Spring break Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, April 2010

Spring Break in Sri Lanka
By
Randall D. Ball

My wife says that the straightest line we traveled in Sri Lanka was the airport runway. With its curves and hills and hairpin turns and zigzags and mountain roads, and with the colorful driving habits of its denizens, Sri Lanka can give even the mightiest iron-stomached bulwark a good dose of motion sickness. My two-year-old daughter Anastasia and I fared well, and my wife Christine took Dramamine tablets to counter the dizzying, nauseating effects of the twisting highways and aggressive driving. Our six-month-old, Talula, wasn’t so lucky, and thus neither were my pants, shoes, or the floor mat in our driver’s car.
Our first day, however, was gentle enough, with an easy four-hour flight from Abu Dhabi to Colombo. Our driver Senaka greeted us at the airport, and within minutes we were loaded into the backseat (no car seats for the kids, either), zipping past creeks, marshes, and rice paddies, marveling at the lush tropical greenery that always serves as a stark contrast to our brown desert life and grey concrete city. Senaka drove us three hours to the central Sri Lankan city of Kandy, a most un-Sri Lankan-sounding name amidst towns such as Kadugannawa, Katunayake, Wattegama, Nawalapitiya, Ratnapura, Angunukolepelessa, and my favorite, Uragasmanhandiya. Our hotel in Kandy was nestled in a tropical landscape and had an infinity pool on a bluff overlooking the Mahaweli Ganga, by far the longest river in the country. It was a perfect spot for Anastasia to play. She enjoyed the kiddie pool, adjacent to our outdoor dining area, so we could eat while she played, even in the rain. She didn’t mind. Rain is a special occasion when you’re coming from the United Arab Emirates.
The next day, Senaka picked us up early to see the elephants. Our first stop was a little business that sold elephant rides, and along with this photo op, we also fed our elephant, and Anastasia—with Christine’s help—got into the little creek running through the jungle to wash—and climb all over—a reclined elephant. I stood on the dry riverbank, Talula strapped to my chest in the Baby Bjorn, trying to take photos while she grabbed at the camera strap. Anastasia clearly loved the encounter. When we arrived at the Pinnawela Elephant “Orphanage” (originally founded as an orphanage, but now it’s more of an elephant breeding program to continue to attract tourists), Anastasia made a mad dash toward them. Unlike a traditional zoo, here you get up close with the elephants, standing next to them, petting them, hoping one doesn’t absent-mindedly step on your feet and crunch your bones into oblivion. The big event at this pachydermal orphanage is the twice-daily elephant march across the street, through a souvenir-shop-lined pedestrian walkway, down to the river where dozens and dozens of the beasts wash themselves and frolic as tourists watch from the riverbank or from one of the cafes that line the waterfront. Back at the hotel, a visibly frightened Anastasia ran away from a brown frog and a tiny lizard. She has no fear of humongous elephants, though.
That evening, we attended a “traditional” dance and music performance, put on nightly for the tourists. It may have been artificial, plastic, and contrived, but the grand finale did involve two men who walked on very hot coals. Following the performance, we took a drive around “scenic” Kandy Lake, which is just as artificial as the performance but at least with the lake, the locals get to enjoy its presence too. Then we visited the famous Temple of the Sacred Tooth relic, home of a tooth of the Buddha himself.
The next two days tested our stomachs’ ability to hold its contents as we twisted and turned up into the mountains toward Nuwara Eliya. Along the way, Talula deposited her contents into my hand, arm, pants, shoes, and floor mat. It was close to noon, before the cooling afternoon showers, and the morning sun baked us in the “air-conditioned car” (the AC only worked properly when it was cold outside). Her car sickness provided us with an impromptu stop by a tea plantation, and an Indian family on holiday stopped alongside us—to take pictures of Anastasia and Talula, not of the fields of tea plantations, the mountains, or the beautiful waterfalls in the background. Both girls got a bit upset and fussy on this drive up into the mountains, trying our patience and ensuring that the driver earned his tip. At one point, Anastasia announced to the entire car, “I farted.” It was her first use of past tense and one of only a few complete sentences that she has ever spoken. Senaka thought her statement was funny, even if he wasn’t too amused by their outbursts of cries and occasional screams.
We stopped at a tea factory overlooking one of the many plantations in the hill country for a tour and a free cup of tea. Anastasia had a chance to run around the little English garden outside the factory and chase a stray dog, one of many that we saw on our trip. After lunch at our hotel in Nuwara Eliya, Senaka drove us to Hakgala Botanical Gardens, where once again the girls became the star attraction as Sri Lankans and Indians on holiday all wanted to take their picture with her.
Then we visited a small, modest Hindu temple near the gardens. It was free to enter, unlike the touristy Buddhist Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, but there was a little donation booth. I had to wake up the guy to make my donation of one hundred rupees (less than a dollar). I thought I was making a donation for the general upkeep of the temple, which I was, but to my surprise the somnolent fellow was a Hindu priest (a “Pujari”) who gathered the whole family around for a Hindu blessing, right down to saying prayers for us and giving us those holy red marks (“Tilak”) on our foreheads. He then handed me some symbolically blessed food wrapped in a banana leaf (“Prasad”) and offered us a drink of blessed water (“Cholera”). It was Easter Sunday, and we had our Hindu blessing.
The next morning, Senaka warned us in advance. “Today, 263 kilometers.” Driving in Sri Lanka, you can barely average 40 km/hour, so 263 km was going to take us the better part of the day. And we had to wind our way back down the mountains, through the same hairpin turns and tea plantations and camera-happy Indian tourists. Talula vomited on Christine this time, just to break up the monotony.
We left the hill country with its tea plantations, heading into the rainforest. The road finally straightened out a bit, by Sri Lankan standards, but then the pavement quickly deteriorated into a series of pot holes, craters, and small rivers, further slowing us down and jarring our teeth in the process. At lunch time, we asked Senaka about a restaurant stop, and for the next two hours he drove past street stalls and shacks selling flat soda and stale crackers before finding us a more proper restaurant. Dining was outdoors next to a shabby, rusty children’s playground, but the sweet potato curry and the spicy dahl were tasty and flavorful and felt more like Sri Lankan food than any of the hotel cuisine we had been eating since arriving in the country. Anastasia enjoyed a plateful of plain white rice before screaming for more playground time. We made sure she had some, because we still had a way to go, stuck in the car, all four of us squirming sardines crammed into the backseat holding on to one another.
“Just an hour and a half more, maybe,” Senaka assured us. This meant we had at least two hours more of driving. It’s important to be able to translate what the driver really is saying.
Over two hours later, Senaka broke the news to us. “I can’t drive to rainforest hotel.”
This was news. Then he explained that he would park at the base of the hill and we would have to take a tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled auto rickshaw, quite common in developing southeast Asian countries) up the narrow path to our rainforest lodge. It certainly felt that we were off the beaten path! Our rainforest hotel was in Kalawana, just outside the Sinharaja Rainforest preserve, and it was a beautiful location offering a panoramic view of the lush jungle from its hilltop perch. The staff were most welcoming and friendly, although perhaps we were just happy to be out of our vehicular prison. Dinner was a splendid candle light affair with delicious chicken, rice, a wonderful pumpkin curry, and other vegetables, concluding with a dessert of “kiri pani,” yogurt topped with treacle. We slept well that night, the sounds of the rainforest just outside—and occasionally inside. I heard something rustling in the bathroom, which—although still private—was open to the great outdoors on one side. In the morning I inspected the little bar of soap by the bathroom sink. It had been either clawed or chewed up…by something.
At breakfast one of the wait staff warned us about Anastasia petting the cat. “Maybe she not touch. Cat hair may be poison…” I knew about the venomous snakes in the area, such as the green pit viper (in the trees!) and the krait, but I was unaware of the rainforest’s poisonous feline fur. Christine and I figured that he meant Anastasia might be allergic to cat fur, but just to be sure I kept an eye on that cat for the rest of the morning.
“Only 100, maybe 110 kilometers today,” Senaka told us after our huge breakfast of various fruits, breads, pastries, omelets, and curried vegetables. “Maybe hour and a half.”
I calculated that, after the quick tuk-tuk ride down the hill, it would take us nearly an hour just to drive out of the rainforest in Senaka’s car, which took quite a beating in the pot holes and craters that make up the road. It would then take us another hour just to get to the coast, and another half hour after that to arrive at our beach resort in Unawatuna in southwestern Sri Lanka. My calculation was much, much closer than Senaka’s optimistic one.
We took two breaks on our way to the coast, one after Talula pooped on me (fortunately, I was wearing the same vomit-stained pants from two days ago, and she managed to hit the same spot on the pants) and another stop at the Kosgoda sea turtle farm, a conservation project run by volunteers. Anastasia loved the turtles—a little too much. At one point she licked a turtle’s fin, which our guide said he had never seen before. He was a young Englishman who told us that the previous night they had had a terrible storm and a tsunami warning, which turned out to be a false alarm, thank goodness. But we were staying in Unawatuna, which was hit worst and destroyed by the big 2004 tsunami. And I thought the poisonous cat was dangerous!
Anastasia and Talula really enjoyed the beach resort, though. Our bungalow was just a few feet from the surf, and from the looks of it, it must have been the only thing left standing after the tsunami. The girls enjoyed splashing in the water, both in the Indian Ocean and at the pool. The waves in the ocean were a little more fierce than what we’re used to, but Anastasia didn’t mind getting knocked down by their force. We spent an extra day there, a day with no car ride, which made for a nice change of pace. Our second night there, Christine and I took turns dancing with Anastasia to the unusual entertainment: five blind musicians who played their hearts out.
In the morning, we piled back into Senaka’s car for the long ride back to the airport north of Colombo. We stopped in Galle along the way to see the fort there, and to pay a visit to a Dutch Protestant church within its walls.
Senaka warned us, however, not to purchase anything in Galle. “Too much expensive,” he said. “You want shopping? I take you to market in Colombo.”
Two and a half hours later, we were in Colombo, and he took us shopping—at what was essentially a Sri Lankan K-Mart. Clearly, our driver wasn’t taking commissions from any souvenir shops or gift stores. While Christine politely looked around the store, I asked Senaka how much farther it was to the airport.
“Forty-five minutes,” he assured me. I just smiled.
After we had left the department store and crammed ourselves back into his car, Christine asked him the same question.
“Maybe one hour,” he said. I decided if we added up the two answers, that would probably be more accurate.
Over two hours later, we had finally fought our way through the city of Colombo and well north of it, grateful to see the airport and bid farewell to our backseat jail. We said our good-byes to Senaka, with Anastasia giving him a nice hug, and our holiday in Sri Lanka came to a satisfying close.