SRI LANKA
April 24, 2018 to May 15, 2018
018-04-24 TURKEY TO SRI LANKA
Water.
Six
hours after liftoff in Istanbul dark at 01:55 we are in brilliant light, 5000
kilometers to the southeast over the Indian Ocean. I slept over Arabia. Directly
to the west, but far off, is Addis Ababa, and our son, Abel. The southern tip
of India is closer to the east. To the south is Mother Earth’s bulging waist
line, then, just water until Antarctica. In an hour Turkish Airlines Flght 730
will make landfall on the tiny archipelago of the Maldives, 6100 kilometers
from Istanbul, rest, then turn northeast for Colombo on the teardrop island of
Sri Lanka, 10 hours after leaving Turkey. If there are any Aussies on board,
they'll have another 10 hours to home. Mother Earth is generously proportioned.
We’re
dropping now over the outliers of the Maldives archipelago, exquisite dots and
ribbons of white sand and pale green lagoons. Malé, main city, looks like a
mini-Miami. I lose interest in the Maldives. Not so the other passengers. They
abandon TK730 in a scurrying drove, with the determined stiffness of
vacationers in paradise, good time all packaged and planned. Few continue on to
Sri Lanka, 777 kilometers northeast.
In
between? Water.
Then
gold beach, green trees, reddish roofs, break the endless blue of the water.
Sri Lanka.
Colombo’s
Bandarnaike Airport is a snap. The mandatory trek through the Duty Free Shop to
get out of the airport stifles us with deals on the usual creature comforts,
but squashes any memory of any other DFS. Nowhere else can you buy your wine
and chocolate AND a refrigerator to store it in, or an oven, microwave, freezer
(squeeze in, if not walk in), wall size TV, in short anything Howie the
Homemaker needs to furnish his man cave and nest. Dennis can't wait to see how
Howie gets his loot on the plane.
Sajeewa,
our driver for the next 3 weeks, greets us with a smile and big welcome. An
hour later Coconut Lady slashes a spout in a fresh coconut at her stand by the
road. They cost 40 cents a nut. Sajeewa laughs as we moan under the effect of ripe
mangos on every sense. 4 hours after dropping out of the sky on TK730 our
AiorBnB host, young Shehan brings tea---Ceylon, of course--- to the rickety
table in front of our tiny cabana on the sand 20 feet from the surf of Indian
Ocean.
Dinner?
‘I will arrange It is all organic. Homemade spices. My mother cooks.’
Indeed
she does. It would be cruel to provide details of the rice mounded on banana
leaf with fresh tomato slices, or the hard-boiled eggs, 4 different gentle
curries, salad, and fresh papadams so
light and crispy they evaporate between plate and drool. Fresh sweet papaya….
A trio of neighborly dogs visit, sniff, give a
lick. We’ve arrived.
The
word for thank you in Singhalese is ‘istooti’
2018-04-25.SRI
LANKA DAY 1
‘The
first wave was original size. The second wave 3 meters. The third wave….It made
much destruction. 12 people die. My father was walking on beach, but he is OK.’
Gentle
26-year old Sheehan lived through the Christmas tsunami of 2004.And still lives
with the Indian Ocean lapping at his feet. His father is a fisherman. They have
no choice.
In
late 2017 he took a handkerchief of land between the sea and his old family
home and built two Hobbitt cabanas, each barely bigger than a double bed, and
listed them on Booking.com and AirBnB, where we found them.
Size
does not matter at Amaranthe Beach Cabanas. Location. Location. Location The
cabanas open onto the blue Indian Ocean, surf just 30 feet away across the
sand. Last night we sat staring into the blackness rumbling in on the voice of
the surf. In the morning light the surf still rumbles, but is upstaged by the
beauty of this coast. We eat breakfast under thatch, feet in sand. The crown of
breakfast is pineapple pureéd into ambrosia, golden as sunlight.
Sheehan
smiles our farewell, turns us over to Sajeewa, waves, and we are released into
our Sri Lanka adventure. Later, we sip watermelon conjured up as juice in a
cool slit of a café off a narrow street in Galle Fort. Remnant of Sri Lanka's
experience with Dutch and Portuguese colonial arrogance, it’s UNESCO World
Heritage Site cum boutique hotel hatchery, but its stones and cobbles reek of character
and stories. They are worth a wander, even in this heat.
The
heat wins the battle with fashion. Shirts come untucked to flap and ventilate.
Ten dollars buy us a pair of airy semi-flip-flops that banish shoes and socks,
heat sinks, to the back of the van.
We
turn inland from the opal of the Indian Ocean. The green of Sri Lanka is
rampantly fecund with the possibilities of that color. The landscape is
glorious, dense with rubber trees, mango, jack fruit, tea rambutan, pineapple,
papaya, lightened by the tattered banners of banana leaves and the feathery
head dresses atop the pencil arcs of coconut palms. A peacock flashes
brilliance across the road, then up into the trees. It is iridescent, inevitable.
What other life form could do justice to this setting?
Danapala’s
tuk-tuk finds us and leads Sajeewa's minivan off the tarmac to our homestay
deep in the green. Lunch is curry, here both a specific dish and a generic term
for the lush Sri Lankan tableful of edible heaven, curried and not. Coconut,
brought down from the heights to our taste buds, floats under the current of
flavors, hinted at in the curries, or, center-staged in a fiery shredded
condiment. This is food that induces ahhs, then naps in the dense afternoon
air.
2018-04-26.
SRI LANKA DAY 2
‘Be
careful with knife'
Yesterday,
at dusk we leave the green for town, stocking up on toilet paper, water, a bar
of soap, and yet another toothbrush, inevitably to join my others in Toothbrush
Limbo. And beer. A bottle of Johnny Walker Black morphs into Sri Lankan
‘honey’, actually a syrup tapped from a palm flower. It's deeply copper
colored, slightly smoky, and delicious, especially on thick curd, aka yoghurt.
The
ladies warn me, then approve of my veggie-slicing technique during the cooking
lesson. We’re less convincing as coconut shredders. Danapala is a born showman,
flourishing each spice as he adds it to the chicken: turmeric, curry powder,
chili, mustard seed coconut milk, black pepper, curry leaves. The kitchen is a
record of growing prosperity book-ended by the steaming pot on the wood fire at
the far end and the microwave at the end close to the living room and
widescreen TV. In between are both manual and mechanical coconut shredders, the
big reefer and a washing machine. I wonder if they carried them from the he
airport Duty Free, but don't ask. The food is delicious.
We
leave early today, eastward up into the mountains. Intermittent rains cool the
air and glaze the landscape. High up in the mists the rain stops our muddy walk
down rocky crag to a waterfall, silver in the distance. It is a moment of calm,
and we realize that the gentle, rounded, soft, calmness of this exquisite
country has already seeped into us. It pervades life here.
‘Our
bodies are filled with air, the breath of life.’
I
still remember this description of South Asian art by a Sri Lankan guest
professor eons ago in Hawai'i. It's true. Skin here seems to float ever so
slightly above underlying muscle. Physique are buttery rather buff. Laundry tub
tummies, not washboard abs, poke over the floating sarongs of the men.
Even
the language is soft. Our ears, ignorant of meaning, hear ripples like fingers
running up and down piano keyboard if there were even more keys between the
white and black, not caught on the sharp corners of consonants. The written
language is its twin, all rounded bubbles tattooed with strokes to create
difference. English is widely spoken, naturally through the scrim of Sinhala.
To our ears things run together, avoiding the breath-breaking sharpness of
English final consonants or the sibilants of our plurals. It's lovely music,
but we need subtitles for at least one more day.
Women
wear longish skirts. The men's sarongs just miss sweeping the ground. Sri Lankans
waft rather than walk. Slowly, softly, gently.
Their
country has seeped into them, too.
2018-04-27.
SRI LANKA DAY 3 - UDAWALAWE
We
stay stock still.
The
wild elephant is an arm's length away. She leads her family past our safari
jeep down the road, ignoring us. These are Sri Lanka’s Asian elephants, smaller
than their African cousins, but mountainous, staggering in their sheer volume,
wall-like. In Africa an elephant this close is clearly Up to No Good, of the
foot- stomping, tusk-slashing, jeep-tossing variety. These ladies just keep on
trucking in that focused, purpose-filled way of their kind.
We
leave them to it.
There
are buffalo grazing nearby. Huge by any other measure, they now seem
miniaturized. Their horns, spit curled into tight spirals give them a 1950’s
Mamie Eisenhower look.
Sri
Lanka is famous for its gems. Rubies and sapphires grow in the sediments here,
and are delivered to glow in the light by life-breaking work in the dark of deep
hand dug pits. Donapala, our host two nights ago, is a gem hunter, luckier than
many.
Nature
in Sri Lanka is kind to those of us not inclined to the subterranean. She gives
us peacocks. Most gemlike of birds, they scurry, dance, fly, and pose, though
mainly they just shimmer. Peacocks and elephants are a pair of oddities. Both
are famous for protruding extremities, two hard ones (and one soft prehensile
one) at the front end of the elephant, and one trailing feathery collection of
giant eyes at the other end of the peacock, all of which are much better left
attached where Nature put them.
Maybe
that's why we go on safaris: to see what Nature intended.
2018-04-28
SRI LANKA DAY 4 - YALA TO ELLA
The
leopards leap away.
Before
our jeep can get us close enough to see them.
No
matter. We don’t travel with a checklist, mired in the ‘Been there. Next'
touristic hurry along. ‘Now here. This is nice’ is more our speed. This morning
begins in the dark at 4:30, gives us sunrise in a new place, more elephants and
peacocks, some Spotted Deer (new antlers still covered in Sprung moss), a more
spotted mongoose, a wild hog oinking for handouts at roadside, and stunning
views of the Indian Ocean.
Bones
thoroughly rattled by 4 hours of Sri Lankan Massage on the park's roads, we
turn inland from Yala towards the mountains and cool Ella...and breakfast.
We're hoping for a ‘curd shop', and fresh yoghurt with ‘honey' (syrup extracted
from palm, coconut or banana flowers), but make do with lemon biscuits and wood
apple nectar. A wood apple looks like a hard brown tennis ball. Its juice is
caramel colored, a thickish, slightly gritty, and thoroughly delicious
combination of apple and lemon. I’ve never seen it anywhere else. Elephants
love it. Smart ladies.
Later,
the road offers delights: a lunch of rice, fried fish and 8 side dishes (the
star being curried pumpkin) for 200 Rupees ($1.34), then fresh orange juice
with small chunks of apple and pineapple for 50 Rupees (32 cents).
We
climb into the mountains, peaks scraping the sky, now promising rain. Near the
top, Rawana Falls rips water from the clouds and leap frogs down the mountain,
dropping sheer into pools, then leaping again in great sheets. At the bottom
the drops are shorter, more gentle, showers, not torrents. It's Saturday, half
day for many workers, and the beginning of a major Buddhist holiday. And Rawana
is the place to be. We join ‘em briefly, but pass on the free shower in the
final pool.
Euphony
ripples out of the place names: Yala, Wellaawaya,
Kataragama,Tanamawawila...then Ella.
Ella
town is Tourist Central for this part of Sri Lanka, infected with tourist
schlock, probably made in China. We zoom through, immune, park, Sajeewa finds a
tuk-tuk, and the 3 of us head skyward to a view of Nine Arches Bridge. It looks
like a Roman aqueduct, caterpillar spanning a deep valley, but is British built
during the colonial days and carries a rail line. We watch the 13:30 chug by
beneath our feet. We'll be on it the day after tomorrow.
Two
kilometers out of town Dilini and her sons (12, 8, 11 months) welcome us to
Morning Light Homestay, lead us up the stairs to the balcony outside our room. We
turn. And see the view.
We are in paradise.
2018-04-29
SRI LANKA DAY 5 - ELLA
The
Buddhist monk chants the day awake, voice slipping through the trees.
To
the east the sky lightens, bright, but blurred by clouds. Behind our house a
waterfall rumbles, deep notes under the sounds of morning. All around our
balcony the rain forest drops away through air cooled and scrubbed by last
night's weeping clouds.
In
the distance somewhere out there the summit of Adam's Peak holds a rock with a
footprint claimed by Buddhists to be that of Buddha, and by Christians to be
that of St. Somebody or Other. Jews are non-committal. I think the Moslems get
It right. This is the footprint of Adam, they believe. I look across this
landscape. Bereft of Eden, I would choose this place, too.
Dilini's
husband Sanjeewa brings us breakfast in paradise: toasted coconut sambal
sandwiches, crêpes, omelets, fresh watermelon, pineapple, and 2 sweet, sweet,
sweet ‘finger bananas’.
The
monkey swoops in, fuzzy lightning, and… make that ONE finger banana. Eldest son
is posted on monkey watch. He gets a few toothy hisses, and a flurry of primate
fingers, maybe just one that looks close to…oh, surely NOT!
It
is rainy season. Monsoon-spawned clouds, dark with evaporated sea, ride the air
currents to the peaks and wait. A few fingers of mist slide over the peaks,
stippling the far slopes with grey, then pull a scrim across the distance. The
breeze picks up. The air cools. We sip tea, and wait for the rains.
They
come at 3, first riding the wind into the balcony, then settling into a straight
down pour. Emptied by four, the chill clouds settle in around us, erasing
distance, rubbing out the valley, scrubbing the trees of green, leaving flat
silhouettes where our view was full and lush.
The
cold, wet sauna drives us inside, Dennis to his crosswords, me to a British
cozy mystery.
Sanjeewa and
son string colorful lights across the balcony, miniature temples and pagodas,
softly bright against the rain-washed night. We eat curries to the sound of the
waterfall, gift of the rain clouds. There is ice cream.
2018-04-30
SRI LANKA DAY 6 – ELLA TO NUWARA ELIYA
‘There
is landslide’.
Sajeewa
is always on top of things, but displaced mountainside defeats ‘George’, our
trusty 4-wheeled mini van. We bump back down from our balcony aerie into town
in the tuk-tuk driven by our host, Sanjeewa.
Today
is a double treat: we ride for 3 hours in the ‘I can. I can. I can’ chug-chug
train over the green corrugations to Nuwara Elite, elegant colonial era refuge
from the lowland heat….and Janis and Lorry arrive from New York City. Both are
rampaging and ‘pukka' successes.
So
is a shopping expedition with Sajeewa who has volunteered to cook tonight.
Thirty dollars buys us enough veggies, eggs, noodles, juice, cheese, pineapples
to feed 6 people (we 4, Sajeewa, and Ravi, resident ‘does-it-all’ at our 3
bedroom ArBnB) for 2 dinners and two breakfasts.
The
house opens off a garden thirty steps up a steep slope overlooking the town.
It's a Cinderella house: full of potential, but in need of a good scrubbing. We
overlook the smudges: the view is wonderful.
And,
there is the music of chants rising from the Buddhist and Hindu temples in the
valley under the radiant full moon. It is a holy moon. Buddha was born and died
under such a light 2500 years ago. Tonight Sri Lanka remembers, thankful.
Thanks, world.
2018-05-01
SRI LANKA DAY 7 - NUWARA ELIYA
‘This
view had better be worth it'.
The
trail has been flat(ish) strolling through grasslands, then muddy, rocky,
slippery, and often just plum difficult scrambling up creek beds for two and a
half hours. We are wiped out. My right knee is sulking at the abuse.
Then
we crest the last bump in the trail...
The
drop is sheer, 900 meters straight down. Multiple by 3.3 to get the number of
feet of crystalline space between us and the river below. This is World's End,
high point of Horton Plains National Park.
And
worth it.
Five
hours and 7 kilometers (‘ALL of it vertical’ whines my knee) after leaving
Sajeewa and Lorry in George at the park entrance, Janis, Dennis, and I wobble/stride
across the last few yards to the van. Will power has triumphed over common
sense. But it WAS worth it.
I defer bragging rights to the 80-year old Sri Lankan
grandma in flip flops who passed us on the trail.
2018-05-02
SRI LANKA DAY 8 – NUWARA ELIYA TO KANDY
‘Why
waste it on a man!’
Ramboda
Waterfall and the valley that cushions it stop us dead.
The
view defies language. Syllables reduce it. Only music might work. Beethoven's
Ninth? Even that…
Janis
considers it as a honeymoon spot ‘should I ever be crazy enough to get married
again…but only briefly: ‘Why waste it on a man!’
On
the spot we make plans to return, in 2020, linking Sri Lanka with South India.
Kandy
is a charmer, tree-lined, still cool, Sujeewa's home turf, every turn familiar.
Navinda
and his brother, Akinda, welcome us in shorts and smiles to their 3 story,
luxurious apartment. If the place in Nuwara Eliya was smudgy Cinderella in the
cinders, this is air-brushed Princess Cindy after the nuptuals. On the covered
terrace I slice up a pineapple for dinner. Navinda brings us all a ‘cuppa' to
seal the day.
We fall asleep planning a return to Ramboda Falls, not
wasted on these men.
2018-05-03
SRI LANKA DAY 9 - KANDY TO DAMBULLA
‘I
am Buddhist
And
proud to say this’.
The
bumper sticker reminds us that the 30-year Buddhist/Singha versus Hindu/Tamil
civil war was fought over sectarian and linguistic issues. Some say the recent
truce is shaky. So far, our trip has been in the predominantly Buddhist south.
Kandy is in the center, mainly Buddhist, flavored with the raucous colors of
Hindu temples. Here is one of the most sacred of all Buddhist sites, the Temple
of the Tooth, most recent home of the only physical relic of the historic
Buddha, pulled from his cremation pyre 2500 years ago.
We
join the faithful, bare foot and carrying our offering of jasmine flowers.
Sajeewa leads us through the proper forms. “Don't smell the flowers. Don't take
the smell away. Offer it.”
We
sink into the crowd, float to the top in our foreignness, free from the belief
of the crowd perhaps, but caught by the pounding drums, and the smell of the
flowers. We may not share in the sense of the ritual for the believers, but it
generously rewards our senses. We don't believe, but are welcomed. Perhaps that
demands even greater respect. Our cameras stay stowed.
The
drum beat changes, sharper, faster, a staccato unmistakable shout that
Something Is Happening. The crowd carries us in a ribbon past a wall of gold,
to a monk robed in saffron. We offer our flowers into his hands. And for a
brief second we view the outermost of the layered reliquaries containing the
Holy Tooth. Then the crowd moves us on, forgets us.
We
walk down the temple stairs, retrieve our shoes from Shoe Guy, find Lorry and
Janis, and head out of Kandy. Behind us the drums, pulse of living faith,
welcome more believers as they have several times a day for centuries. I carry
it with me.
Later,
a teenager squeezes oranges for us under thick-trunked trees. Our juice is 50
Rupees (32 cents), discounted a bit in thanks for his photo.
Still
later we bounce in a cattle cart, then slide across a shallow lake to ladies
who make us lunch and show us how to pound and winnow rice, then to weave palm
fronds into roof thatch. Bird calls are the only sounds to escape the blanket
of heat. Our day is quiet, gentle, as it slips away.
I still feel the beat of drums.
2018-05-04
SRI LANKA DAY 10 – DAMBULLA – DAY 1
Scores
of elephants outnumber the safari jeeps in Minneriya National Park.. They
ignore us. Rude intruders, we do not return the favor. They munch their way
into the lake, spray geysers until their skins glow in the late afternoon
light.
Surely
nothing can top this.
Then we see the leopard.
2018-05-05
SRI LANKA DAY 11 – DAMBULLA – DAY 2
A thousand
steps.
The
calf, perhaps unfolded only an hour from the womb, almost has a handle on this
walking thing. Her legs splay and spread instead of stride, but Momma nuzzles
and things are as they should be. She nurses. Later the monsoon rains bring chill
air. The father of our homestay hostess cradles the calf, carries it inside the
leanto, warming the baby by the small fire. The man is old, walks tilted to
left over his withered arm. The rain is a thundering waterfall. He strokes the
other calves and their mothers through the noise.
We
watch him and his cows from our balconies, moved by his obvious affection.
There is an occasional peacock.
Our
homestay for 3 days in Dambulla is under trees, surrounded by fields, sung to
by frogs. Andudh, he of the glorious smile (‘he is gorgeous’, say the
ladies…and that gets no argument from us), takes care of us. His sister-in-law
cooks, sublimely. Even by the high standards of Sri Lankan cuisine, this is
memorable food, especially the carrots and long green beans in coconut sauce.
This
place almost seduces us from the nearby remains of Sri Lanka's Golden Age, the
ancient city of Polonnaruwa. Lorry “doesn't do rocks”, stays with Sujeewa, as
we three scramble, barefoot in these sacred places at times, over and around
palaces and temples stunning even now for size, grace, beauty. A fragment of a
painted arch hints at how this place, now rain-washed and sun-worn to grey,
looked in its prime, dripping in color against the green of the jungle.
High
above all of it is the monolith of Sigiriya, rising a thousand steep steps out
of the flatness, to a cloud-nudging temple in the sky. We tuk-tuk around it,
watch the hikers way above us, tiny pepper grains, against the stone. We did
our thousand steps yesterday on the flats at Polonnaruwa, a much better deal
for our knees.
Late
in the afternoon I wrap in a cotton sarong and we sip tea on the balcony. We
watch the old man love his cows. The calf has outgrown her wobble, taken her
thousand steps.
The
rains come. Then the frog songs. Then dinner. Then sleep.
2018-05-06
SRI LANKA DAY 12 – DAMBULLA TO TRINCOMALEE
‘Pizza...with
a side of sarong’.
Dennis
lays out our foray through Trincomalee.
We're
on a mission. Dennis wants a sarong for the beach. Janis’ poor sensitive tummy
has silently accepted a diet of plain rice for days and is on the lookout for
its preferred comfort food: pizza.
‘Trinco’ bakes on the coast of northeastern
Sri Lanka. There has been a port here for a few thousand years, secure in one
of the greatest harbors in Asia. It was home to the Asian Fleet during WW2.
Nothing could defend it from the tsunami 14 years ago.
We
see no obvious remnants of the tsunami as Sujeewa dodges tuk-tuks, busses,
trucks, motorcycles on the crowded roads through town then along the shore.
Multi-cultural
and polyglot Trinco has a majority Tamil-speaking Hindu population, many
Moslems, some Sinhala-speaking Buddhists, a few pewfulls of Christians, and a
lot of sun worshipers, tourists and travelers here for the beaches.
The
Hindu temples are flamboyant color wheels embroidered riotously in gods with
polytheistic enthusiasm, something for everyone, every event.
Sedate
rounded Buddhist shrines, single figures of Buddha in smiling meditation on the
oneness of things, honor not a God, just an enlightened humble man, an example.
Domed
mosques are rimmed with ribbon calligraphy and images of nature, but none of
humans, and none of God, minarets pointing upwards to their one God and his
message.
Angular
Christian churches, solid, square, hide their tortured and suffering man-God
Savior behind thick doors.
The
sun worshippers sizzle in ecumenical indifference today, assured their God will
return tomorrow.
We
ignore them all. The promise of ‘wood fired pizza’ draws us into ‘Nero
Kitchen’. I stick with fried rice, but it's pizza---plain, Greek, sausage---
around the rest of the table. ‘Plain' makes Janis' tummy happy. Taste buds? Not
so much.
Dyke
Hotel (no, we have no idea how it got its name) is bright blue and right
on the beach. And it has a wiggle-bottom Golden Retriever puppy.
Fourteen
years ago the tsunami raged onto this beach three times, scrubbing it of life.
Now we sip tea here under a waning sun. The Golden Retriever puppy yaps in the
Dyke Hotel behind me, and a village dog curls on the sand, asleep a few yards
from the surf.
Dennis never does get his sarong.
2018-05-07
SRI LANKA DAY 13 – TRINCOMALEE – DAY 2
“I'm gonna miss him when he's gone.”
The
water is 29 degrees C, about 85 in F. From the shore it is turquoise, rippling
in under the warming pink of sunrise. I step into it, massaged by diamantine
clarity, silky, voluptuous. It's six thirty in the morning and I am freshly
salted by the Indian Ocean. I carry the salt on my lips back up across the
sand. Uncle Kadira brings me coffee, sweet with a touch of ocean.
Three
month old Misha, Retriever puppy, gilded as the sand, but fluffy, joins me,
ready for play. Or a gentle sampling chew on my foot. The fuzzy piranha, 5 Star
Graduate of Puppy Cute School (A+ in all courses, double A plus in ‘How to Make
Humans Forgive You Anything 101’), moves on to chasing beach crows, defoliating
potted plants, rescuing sticks, attacking the hose, rolling in the sand, but
mostly chewing, all proof he deserved those grades. Two human puppies, play, deep
mahogany on the gold, are almost as cute. Almost.
The
sun rises, dragging heat with it. We are 8 degrees above the equator. The heat
sticks.
My
coffee grows cold. No matter.
Dyke
Hotel is a ramshackle, hodge-podgey, comfortable, colorful hybrid of hostel
casualness and private room convenience. Our 3 rooms (there are 8) all have two
double beds, AC, ensuite bathrooms. They are 30 feet from the sand. Serious
Moses, bubbly Ramesh, efficient Rom, and kind Uncle Kadira take care of us.
Everyone else here is under 30, nice people, from Sri Lanka (the human
puppies), Ukraine, Russia.
Dima,
pilot, and Chief Officer at Ukraine International Airlines, makes a convincing
case for a Springtime trip to Ukraine, especially the Carpathian Mountains and
the city of Lviv. Lviv? My tongue votes for the chance to stumble around those
consonants.
The
afternoon rains come, and come, and come, overwhelming the drains, washing
through the roof, floorboards, ceilings. It's a bit messy but not a tsunami. We
stay dry. The Russian couple is flooded out, briefly. (So is Janis’ pet fly,
constant companion. We’re not sure who is whose pet, but she'll miss him. She
says.)
The
Russians, Ukranian Dima and his wife (both roasted a medium-rare deep pink) and
we spread across three tables. Dima offers some potent Georgian booze, green,
potent, and good. We offer Sri Lankan curd and palm syrup, a big hit all
around.
Things
dry.
The sound of surf soothes the night.
2018-05-08
SRI LANKA DAY 14– TRINCOMALEE – DAY 3
‘You
will lose your bet'.
Dima
points at the drape of rain-dark clouds pulled over the evening sky. It will
rain. I will lose my bet. We all win free seats under a stupendous sky show of
roiling black clouds. ‘El Greco' says Janis.
We
spend the morning at sea, hoping to spot a lazy Sperm Whale two weeks behind
the migration train. We settle, happily, for joining pods of Spinner Dolphins.
The sea is deep blue over the 2000 foot canyon the whales prefer, then
aquamarine where we roll overboard to snorkel. The captain of the small dinghy
drops a line, hauls in a 3-foot Wahu by the tail, bare-handed. It's a placid
fish. He flaps a farewell to life, then lies, silent, under the seats. He will
be someone’s dinner. But not ours.
The
rain drops fall, only a few, but enough to lose me the bet. Or to repeat last
night's deluge. (Janis gives us a ‘fly update’. Her roomie is alive and well.
At least that's the latest buzz.)
Dinner
is whole fish, deep fried, prawns, cuttlefish, rice, curries, all good. The sea
here is generous.
2018-05-09
SRI LANKA DAY 15– TRINCOMALEE – DAY 4
‘Tiny
puppy. She came crying on Christmas Day.’
Last
night, Kadira fills us in on the 8-year history of the grumpy black and white
dog, the only inhabitant of Dyke immune to Misha's puppy charms, grrr replacing
ahhh. She reserves more serious comments for the neighbors to the south. One of
them threw a rock at her when she was a puppy. She has been telling them off
for 8 years. Kadira and the cook bring out scraps in a purple bowl for two of
the beach dogs, both standard issue, yellow-brown with pointy ears and snouts,
one a bit mangy.
This
morning Mangy Dog walks with me down the beach for a while, his paw prints
clear in the sand. I add mine. It's 05:45. The sun is low behind singed puffs,
soft coral, not yet white hot. Two fishing pirogues are already out to sea, black
silhouettes floating on coppered silver. On the beach men unravel their nets,
looping them into haystacks between the sleek and painted wooden canoes that
will carry them to sea. A lei of marigolds drapes over a narrow prow, a Hindu
touch of grace, orange against weathered wood, sky blue paint worn to wood
grain.
The
men are mahogany, teak, ebony even, lithe, muscled, in shorts or work-wrapped
sarongs, gathered, folded, knotted up above the knee. A Moslem man walks past
in skullcap, shoes in one hand, hem of his white robe in the other.
The
only sounds are the soft sibilants of the surf and the sharp insults of the
beach crows. Then, the slap of oars rises under the chatter of the men as they
set out into the Indian Ocean. The day has begun.
I
walk back.
The waves have erased my footprints.
2018-05-10
SRI LANKA DAY 16– TRINCOMALEE – DAY 5
‘This
is beyond paradise. This is where the people in paradise go for vacation.’
I
float on the swells, bobbing on quicksilver, burnished by the flat rays of the
low-lying sun in the East, behind me. The surf slaps the shore. Our planet is
the only place in our sun’s vast family where this sound exists, or where there
are ears to gather it. Paradise. I don’t waste it.
Up
the beach a fishing net come ashore. Two teams of seven work on the net,
hauling it from the sea and drawing the broad sweep of the net into a pouch.
The men rotate to the front of the net line one by one, hands on, but legs
doing the work, leaning landward, each moving seaward as his rescued line curls
flat on the sand. Way out, buoys, dark against the sun, mark the net, scores of
pulls and rotations away. The pile of net grows.
The
net is almost empty. Paradise? For whom?
Before
the day grows too hot, Dennis, Janis, and I do a walkabout in our neighborhood.
To the left, down Dyke Street, Uncle Kudira, jolly Does It All (and dog lover)
at the hotel, has just opened a tiny store, ‘first one at corner’. He sells
everything, neatly stacked around the 8x10 (feet, not meters) perimeter. We
pass on the noodles, soap, baby pacifiers, add butter cookies and a sheet, soft
cotton striped with the colors of the sea, sky, temples, to our loot.
At
the end of the narrow street the zaftig, Rubenesque, four-armed Hindu goddess,
voluptuous celestial coquette, watches over her flock from her flowered niche
on the temple wall, eyes wide open. Above her, Ganesh, the Elephant God, waves
his eight arms. He is the Remover of Obstacles, Protector from Disasters, a
handy guy to have around. Hindu temples are polychrome eruptions of attention
to the inevitable facts of life, good, bad, ordinary, and not, gods and
goddesses at the ready for whatever life delivers. They are both overwhelming
with the ‘Bigger Than Me', and comforting with the ‘No Job Too Small’. I make a
silent petition for the Net Guys. Maybe tomorrow the nets will be full.
We
walk on, turn right at the local hospital, then right again, up to the circle,
turn right yet again under the big tree and we return to Dyke Street. On our
left, the single row of small houses, hostels, hotels touch the beach but
muffle the sound of the surf. There are gaps with signs of ruin
unreconstructed, left over from the tsunami, when paradise was almost lost.
Almost. But for the coquette and Ganesh?
Who's to say?
2018-05-11
SRI LANKA DAY 17– TRINCOMALEE TO JAFFNA
‘Go
slow. Bridge dilapidated.’
We
say goodbye to kind Kudira, efficient Moses, the beach dogs, and the Fuzzy
Piranha, and leave the beach for the last time. The fisherman don't notice.
Neither
do the spotted deer who sleep in the shade on the headland high above the bay
at Koneswaram Temple. There's been a temple here since 1600bc.until the
Portuguese destroyed it…and 32 hundred years of history… with morbid Christian
triumphalism in 1622ad. The Portuguese are long gone, nasty footnotes to a more
enduring story. The spot is sacred, rejects desecration, spawns temples. The
modern avatar sits under a massive statue of the god Shiva, many times human
size. He looks over his flock and a stupendous view of Trinco Bay, water bluer
than even the bluest gods imagined in many-armed helpfulness on the temple
walls.
We
stop at a trinket stall for a keychain with a map of Sri Lanka to add to Nuri’s
collection our next time in Turkey, a talisman to secure that trip. I sip cold,
fresh passion fruit juice (pineapple and avocado for the others) slowly and
watch the outriggers on the blue way below, securing that view for my memory.
We
head inland, then turn north into Northern Province. Here Sri Lanka is
stretched thin by the forces that ripped it from India. It’s barely a skim over
the Indian Ocean, pounded flatter still on the anvil of the equatorial sun.
The
road runs north, true, flat, easy. It bores Sajeewa, who likes to steeplechase
around the tuk-tuk/motorcycle/bus traffic…and cows…of the towns. We make no
concessions to the ‘dilapidated’ bridge, swoop across it, unconcerned. He knows
his stuff.
After
many years of isolation during the civil war, Jaffna bustles. That revives
Sujeewa. The tangle of streets defeats even the GPS. It's upstaged by a few
phone calls and our host, Allen, who leads us on his bicycle down a narrow lane
to our digs. We've hit another jackpot. Allen is Sri Lankan. Britta, his wife,
is German. They are delightful, stimulating. Their home is art-filled and
spacious. We sip papaya juice on the veranda looking out into the garden. The
arbor drips almost-ready passion fruit.
KFC…yes,
Kentucky Fried Chicken…soothes Janis’ testy stomach, and rewards her taste buds
for their uncomplaining acceptance of a rice for days. We abstain. Lots of
youngish Sri Lankan do not.
Later,
we go out the gate, take a few right and left turns through the dark, under
trees, shrug past the obligatory but under-committed barks of neighborhood
dogs, and meet Sujeewa coming from his digs at the junction by the temple.
Dinner is hot and flaky parathas,
fresh baked, with curries, and cold EGBs, Elephant Ginger Beers. Three of us
guys eat and drink (5 EGBs) for 870 Rupees, about $5.50.
Sleep comes, tinged with beach, and slightly blued,
memory secured.
2018-05-12
SRI LANKA DAY 18 – JAFFNA
‘Om'.
The
small speaker in the roadside juice shop whispers ‘Om’, then syllables, then
‘Om' again and more syllables, a gentle massage for our ears, devoid of meaning
for us, but not of message: be calm. It works.
The
whirr of the fruit juicer is soft, promise of relief from the heat. We sip the
fresh pineapple juice. Juice Man tells us he lived in Toronto for 7 years.
Before. Around his shop here is green, palm trees, blue sky, an occasional cow.
Good move, Juice Man.
We
drive to the northern tip of Sri Lanka. Thirty miles to the west is India,
until the 15th century connected by a narrow land bridge. A cyclone
ripped the bridge into a dribble of islands---sandbars with affectations, in
fact. Somewhere out there across a puddle or sand bar Sri Lanka and India meet
across the shortest international border in the world.
At
Point Pedro, the very tip of Sri Lanka, two fishing boats have died on the
sand, huge holes gouged by the tsunami. Across the road is a cemetery. All the
grave markers are the same size, worn to the same color, marking shared death
by that distant seismic seizure and the roar of the sea.
The
waiter scoops yellow biriani rice,
crisp, fragile, manioc chips and crispier, sturdier, papadams onto our banana leaf plates, adds dollops of curry,
sambal, chutney, and fresh from the fryer savory donuts. It's delicious…and
$7.75, including drinks, for all 5 of us.
And
the plate is biodegradable, returning to Mother Earth.
She hums ‘OM'.
2018-05-13.
SRI LANKA DAY 18 – JAFFNA TO ANURADHPURA
Church
bells?
They
clang, strident, harsh in the dawning, mechanical, artificial[1] ,
alien to the soft murmuring of the Buddhist and Hindu chants, and the confident
yearning declarations of the Moslem call to prayer, human sounds.
Jaffna
has many Christians. I see a grey skirted nun on her bike, a shadow---without a
clang---in this color world.
Hindus
in respectful white and barefoot, are blanched dots against the immense temple,
stacked to the heavens with Hinduism’s riotous pantheon. This one has eschewed
all other colors for the eye-searing brilliance of gold, an architectural El
Dorado just a wee bit compromised by the huge analog clock smack in the middle
of the golden celestial throng voguing with nubile exuberance on the tower.
It's 10 after 10 human time, of no concern to the Golden Ones, but time for us
to head south.
Elephant
Walk is a narrow sinew of land, barely a few vehicles wide, connecting Jaffna
to the rest of Sri Lanka. Jaffna seems to be one cyclone or tsunami short of
becoming an island, but Elephant Walk has survived for eons. Across it,
merchants walked elephants from Sri Lanka proper to be sold for export in
Jaffna. (Presumably, the ones that
did not sell at the duty free shop at the airport, the one offering other
behemoths: washing machines, wide screen TVs, and refrigerators.) Thus, the
name.
Well
onto Sri Lanka proper we sit in the shade of roadside trees and sip a heavenly
and icy love child of fresh ‘squoozed’ orange juice and pineapple morsels. The
midwife/barista Juice Guy adds a fluorish of red syrup to turn it bubble gum
pink, lurid, but festive. He deserves applause, gets a photo, gives a ten Rupee
discount.
Four
hours later I discover the lakeside hammock at our AirBnB and the day swings to
a halt. There are no clangs.
2018-05-14
SRI LANKA DAY 19 – ANURADHPURA TO NEGOMBO
“Whenever
I go to airport I always stop here to pray.”
The
shrine is small, car-size, and squat, but Sujeewa says it is holy and pulls
(barely) off the road onto the toothpick shoulder, inches from the voracious
maelstrom of Sri Lanka's rush hour traffic. The prayer works enough to get us back
into the flow, intact. Some other god or prayer dumps monsoon rain on us, wet,
leaden, sheets taxing the windshield wipers and washing the world clean.
It’s
our last full day here, way too soon. I'm greedy for this place, my senses
latching onto tiny events. We sit on the veranda watching ripples in the lake
turn into swimming monitor lizards. Upali's wife turns Lorry's ill-fitting
tunic into a stunning over blouse, and two pieces of fabric into shorts and a
blouse. In 45 minutes.
Sujeewa's
wife and parents-in-law welcome us in the garden of their rural house. Son
Didula isn't so sure, but peeks around Grandpa and bats inch long eyelashes, a
natural flirt at age 6. Crisp, deep-fried mushrooms, carrot and coconut salad,
and potatoes in coconut curry sauce deep massage our taste buds, are new
flavors that leap frog to the top of our list of Sri Lankan must-haves.
On
the lake shore we finally meet Gihan, owner of Traveler's Isle Tours and the
guy who set this up for us. No matter what we expected, he surprises us.
Yesterday he turned 25. He looks half a decade younger. He is sweet,
articulate, and has honest eyes crowning a truly handsome face. We all take to
him immediately. Only heavy rain drops cut short our tea under the trees.
An
ocean of drops, 80 kilometers, and one roadside prayer later Chris and Renuka
welcome us in the dark to their sprawling 5-bedroom garden villa. Our room is
huge under a ceiling high above my pillow, space enough for the whirl of
competing memories to sort and fall into place.
Sri Lanka refuses to let go. I don’t want it to. I
take it with me into my dreams.
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