september 2003
Hikkaduwa is an old resort town on the southwest coast of the island. It seems a little run-down but in a friendly beatnik sort of way and is a relaxing place to acclimatise to the culture, cuisine and weather. The streets are lined with quiet cafes and craft and clothes shops and the beach stretches endless and empty, looking out into the Bay of Bengal. It is easy to walk the length of the town along the main road that divides the seafront on one side from the jungle on the other but it is also enjoyable to hire a tuk tuk to ride into the neighbouring villages. There are also a couple of banks that will take credit cards as well as an internet cafe in the unlikely event that you feel the desire to contact the outside world. A long coral reef offshore meant that the place used to be popular with surfers (before everyone moved onto Bali and Goa) and the neighbouring town of Unawatuna still has a strong hippy contingent. The weather in Sri Lanka is generally hot and humid with the Yala season, from May to August, brining a monsoon to the southwest of the island while the Maha season, from May to January, sees a monsoon in the northeast. There are several cheap and cheerful tourist agencies in Hikkaduwa where it is easy to hire a guide and a driver to assist in exploration further afield. The nearby port of Galle, founded in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, is an excellent example of the interaction between European architectural styles and South Asian traditions. The grassy expanses between the ramparts are invariably filled by local youths practising their cricket skills.
Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese population are primarily Buddhist while the Tamil minority are primarily Hindu. There are temples to both religions all over the island and a happy custom of calling in at your local shrine before heading off on any journey. It is not at all uncommon to find Hindu statues on Buddhist sites. Ever since a Hindu prince from India married a Buddhist native in 504BC the two religions have enjoyed a relatively peaceful coexistence. The islands location in the Indian Ocean has meant that it has always been a popular trading stop. The Romans knew it as Taprobane and the Arabs as Serendip (from which we derive the word serendipity). The Portuguese, in search of cinnamon and other spices, seized control of most of the coastal settlements in 1505. The Dutch were granted a monopoly in the spice trade for expelling the Portuguese in 1796 and renamed the island Zeilan. The British were the first extend colonial control across the whole island and they established the crown colony of Ceylon in 1815. Sri Lanka gained its independence at around the same time as India and adopted its current name in 1972. In addition to the Sinhala and Tamil populations, there remain smaller groupings of Muslim traders living in the interior towns as well as various Christian descendants of the successive Portuguese, Dutch and British eras.
Bundala National Park is a large expanse of scrub, lagoons and beachfront located in the southeast of the island. It is filled with noisy black-faced languor monkeys, lazy crocodiles, sunbathing iguanas, docile water-buffalo, not-so-docile elephants and, everywhere you look it seems, peacocks. Tours can be organised from the nearby town of Tissamaharama. If you are particularly lucky then you might even see a monitor lizard. These live in the waterways between rice paddies and can grow up to two metres long. It is also a peculiar pleasure to take a night-time dip in your pool and watch the large fruit-bats flock overhead, occasionally unnervingly low overhead, as they come out from their roosts. A culinary speciality of the area, not to be missed, is the buffalo curd which is traditionally served with arak honey, collected by bagging the flowers that hang from the jackfruit trees. Jackfruit itself is very sweet and quite delicious and is reputed to be the largest fruit in the world. All of the food in Sri Lanka is generally excellent and it is a pleasure to fall into the routine of eating fruit for breakfast, fish curries for dinner and, of course, drinking some of the finest tea in the world.
Kandy is the old capital of the central hill country, a frenetic place of markets and festivals and monks and monkeys and working elephants. Legend has it that the great quadrangular tank in the centre of the city was built by a king who drafted an entire generation of labourers from local tribes for the dedicated purpose of its construction. As the project wore on, the tribal leaders complained about the loss of their men and the King had them rounded up and imprisoned. Legend tells that on the occasion of the tanks completion, the King declared an amnesty and had the tribesmen released but only then to have them seized again and tied to stakes in the base of the lake so that they drowned as it was filled up with water for the first time. The heart of the city is the Dalada Maligawa which reputedly houses a tooth from the Buddha. It is a famous pilgrimage site and tourists can join the twice daily procession of the faithful past the opulent shrine while attending priests beat drums and blow horns. Visible from almost everywhere in the city is a giant white statue of a seated Buddha that looks out from Bahirawakande on a high hill to the south. The botanical gardens at Peradeniya, which occupy sixty odd hectares along the banks of the Mahaweli Ganga, Sri Lanka’s longest river, are considered to be some of the most beautiful in all of Asia. They contain a spectacular orchid house, groves of towering bamboos from Burma and, dominating the central lawn, an enormous fig tree from Java whose long drooping branches have nowadays to be propped up on stilts. The city is also the ideal venue to catch an exhibition of traditional dance. Accompanied primarily by percussion and informed heavily by folk religion, the dance ceremonies use richly ornamented costumes and masks and combine ritualized movements, vigorous acrobatics and rhythmic forms, intended to mimic various animals and birds. The exhibitions often end with a display of fire walking, recalling the legend that when Sita, the wife of the then king of India, Rama, was returned to her husband after having been abducted by Ravanna, king of Ceylon, she proved her chastity by crossing barefoot over hot coals.
The tea country around Nuwara Eliya, a hill station town whose name means the city of light, bears a strong stamp of British rule. The higher altitude means a cooler climate and the town was founded as a summertime retreat for the colonial British. It still grows and sells traditional English vegetables and has rather incongruous Georgian houses with lawn gardens as well as several tennis courts and cricket clubs. The surrounding plantations are reputed to grow some of the finest orange pekoe tea in the world. A nearby attraction is Worlds End, a kilometre high precipice from which the early morning views, before the daytime mists obscure them, are genuinely breathtaking. Travelling northwards, the army presence gets stronger as you go further into that part of the island where separatists have been waging a terrorist campaign for autonomy since the eighties. Many of the policies adopted after independence have been seen to favour the ethnic Sinhalese and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been fighting for a homeland of their own. Support from Indian Tamils has dwindled since the Tigers assassinated Rajiv Ghandi, the Indian prime minister during the Eighties who sent peacekeepers to assist the Sinhalese government. While the conflict has at times been severe, with atrocities committed on both sides, in recent years there has been a ceasefire and peace talks and renewed hope that a compromise can be achieved.
Returning south, Pinawella is an excellent place to see elephants up close. An orphanage has been established in a cleared part of the jungle and is a major draw for tourists. Consequently the town is bustling but it also has many beggars and the stall holders here are more badgering than is otherwise usual. Other local attractions include rubber plantations and pineapple farms. There is a fascinating spice garden in Matale where you can find out about the Ayurvedic system of medicine and buy an array of herbal remedies. If you don't mind stripping off in a hut in the jungle then the traditional massage is highly recommended. Ayurveda derives from Hindu philosophy and takes a holistic approach according to which living things are understood to adapt to their environment. All material objects in the environment are said to have unique combinations of Gunah (qualities), depending upon their proportionate composition in terms of the five elements. The process of adaptation can thereby harm or heal a persons natural Prakrti (constitution), depending upon their inherent balance of the three Doshas (organising principles), which lead to unique strengths and susceptibilities. Illness is said to arise from imbalance and treatment, which aims to restore balance, is based on the belief that similarities will causes increases while dissimilarities will cause decreases.
The Golden Temple in Dambulla, located to the north of Kandy, consists of four monasteries and a series of cave shrines located within a large granite outcrop. Dating back to the first century BC, it is the most extensive and best preserved cave-temple complex in Sri Lanka. The ceilings and walls of the caves are painted with over two thousand square metres of intricate murals, following the natural contours of the rock face, representative of many different epochs of Sinhala art. One cave has over fifteen hundred separate images of the Buddha. An overhanging drip line has been carved across the entrances to ensure that the interiors remain dry. There are 150 statues of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas, his attending saints, the largest of which is 15 metres long. Statues of Vishnu and Saman were added in the twelfth century to mark the arrival of Hinduism to the island. The grounds are planted with sacred Bo trees which have prayer flags fluttering in their branches. The friendly tawny macaque monkeys generally outnumber the monks and the visitors.
To the northeast of Dambulla is the fortress complex of Sigirya, lying on the summit and slopes of a 200m high rock that rises out of densely forested surrounds. It was built by Kasyapa in the fifth century BC, an illegitimate son of King Datusena who murdered his father to seize the throne. Fearful of his resentful subjects, Kasyapa constructed an impregnable and lavishly decorated citadel on the four acre plateau at the mountaintop, with accommodation for his three hundred wives and consorts, elaborate water gardens and encircling moats filled with crocodiles. Guard posts were carved into the rock face with outward sloping floors which meant that the guards had to remain both awake and alert so as not to fall to their deaths below. A series of galleries and masonry staircases pass by the ruins of giant animal carvings and famously detailed paintings that are adorned with thousand year old graffiti recording the opinions of ancient visitors. When Kasyapa’s half-brother, the crown prince, returned from hiding in India, eighteen years later, along with an army of Tamils and laid siege to Sigirya, Kasayapa found himself trapped in his own citadel and committed suicide. The climb can be arduous but is more than worth it for the panoramic views of the jungle. Guides and helpers (to assist you up the slippery steps) are everywhere and it does well to remember that you're expected not just to tip the man whose job it is to point at a thing but also the other man whose job it is to point at the pointing man.