I really had hoped to post before this, preferably from the road while the action was happening, but technology or the lack of it, rearranged my plans. Even back in Bangkok I am having some problems getting images to post properly on the blog page. So what is below is the first part of the trip with more to follow.
The best vacations make one reexamine old assumptions and shed the tired skin of jaded middle age. I arrived at the international airport just outside Colombo, on Sri Lanka’s west coast on Nov. 20th around 10 pm after the three-hour flight from Bangkok. One of the few nice things about flying these days is that most planes now have real-time maps showing the flight’s progress. There are channels called Airshow which have forward and downward views as well. From the map one gets a painless geography lesson. Because water boundaries are less distinct than land boundaries, I am not sure where the Andaman Sea joins the Bay of Bengal or where the Bay of Bengal becomes the Indian Ocean. I am almost certain that I was flying over each of these bodies of water. I had known that Sri Lanka and India were close, but I hadn’t realized how close. There are fingers of land of both countries only 50 or so kilometers apart.
Sam, the driver whom Dr. Daya had arranged, met me at the airport. I don’t think I ever had a stranger pick me up in an airport before with my name on a sign. It was kind of a kick, almost like being in the movies. Sam was 52 and looked a bit like a darker version of Nicholas Sarkozy. It is daunting to meet a stranger who will be one’s companion for the next 10 days. What if the guy is a jerk? But it quickly became clear that Sam was a cool guy with extraordinary self-possession, street-smarts, and driving skill. He spoke passable English and was comfortable in his role. He addressed me as “sir” but without affectation. Driving is risky anywhere these days, owing to intoxicated and distracted drivers. But in a developing country, one is only a few seconds away from a bad crash if not annihilation. Statistically, road accidents are a much more serious risk than terrorism. In the entire Sri Lankan civil war, no tourist has even been killed by terrorists. But in terms of traffic fatalities Sri Lanka ranks in the top ten venues. Over the course of the trip Sam’s driving, on a 1 to 10 scale, was an 11. He had the instincts and reaction time of a 20-year old.
My hotel for the first night was in Mt. Lavinia, about 30 kilometers south of the airport and Colombo, the country’s biggest city and commercial center, lay in between. So we had to snake our way through Colombo at 11 p.m. This was an instant education in several respects. I had anticipated a freeway or highway bypass of some kind, but there wasn’t any. In fact, there are no freeways in the country. One winds down a road with two lanes in both direction past endless shops and military barricades. The civil war between the government and the Tamil extremists had ended in May, 2009, but the situation looked tense to me. Very young soldiers loomed in the gloom every kilometer or so near sand-bagged barricades. They carried imposing rifles and machine guns with fingers resting near the triggers. Some of them held big paddles with red stop signs to pull vehicles over. Sam and I were stopped several times during the drive and asked to show ID’s; this was business as usual in Colombo. Even at this hour, traffic was quite congested. Work crews were doing construction and big trucks were on the road. I couldn’t help noticing the pollution, which reminded me of the way Bangkok used to be a generation ago.
The Mt. Lavinia Hotel, called a “British colonial heritage hotel,” is one of those places so imposing and captivating that some folks come to Sri Lanka just to stay there. Located on a spit of land jutting into the Indian Ocean, and with the original structure dating to 1806, it looks like a movie set. You almost expect William Holden to walk by.
Sure enough, in 1956 it was the location for the classic movie Bridge on the River Kwai when it masqueraded as a military hospital. The grandeur of the place recalled colonial days, but what with the political problems of Sri Lanka, the prices were quite reasonable: $88 per night. My room had an unobstructed view of the Indian Ocean, and I thought to myself, whatever the Brits did wrong in their colonial history, they certainly had good taste. I heard the surf crashing outside even with the window closed and the air conditioning on. I was in heaven. Beyond a perfunctory walk around, I didn’t really explore the hotel during the two nights I stayed. It was much too fancy for me with porters and clerks everywhere, but the romance of the scenery was just made for lovers. And I learned that the British Governor who built the original location in 1806 entertained a Mestizo dancer named Lovina, who was for seven years the Governor’s passion and obsession.
As a city, Colombo is rather nondescript with a lot of higgledy-piggledy new construction. And with all the security road blocks it is hard to get around even with a private car. The Saturday before Thanksgiving, my first full day in country, was quite stormy. I double and triple-checked the annual rainfall for Colombo and was astonished to find that Colombo gets 240 centimeters of rain per year. That is almost 8 feet! By way of comparison, Bangkok, Seattle, and New York get 150, 94, and 120 cm respectively. There are no distinct seasons in Colombo, just two periods of monsoon rains. But the rains keep the pollution down, a trade-off I’ll take any time.
My first outing on the morning after arrival was the National Museum. It is a large, white, Neoclassical building dating from 1877 which has been recently renovated. Going to a national museum in a new country is a knee-jerk tourist activity, but in this case it turned out to be inspiring. By the end of my visit I had a broad sense of the basic story of the country from pre-history to the present. For lunch I had one thing on my mind: vegetarian Indian curry. Such food, when done right, ranks right up there with sashimi as my favorite. When I order it, I always get the same reaction from the waiter. What, you just want the curry? What about some rice or bread? No thanks. I just want the curry. Sam knew a restaurant called Mathura, which was the place. Nothing but vegetarian food and widely known, it was practically empty early Saturday afternoon owing to the foul weather. Sam told me that people from the American Embassy often came. There are now scientific claims that turmeric, a key spice used in Indian curries, has many health benefits including prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. But my interest was entirely the taste and the fact that it’s hard to get the authentic fresh ingredients outside of India and Sri Lanka. In contrast Thai curries which use artery-clogging coconut oil as a base. It is my understanding that Indian curries use cashew nuts. So I ate the vegetarian curry the entire trip whenever possible and never got tired of it. After lunch I had Sam take me to Barefoot, which I came across in one of the guidebooks and which is a bookstore, café, gallery, and market for wonderful woven fabrics, all rolled into one. It is perhaps the expat hangout, and while I go out of my way not to shop on a trip, I found the colors and textures of the material intriguing. There is a fine line between gaudy and tasteful. I find much of Thai design to be gaudy; Sri Lankan design in my brief encounter was captivating.
On Sunday I did a brief tour of Colombo’s Pettah district, which is the old market bazaar part of town. It was good to go on a Sunday as the streets are narrow and one gets the feeling of being in an Arab souk. I just ambled around aimlessly checking out the sights, got a little bit lost, and was set straight by a charming alcoholic who seemed to know where I meant to be going to rendezvous with my car and driver as if he had read my mind. I couldn’t believe it. He wanted 500 rupees (about $4.40 at the going exchange rate) for his ESP service, but I gave him only 100, not quite enough for a cold beer. The Pettah is distinctive in Sri Lanka; one doesn’t find it elsewhere, and I was struck by the orderliness of the chaos: bookstores in one section, hardware in another, shoes in a third, and so on. The problem as always is that I’m really not in the market for stuff, with the exception of interesting books light enough to carry in my bags.
I met Dr. Daya briefly back at the Mt. Lavinia Hotel later in the afternoon, where he provided a list of hotels for the remainder of the trip as well as a crude timetable. It was by now dawning on me that going 100 km. in Sri Lanka was a very different proposition from going 100 km. in Thailand let alone the U.S. I had considered my itinerary before, but now it was time to make decisions. I would travel in a crude counter-clockwise circle down the coast from Colombo to Galle (pronounced “Gaul”) and then up through the hills and the tea plantations to Kandy, a storied and photogenic city in the center of the country, and then back to a beach near Colombo in time for a crack of dawn departure eight days hence on Nov. 30. One of the considerations in choosing hotels was whether or not they provided “drivers’ quarters.” Most big hotels outside of Colombo did.
We got to Galle early afternoon on Monday. Galle is near the southern tip of the island that is Sri Lanka, and the old fort there is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a blow-your-mind breathtaking natural harbor. This part of the coast had been hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Nobody knows how many people died, but I have read estimates of 40,000. So when some of the local population mentioned the catastrophe to me I kept thinking of the chilling Joseph Stalin dictum that one death was a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. One young man mentioned the helpfulness of the US Navy after the Tsunami, and I felt a swell of national pride. The European history of Galle dates to the sixteenth century. The Portuguese took it first; then the Dutch captured it and built a fort in 1663. When the British captured it from the Dutch in 1796, they left the fort unchanged. With private money, the fort area is being redeveloped, so far rather tastefully. Arts and literary festivals are starting to happen. Galle still has a rugged charm, and while the prices are rising, I immediately realized that I should have stayed in the fort area, where there are guest houses. Instead I stayed a few miles outside of town, in Hikkaduwa where I had my reservation. As a sign of the times, the big hotel where I was staying didn’t have wireless internet in the rooms; the newer guest houses in the fort did. The fort had a walkway along the sea with commanding ocean views. It had been raining but not enough to interfere with my walk, and the overcast sky added drama to the scene. At one point I needed to use the bathrooms. There were no visible toilets so what to do? It turned out that the local gem shops encouraged people to come in to take a leak as some of the tourists ended up buying merchandise. For lunch I couldn’t believe it, but there was a restaurant named Indian Hut that served curry dishes and shamelessly ripped off the Pizza Hut logo. I doubted that a place with such a corny name that had committed such a bald theft could be any good, but it was just terrific. I hope to return to Galle sooner rather than later.
The hotel in Hikkaduwa, (about 10 km. from Galle) in which I stayed was a beach venue. There wasn’t much sand but again amazing views of the waves. The problem with beach resorts in Thailand is that for the most part they aren’t located on exposed ocean. One doesn’t get big waves and crashing surf. It gets old. The whole of Sri Lanka is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, and that means a lot more authentic ocean beaches. The night I stayed in Hikkaduwa I noticed a lot of louche, boho Europeans. When I went out at night for a stroll, I heard what I thought was Russian, but I suppose it could have been Ukrainian. Forget vegetarian curry. Think western junk food.
On Tuesday morning we hit the road travelling north and east to hill country and the vast, world-famous tea plantations. The destination was a small town called Bandarawela, which is pronounced approximately the way it is spelled in English and with the accent on the fourth syllable. So from sea level we climbed over 1,200 meters. It was a grueling all-day drive, and Sam’s equanimity was put to the test. The road was paved but only one-lane, and I could imagine a crash in the middle of nowhere on a hair-pin turn in the hills where cell phones didn’t work and where medical care was hours away. Road signs weren’t clearly marked, and Sam had to ask directions repeatedly. Once we got lost, but I didn’t mind. We were traveling a road where there were no western-style cafes let alone restaurants. When we finally did stop for tea and a snack, the food was served on a piece of newspaper in a place without refrigeration, or so I thought. While there are an increasing number of tourist-grade hotels going up in the towns of hill country, much of the road along the way struck me as being stuck in time, and subsisting on very little. But I never encountered anything but kindness. For the most part, people didn’t know what to make of me. And when I told them I lived in Bangkok, they were genuinely perplexed. There aren’t a lot of Americans in these parts, and those who do come, come in group tours.
As a town, Bandarawela was not especially charming, but it was very authentic. After all the driving, I was in the mood to do some walking and chat up the locals. The Bandarawela Hotel was the most important reason to stay in the town. It was a planter’s clubhouse dating from 1893 chock full of colonial fittings and rather uncomfortable but worth it for its charm. An old British Wolseley dating perhaps to the late 1930’s or early 1940’s sat in front of the office.
While there was a ceiling fan, there was no air conditioning as at 1,230 meters, it wasn’t needed. The dining room made me some curry dishes to order, but they didn’t compare with those in Colombo. I rewarded myself and Sam with the first beer of the trip. As in India, Sri Lanka is rather puritanical when it comes to alcohol. There are special separate small shops with bars for windows and rather unattractive characters hanging around. The beverage of choice is beer, and somehow I stumbled on a local brew call “strong beer,” which advertises 8.8% alcohol. I figured I’d be a sport as I wanted to sleep anyway, and I was pleasantly surprised. One gets 625 ml. of brew for all of 160 rupees including a deposit for the bottle. 160 rupees is all of $1.40 and it went perfectly with the spicy curry.
This was Tuesday night of Thanksgiving week so I decided to check in on the doings at Broad and Wall. The hotel provided internet cards for wireless service, but the electrical sockets required a special fitting for my laptop. The hotel didn’t have them. So I went out to find an electronics shop that could provide the appropriate plug. I walked into a small general store and presented my computer cable to a young man of about 14. He broke into a broad smile and instantly led me upstairs to a store selling electrical parts. I tipped the youngster for his help, and he has nonplussed but grateful for my small show of gratitude. The clerk behind the counter had just the right plug and spoke good English to boot. He said he was Tamil, but not a “Tiger” meaning one of the terrorists. We instantly hit it off, and it turned out that it was his dad’s store and that he had an MBA and was considering what to do with his life to secure a better future. I went back the next day just to chat some more, but I just didn’t connect with him successfully again.
The drive from Bandarawela to Kandy on Thanksgiving Day went through lush and picturesque tea plantations. The British introduced tea to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and it changed the economy and the country forever. Indian Tamils came over in the 19th century to do the hard work, and the plantations are sometime to see. The intensity of the green reminded me of May on the US East Coast when everything was in full bloom. The hills were shrouded with eerie mists and waterfalls. We drove past rock slides. We had lunch just outside Nuwara Eliya, which in Sinhalese is pronounced as one word roughly “nyur-rail-eeya,” in a beautifully lilting way. The town is the highest in Sri Lanka (over 6,000 feet) and has considerably cooler temperatures than the rest of the country. By chance we stopped at a brand-new place with a European restaurant and bungalows managed by a Sri Lankan named Rodney who was a Burgher, the name given to the descendants of the Portuguese-Dutch settlers. Rodney spoke good English and said he was Catholic. The place was so new they didn’t have business cards, but I inspected his cabins, and they were just perfect, perhaps the best accommodations I found during the entire trip. Nuwara Eliya is called Sri Lanka’s “Little England,” and I regret that I didn’t have the time to stop to explore the town. I saw that it has old, atmospheric colonial hotels, and a nice park, and a golf course, and in fact it is a very popular place, which really says something as it is quite difficult to get to.
To be continued.
