black or pink-faced monkeys) the ancient sites in Anuradhapura and Ritigale Mountain, local cooking at Habarana (with scary amounts of salt in every local curry and dhal) to the humid cool of monsoonal Trincomalee and Nilaveli on the north east coast. The isolated resort at the end of a rutted dirt road, surrounded by onion fields, army road blocks, a naval base; wild peacocks and a vast beach with roaring, dangerous surf due to the monsoon, looked like three nights of well-appointed, isolated internment. Once we’d sampled the amazingly presented, very fresh food (grilled fresh tuna being a particular treat) this “internment” in the old Tamil Tigers’ war zone started to look very good indeed.
By this time we’d got into a routine of planning each day “our way” rather than just sticking to the published plan. Raj insisted on personally introducing us to every beast, tree or crop; (“Do you want photo?”) as well as to various local religions, foods; ancient and modern histories, so any “day trip” became a pleasantly rambling and flexible affair.
On the drive south into Trincomalee, we paused at the Commonwealth War Cemetery: the well manicured last resting place for 600 servicemen, many from the 1942 Japanese raid on the British fleet in China Bay and Trinco Harbour. Many of the graves date into the late 1940’s and some into the 1950’s, becoming a kind of record of the end of Empire as India and Pakistan become recognised as nations on the later graves of labourers (known by only one name) and servicemen and women.
About a kilometre further north, on a windswept section of road, were two lines of concrete terraced houses, backing on to a lane, each house capped with an identical black plastic hot water service. A large sign was outside: TOKYO CEMENT GROUP Tsunami Housing Scheme Declared Open on the 16th may 2009… A closer glance across the coastal swamps and heaths showed several such villages on higher ground, rehousing the survivors of the 2004 disaster from former coastal fishing and farming villages. As we were leaving, the rumble of more than 100 cattle running as a thick herd from east to west across the main road north of the houses was swamping a local bus and other traffic for some minutes.
Sea swimming was impossible at monsoonally rough Nilaveli so, between the potential to splash in the dubious healing water at Kanniya Hot Springs and the “bells and smells” in the clifftop Koneswaram Temple and fruit and battery shopping in Trincomalee, we plunged into the more serene and white-sand skirted Dutch Bay overseen by an elderly lifeguard in a corrugated iron shed. Marker buoys seemed to indicate the safe swimming area. There appeared to be a training squad of some kind in the water so we wallowed well away from their lap swimming.
From a distance, there seemed to be a couple of blokes lurking near our gear on the beach. Eve then couldn’t find her passport or money: mild worry…. Was it stolen or had it fallen out of her bag in the van? She set off, quietly concerned, to check the van, in the far distance under a thicket of fir trees (which Raj would no doubt personally introduce us to later). The beach patrol bloke came down the steps: “What is wrong?”
I explained.
“Theft seems highly unlikely, Sir, as every other person on this beach is a trainee policeman.” The “team” in the water were preparing for their lifesaving and rescue examinations on Friday. On Eve’s return, relieved as she had found missing items in the van, she was surrounded by a small crowd of wet, strapping “police presence” to confirm that she was ok. They returned to training, although one young bloke remained behind to ask what we knew about the Australian Government’s refugee boat policies, and why weren’t boat arrivals treated as heroes after all they had been through to get to Australia?
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Bleak Wednesday afternoon: Having exhausted the entertainment options at our comfy internment hotel, I took a long stroll south along the windswept and occasionally rainy beach. In the distance across the boiling sea was the sanctuary of Pigeon Island: closed for visitors and snorkelling due to the monsoon. The whistling salt spray quickly coated skin and spectacles. First impression of the beach: it’s a stunning sweep of dark yellow beach for many kilometres to the north and south. Second impression: above high tide level is an appalling mess of plastic junk which was mostly 2 litre drinking water bottles but also detergent and shampoo bottles and other messy plastic junk in amongst seaweed, old running shoes and the odd industrial bucket. The mess was cleared from beachfronts owned by resorts, but few are operating. About every 400 metres, a large tree branch had been tied, upright, to the barbed-wire beach fence and it had been festooned, Christmas-like, with a selection of the plastic detritus. Art? Protest? Dadaism? Prank?
About two kilometres south (just prior to being “encouraged” to make a U turn by a Naval Beach Guard from the nearby military installation and “health resort”) was what looked like ruins from the recent civil war. Gaunt and weather beaten concrete frames and stairways and towers, stark and windswept, were being gradually overgrown on the edge of the beachscape. This was a resort which had been swept away in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the stark concrete ruins are left to crumble into a slow ruin, gradually retaken by the coastal undergrowth…
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Friday: Dambulla Village Safari and so much more…
Prior to exploring the town of Dambulla we had both paid USD40 for an elephant ride. Never before have I paid so much to be soo uncomfortable for sooo long…. I was the “ballast” that was regularly directed to move around on the roped “saddle” on the backbone of the beast to make sure it (and we) were well balanced. The climb down from the bank for a wallow in the river was memorably discomforting.
At Dambulla, a cluster of villages has got together to create a circuit of local sights and culture for visitors: tractor ride – catamaran trip amongst fishermen and wild life, hearing only the calls of storks, eagles and many, many calls of the wild Nokia – herb tea and fruit on the bank of a creek surrounded by vegetable gardens – catamaran ride from one slippery mud bank to another – ox-drawn cart to a mud-hut kitchen for a demonstration of Sri Lankan dahl making, coconut husking and many sumptuous curries eaten by hand from banana leaves in the company of a couple of Danish travellers. We discussed Borgen and washed our hands under coconut shells of water. Then we waddled out to the van.
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"So Piyumi found herself in the hot seat next to Viraj. He turned round, looked at her and smiled, but all Piyumi could see was the gigantic articulated lorry ahead, bearing down on them with the unwelcome familiarity of a maiden aunt at a wedding. Viraj turned his attention back to the road just in time. There were various medals of the Madonna, Jesus Christ, the Lord Buddha and assorted Hindu gods dangling from the mirror. Piyumi tried praying to them individually, jointly and severally."
- Ashok Ferrey: Serendipity
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At Minneriya National Park we were promised wild elephants. Spending about an hour slowly shadowing a small family of about 7 beasts in a basic, basic jeep in muddy rutted tracks was pretty special. That was until a diversion to an adjoining lake (past a male peacock “showing” to a deeply unimpressed female on an adjacent log… but WE were impressed), then standing silently to one side of a gathering of more than 20 elephants grazing and wallowing in shallow water for more than an hour as glowing sunset colours and shadows crept across the grassland
The peace evaporated in a wild, wild ride through quagmired mud and grass and gravel and creeks back to the park entrance as one of 20 competing, bouncing and overtaking 4WDs. The two jeeps that became bogged in the grasslands, with their passengers, were just left behind. The wildlife turned its collective head and got on with its grazing…
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"Like a concert pianist so technically accomplished he can afford to lose himself in the emotions of his music, Viraj drove by intuition rather than mere mechanics. Skirting a man-made lake, past an outraged security guard who tried unsuccessfully to stop them by bringing his bamboo barrier crashing down – too late! – and screeched to a halt in the forecourt of the Giritale Hotel."
- Ashok Ferrey: Serendipity
Giritale Hotel was at the end of a(nother) steep, rutted and muddy road negotiating around an assortment of brown pariah dogs. In the company of tourists from Poland, Russia, Canada, Germany and a group of elderly cyclists from the UK we stood for some minutes rapt by the dark orange sunset over the still lake, before the onset of mosquitoes forced a brief but rapid retreat into dinner (at the table with the correct national flag for YOU!).
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And so to a relaxing night of local TV: the Sri Lankan National News in English. Think: florid and partisan language and political constructs more associated with North Korea and certain former Eastern European regimes, and you kind of have the verbal flavour of the “news” and how it “positions” its fortunate audience:
An election is in the offing. All political meetings by the Freedom Party are reported to “enlighten the people” about government achievements and to “ensure victory”.
Any mention of the opposing parties (more likely in the press than on TV) is merely about disunity or incompetence.
Roads are newly “carpeted”, (sealed?). A lot of this is happening in Galle, and the people are being met and “enlightened” about infrastructure improvements. (They looked very bored…).
The President is shown, dispassionately handing out salads to bedridden hospital patients with little evident interest or empathy while the report covers “overcoming terrorism in The Motherland”. Vision of the newly opened headquarters for National Intelligence is shown, raising awareness of growth of intelligence since the Tamil Tigers “targeted government officers for assassination”. The influence of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and of the “Tamil diaspora in the West” are blamed for division in the “Motherland”. “TN Lives off SL” is a not infrequent headline in the conflict over illegal fishing. “Friendly countries” are identified as “Russia, China and France”. The Civil war was “a war on terrorism” and so on….
Needless to say I was riveted by all of this (replicated in the following day’s print media as well) and by the grateful thanks of the Sri Lankan government for Australia’s refusal to support an enquiry into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. I was also “enlightened” by the street propaganda: the Sri Lankan “Motherland” speaks with “One Voice” and was Proud to Host CHOGM and huge roadside hoardings feature one T. Abbott with that grin in the front row of benign looking Commonwealth leaders…
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Somehow all of this added a touch of irony to the following day’s climb up the mountain/pillar of Sigiriya. Think also of Shelley’s poem” Ozymandias” and you are sort of in the right territory:
King Kassapa (AD477-495) apparently stole the kingdom from his brother, built a garden and palace on the summit of a huge rock pillar, then lost the lot when the rightful heir returned with a large army, after which it was all abandoned. A perilous stair climb from sumptuous gardens to view remaining frescoes is followed by a further climb up stone and steel stairs (with one huge remaining sculpted lion’s paw at the base of the sheer cliffside climb) to the remaining foundations and pools at the summit with a breathtaking view across valleys of lakes, jungle and cultivation to the up-country mountains.
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Sunday: We arrived in Kandy after an aromatic morning in a herb/spice garden (with learned sales pressure and brilliant food – Brinjal Moju [*** See the link below] - and massage… ) our Tour Leader, Raj, announced his sudden departure due to a death in the family. BUT, not before a “trek” in the Knuckles Mountains.
We left in our familiar starting-to-overheat van with our stoic driver travelling in the early afternoon through many roadworks and dusty towns and villages covered in national flags of all sizes in preparation for Republic Day. The turnoff from the main road, nearly three hours later, led to the steep winding dirt track, gravelled at times, so we ground and lurched up through a series of hairpin bends through goats and cattle and roadworks around down-at-heel tea plantation workers’ villages (sad concrete terraces with some power but no running water or glazed windows) then into thick fog, suddenly confronting the local bus squealing around a sharp bend forcing us into a fast reverse to the precipitous road edge. At about 5 we reached the summit, got out to breathe the thick fog and NOT to trek, got back in to head back down the sharp grades with a pause at a brightly incongruous Swiss chalet for a restorative cup of tea… The spectacular evening with the Kandy Traditional Dance Troupe (with extra added firewalking) would have to wait until Monday.
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Monday: “To lose one tour leader is unfortunate. To lose two looks like carelessness”:
Our second leader, Daniel, departed to look after his miscarrying wife in Colombo with some appropriate haste and the glamorous Danu arrived some time during the evening…
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Tuesday: Republic Day. National flags were clustering from any building or vehicle or monument. After a tour of a Giragama tea factory we were fortunate indeed to capture a moment or two of “Big Brother” Rajapraksa’s Presidential address in Singhalese with its blend of Churchillian bombast and parallel Tamil translation, and carefully toned confidential anecdote-sharing. On screen he was surrounded (under a marquee) by collective military uniforms and formally dressed flunkeys. The “locals” were standing in a crowd in the sun, and appearing to be conversing animatedly amongst themselves during the address. You too can share the moment with an extract from the full text from the “Daily News”. Yes, really. Here it is:
“It is necessary for people in the North to be aware that certain foreign forces are attempting to use them as human shields. The invaders always come to our country shedding oceans of crocodile tears. They interfered in these countries putting forward to protect human rights, establish democracy and the rule of law…
…We have unfurled the flag today to mark the 66th Anniversary of Independence, when the whole of Sri Lanka enjoys freedom. When we defeated terrorism and won freedom in the South, we said it was our responsibility to make it a greater victory for the people in the North…”
I read this, while lounging at the 19th century Kithulgala Government Rest House (the site of the filming of “The Bridge on the River Kwai”) and following a real afternoon village trek of three hours along a river of white-water rapids, scary swing bridges (limit of three people at a time: largely ignored…) and drinking from fresh coconuts near deep pools where the national-holiday crowds were frolicking, while local women supervised cattle or thrashed wet clothes on the slippery rocks. The national “political construction” of the Presidential speech seems rather grandiloquently irrelevant for village Sri Lanka, apart from the “carpeting” of roads and greatly delayed infrastructure development following 24 years of civil war. In the former Tamil areas up north, quite massive road and bridge building has taken place, along with housing developments where red tiled rooves are painted with the metre high letters “NEHRP”: North East Human Rights Project
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Once our organised tour had finished in Colombo with Tour Leader 3 (following the city tour: “Here is our new trade building where the car bomb exploded outside: much damage”), Eve headed south to look for an idyllic beach for 5 days, and it was back to solo travel for a day around the city. Once you are a lone traveller, people initiate conversations on buses and trains or just on street corners (That is discounting the scam where a stranger approaches you with: “Don’t you remember me? I’m not in uniform but I carried your bags in the hotel…” Asking which hotel usually puts an end to this nonsense).
The more genuine approaches usually follow the lines of: You come from where? followed by allusions to the glory days of the Sri Lankan and Australian cricket teams and how they are improving again; how good a Prime Minister was Julia Gillard; and can you explain your government’s policy on immigration and boats. The earnest young merchant mariner on the delayed train to Maradana was keen to converse at some length:
I lived in Perth for a year and a half. Is it true that it’s Australia’s cleanest city? I am now on the clinker ships from West Java to Singapore to Colombo.
My wife wants to emigrate to Australia. She’s a business accountant. I want to stay. The opportunities are here, now the war has stopped. You can see how fast we are developing. Tamils on boats to Australia are just economic refugees, The fighting has stopped. Things are better. We just have to get on. They are only economic migrants.
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On the beach at Wellawatta (after hurdling a fence with tall, energetic early-middle-aged enthusiasm and a huge wave and a grin; running across the train tracks to talk to a foreigner):
"Hello. You are from where? Can you explain your government’s stand on Sri Lanka’s human rights record? (Please go slowly. I am a teacher and I need to practice English). Cricket: Warne, Taylor, McGrath: how are they now? So, Julia Gillard, she was good? Australia is so lucky; government changes peacefully. That is not the way in Sri Lanka, You leaving when? So soon! I live in Katunayake. Perhaps you could visit. Share a coconut which my English will improve. I primary school teacher. You work at? It is important you see that I practice English. So sad you are leaving so soon..."
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Back to Katunayake: Departing Colombo on the 1.30am flight to Singapore wasn’t a complete delight. On the subsequent flight into Java, I opened the Garuda inflight magazine and found, up-front, printed invocations for 5 different faiths, praying: “that You will guard and protect our plane from disturbance and danger. “
I picked up the latest Ashok Ferrey novel and attempted to relax and enjoy the inflight service through the turbulence into Jakarta…
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*** Moju: http://www.recipekey.com/therecipes/Sri-Lanka-Brinjal-Moju-(Eggplant-Moju)