Sri Lanka was just fabulous. It was my first real time traveling alone – def a huge learning experience. I took a hella long train to Chennai, spent the day/night in Chennai hanging out with some lively couchsurfers and flew to Colombo on the 26th. Colombo is your average cosmopolitan city with the added bonus of a scenic coastline and due to current political unrest a plethora of armed soldiers – I’m talking every 100 feet. So I was quick to get out and left for Kandy the very next day. I also had enough of the hyper Anglophilic Sri Lankan woman who ran the guest house I stayed in for the night…seriously she‘s one of the few people I have met who lament their colony’s independence from the British. I rode in the “observation saloon” on the train and boy was that a treat…it’s a rail car made of a whole lot of glass and its route is straight through the gorgeous hill country of SL. Luckily I was assigned a window seat.
Upon arriving in Kandy I checked into a small guest house…it’s off season so I made my decision by the fact that is was the only one with patrons for the night. Sri Lankan food is pretty uneventful if you are a vegetarian but I made the most of it…. The next morning I rose bright and early and took a bus to Dambulla, the site of ancient Buddhist cave carvings. So I finally empathize with my fair skinned friend’s frustration with raised foreigner entry fees for Indian tourist sites….I usually get away with being Indian in India at places like the Taj and City Palace so I hadn’t thought of how irking it is before that non-residents have to pay seriously 10X the local visitors fee. Sure, we don’t pay taxes to maintain these sites…but let’s get real…who in South Asia pays their taxes anyway. And if they don’t, why the heck should we pay the brunt of it? So in Sri Lanka I tried to pretend I was Sri Lankan…and this worked until I demonstrated my incapacity to speak a lick of Sinhalese or Tamil. By the way, contrary to the guidebook I purchased – English does not get you by easily on this island. The most intriguing aspect of all of these Buddhist heritage sites was the strong presence of Hindu imagery. No Buddha idol was without a Vishnu idol nearby. After that I hitched a ride to Sigriya and climbed that rock with a group of monks on a field trip who spoke broken bits of English and Hindi.
The Sri Lankans, like the Indians, are on this kick to promote a timeless Buddhist past (in comparison to India’s Vedic past). Hence the never-ending marketing of 3-4000 year old Buddhist palaces, temples, schools, etc.
Onwards to Nuwara Elliya – an eerie colonial town which I quickly got out of it…on my way out I stopped to check out the presumed gufa in which Ravana held Sita captive. Complete with Hanuman’s footprints and all. Considering the Lonely Planet alone lists three such sites - who knows if it is “real” or not, but either way being there def. inclined me to empathize with Sita’s plight. My varnam included the scene from the Ramayana in which Ravana deceives Sita and kidnaps her...and the abhinaya felt much more real to me in SL than it did at 17 years of age.
The ethnic politics in SL was apparent to me in just the 10 days of my trip…Tamilians identified with me on the basis of my Indian ethnicity. They were eager to establish their connection with India much more so than the Sinhalese people that I came across. Yea, I’m probably reading too much into this and I don’t know even too much about India’s involvement in the Tamil Elam separatist movement.
My next significant trip was to the Sinhraja Forest Reserve. What a fantastic testament to the grandeur that is God’s creation. This place was teeming with life.
I actually happen to really like plants and trees so this was my kind of joint. Between incessant leech checks and admiring the minute variations and number of patterns in leaves alone… my awesome guide and I spent 6 hours hiking around the forest. I stayed with my guide’s family for the night which was my most “authentic” cultural experience....the Kandyan tribal dancers performing for an audience in a recital hall just felt a little staged. The accommodations were minimal and included dinner by candlelight and a natural, relaxing bath outside of the house in a peaceful stream.
And finally on the beach baby…on the south coast I met up with a British friend I had made in Kandy which was very nice because I was starting to feel a little lonely and it was off season so I couldn’t meet other tourists easily. We basically kicked it on the beach for three days. I snagged an awesome “neighbor country” discount at this guest house right on the beach! And I visited the Galle Fort in there somewhere – one heck of a magnificent structure. A very relaxing end to my summer of Hindi and a relaxing beginning to my year of Urdu!
