I write this from my terrace room on Bentota Beach on this our last day in Sri Lanka. It has been a fabulous trip. It has been on our bucket list for almost ten years, since we lived in the Arabian Gulf, and this year the stars aligned so that Tom's month long university break coincided with ideal weather to visit here.
Before you rush for an atlas or to Wikipedia let me say that it is the small teardrop island off the southeast coast of India. It has been called India-lite, but that doesn't do it justice. Oh, yes. There is the matter of the 32 year long war against the Tamil Tigers, who introduced suicide bombings to the world. That war ended in 2009 and tourism is now rebounding.
And what a lot of things there are to see. There are six or seven UNESCO world heritage sites.(we saw five.). There is wildlife, there are echoes of colonial eras of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. There are world class beaches where the water is 84 degrees year round. We visited the tea growing areas at high elevations in the hills where a fire in the fireplace was welcome at night.
It's very humbling to realize how little we in the west know of Eastern civilizations. They have several thousand year old cultures we have never heard of. For example, we visited Segriya fortress where a paranoid king built a palace on top of a 600 foot high rock and surrounded it with moats and terraces and pleasure gardens. And he did it 1600 years ago. The engineering was amazing, especially the hydraulics. A poem I memorized in high school was buzzing in my brain and with a little help from the Internet I found it.
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did kubla khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
This place reminded me of the poem. We climbed all 1262 steps to the top, past frescoes of bare breasted women (he had 500 concubines including Africans and Chinese) and the water gardens and swimming pools. There only remain ruins of the palace but it was built of brick, which had to be hauled up all that way. We also saw costumed dancers and drummers in Kandy performing traditional dances and walking on hot coals. Kandy also houses the Temple of the Tooth Relic. That would be a tooth of Buddha, saved from his cremation pyre and carefully tended by royalty ever since.
Beyond the cultural stuff, there was the amazing wildlife. Sri Lanka is mostly Buddhist (with about 7 percent each of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu) and that background helps to promote a conservation ethic. We went on two jeep safaris, one in the north and one in the south. In the northern one we saw mainly elephants-I would guess we saw about 60 to 70 wild elephants. They were mostly in groups of 7 or 8, always with a baby or two. In Yala National Park in the south, a more scrub, savanna type habitat, we saw more elephants, but many other animals. We saw both spotted and sambuhr deer, crocodiles, wild buffalo, mongoose, jackal, iguana, wild boar, and monkeys. The bird life was also fantastic-more peacocks than we could count. My favorite birds were the bee eaters, both green and blue tailed varieties, the painted stork, and the hoopoes. The conservation ethic extends to sea turtles. We visited a hatchery where I held a day old hatchling. They are released from the hatchery when they are three days old. Over thirty years of work they have convinced the locals not to eat the eggs or the turtle meat, but to bring the eggs to the hatchery and be paid a small amount. The hatchery also was rehabilitating some turtles that had been injured, some of which would be returned to the sea and some which would have to remain there due to loss of both front flippers.
The lodgings were all quite unique. Two were over 150 years old and go back to the days go the "English raj". One was a cottage in the national park where we had to be escorted to the dining hall after dark because of roaming animals. We thought it was just for show until we found a wild boar rooting around by our porch on returning from dinner. My favorite, though, was a 250 year old building built for a Dutch admiral and now converted into a boutique hotel. It only has 13 rooms and, for some reason, we were given the Admirals's quarters which was a huge two room suite with a bathroom as big as many hotel rooms, and with two verandas. It was full of antiques and was quite marvelous.
The first day we arrived was an auspicious day for weddings and there were three in the hotel where we stayed. They were very elaborate affairs.
The food was fine, if not remarkable. As Buddhists, many are vegetarians and they did a nice job with vegetable dishes. There were many varieties of curries and good fruit.
We went to the higher elevations where tea is grown and visited a tea factory. For a drink enjoyed all over the world, it is a surprisingly low tech operation. From picking to being ready to drink takes about a week. A plant can live 60 to 70 years. The air was crisp and we did a lot of walking while there.
We drove along the southern coast which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami. There were at least two monuments to the lost and missing. Rebuilding is occurring slowly, but you can see shells of houses remaining. A train with more than 1000 people (many tourists) was washed out to see along this stretch.
One bad thing-I left my Kindle in the seat pocket of the plane. That's what happens when you get off a plane at 2AM. I miss it like my right arm. And the worst part is that I can't replace it. It's not sold here and it's not advisable to have anything shipped here-doesn't usually show up.
I am not totally happy with how these photos look in the blog. There has been an update that I have to figure out. But meanwhile it gives you some idea of our trip.
I am going to try to put in a link to some other photos. Let me know if it works or not. I have my doubts.
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