Sri Lankan diary part 2

  I'm not speaking for everyone, but I loved the Ameelia Guest House. I think the girls hated it.

Caroline felt Alex and I got the best room. It wasn't especially clean or comfortable: No screens or mosquito nets, no soap, no hot water, a crude cabinet with a clothing rail but no hangers, thin mattresses on creaky wooden slats, spiders the size of tea cups, geckos in the shower, and a long way to the shops. And all this for 23 bucks a night. For two. We took all three spare rooms, Dominic and Caroline in one balcony room, Alex and I in the other. We stashed the two girls into a damp, windowless cell. For the first time since we landed, I felt we had finally escaped the well trodden tourist track and stepped into the country of the SriLankans. Kumari and her husband Abey have lived in the house for 30 years. It is named after their younger daughter who attends law school near Colombo. Ameelia was home for the holidays but I only spoke with her once. Kumari and Abey were clearly proud of their house and possibly blind to its shortcomings in the eyes of western travelers, yet completely generous with anything it could offer. The garage was spread with mangoes recently harvested from the huge tree over their driveway and ripe ones were selected for us. The house is built on a steep north slope with a nice view of high mountains to the north. Unlike the last stop, we were in a modest family home in the suburbs away from the noise and mess of town. It is a brick structure with a white plaster veneer. A clean, tiled verandah spreads across the front with an attached double garage alongside over which they have built two bedrooms with adjoining balconies and two bathrooms in the back. Their kitchen reminded me of the old masonry kitchens of rural ltaly with its crude gas burners mounted in a large masonry niche in the wall which was likely a wood burning fireplace originally, the whole thing fairly grimy with age. Every sink and water tap we encountered in SriLanka was loose, and the Ameelia house was no different. When you turned the tap handle, the spout would revolve until water poured off the side of the sink. I often found myself reaching underneath and finger-tightening the fixing screws. We didn’t encounter running hot water until we reached Eveline and Charles’s hotel. I tried to spend as much time as I could with Kumari and Abey trading stories of fixing up old houses and bringing up two daughters. Abey described the mix of the SriLankan population: a majority of Buddhists, ten percent Hindus left over from English imported labor, and a smaller fraction of Muslims and Christians. The Tamils grew out of the Hindu fraction and a militant wing has caused a lot of trouble until brutal suppression by the government has rendered the country reasonably stable. Kandy is an important city in the central mountain region. It's economy benefits largely from the tea plantations begun by the English and now entirely owned by SriLankan interests. Muslims, it was explained, were more acquisitive, more forceful business people and would be found in the cities. They were different, they wore hats. When it came time to visit the city of Kandy, we walked down the hill and caught the “government” bus to downtown.

  I recognized something in Kandy we hadn’t seen for a while. Sidewalks.  And more-or-less western style shops. Kandy is apparently prosperous enough to afford sidewalks and they were surprisingly welcome to me. Maybe it’s because I fall down a lot after wearing progressive bi-focal eyeglasses. In a couple of days I would miss a step and fall in front of an audience, skinning my shin. Luckily I didn’t fall down in Kandy.

  Kandy is famous for the huge Buddhist palace, the Palace of the Tooth. The tooth is a relic found after the Buddha's funeral pyre had cooled. It is capable of miracles, and it has been usurped as the symbol of royalty for thousands of years. The temple built to house it sprawls along the shore of Kandy's lake, and like all buddhist temples, painted bright white and brilliantly lit. It's entrance is graced by a large park and protected by a reflecting moat. One joins the “foreign” ticket que to enter, first paying an unusually large amount, followed by a somewhat lesser amount to safely leave ones shoes. Only Caroline and I felt it worthwhile. We followed the mixed throng of white-robbed faithful and curious tourists. Our que slowed and compressed until it became necessary to push with real, competitive determination. Two drummers, amplified to a painful level, tapped a somber beat, highlighted by occasional bangs, repeated hypnotically and joined occasionally by a recording of monotone, reedy chanting. Firmly sandwiched between strangers (Caroline and I mercifully separated), we inched along and up some steps until, suddenly, we gained a small window giving an incomplete, internal view to a ridiculously ornate golden, inverted cone maybe three feet high and ten feet away. Passed this, the pressure eased and we were able to escape and wander to admire

offerings

the architecture, people, and lesser relics; disoriented by the amplified nasal horn chant and drum bangs. We left with the gift of a small CD, hopefully a recording to hypnotize myself with later.

temple museum

    Now it was time to find something to eat. Alex and Caroline leading us again past respectable looking places with printed menus to sidewalk vendors with butane tanks and open burners (and no sinks!). We bought a plate of chopped and chillied tortillas leaving me yearning for simple dahl and rice. At the end of the sidewalk stood the Muslim Hotel with its open restaurant on the ground floor, a bank of stainless cafeteria chafing bins displayed threatening ponds of dark curries. Muslims eat beef and this appealed to Dominic. They also serve dahl and rice which appealed to me, and within a sort of glass phone booth at the entry point someone was slapping dough into a hot steel surface which appealed to the kottu eaters. We sat at a marble table in a lofty, noisy room and got no service at all. A white bearded fellow was doing the best he could with a full room and every so often a dish of something was slid onto our table as he passed. Thomasina reminded us to eat with our right hands until a few damp spoons arrived. Over in the back corner one was encouraged to use the public sink. Near the end of the meal, stiff paper place mats arrived which others appeared to be using as napkins. I was mesmerized by a neighbor eating alone who spent a long time tearing his tortillas to bits and building a small hill. He then dipped each bit into whatever curry was in front of

him. It all looked so appetizing I copied his method from then on, being careful not to bring my left hand near my mouth.

fresh mountain air

  The next day in Kandy, we rejoined the tourist trail. Over a mountain pass to the east sat a small town bragging a domestic elephant treatment center with a nationally subsidized botanical garden next door. The six of us, looking doubtfully at the confusing choice of buses, attracted the attention of a tour guide and his father's van. He quickly convinced us we would save no money on a round trip bus ticket for six vs. his very good value van, not to mention his deep experience and social connections. We expected a scenic drive in the mountains, but instead suffered an awful, nonstop, choking cruise through deep valleys lined with shabby, one room businesses stuck in a carbon monoxide inversion layer. Surviving this, we found ourselves paying to look at elephants unfit to slave

away in the logging camps, but cured enough to perform a few tricks for the foreigners. Next door at the essential oil farm, a talkative guide took us on a walk through a beautifully groomed forest with small bottles of extract at the base of selected plants. We were led under a palm frond shelter where a group of young, shy trainees quickly had our shirts off to practice the art of Ayurvedic massage therapy. I found it quite funny, maybe because I'm ticklish and horribly skeptical. Sufficiently softened, we then found ourselves subjected to a serious shake down in the gift shop which proved four times more expensive than the local markets. Safely delivered back in the chaos of Kandy, and satisfied with our true Sri Lankan experience, we ambled through the street markets and returned to our Muslim Hotel for supper.

   A backpacker’s website convinced Alex that one of our main goals in Sri Lanka must be the train from Kandy to Ella through tea plantation country. There was some agreement among train spotters on the internet that this was one of the most wonderful train rides anywhere.  Precise information on anything in SriLanka is never easy to nail down. Probably because nothing runs to schedule or description. It was suggested we try and reserve tickets for this train over the internet, but due to prevarication and an inability to agree on our touring schedule, we waited until we arrived in Kandy before trying to buy a train ticket. Which proved to be a month too late. Our public display of disappointment attracted the attention of a particularly clever van owner. “Blackie” began with Isolde,

Blackie's windshield

explaining the map of SriLanka and where we were and where we wanted to go. Then he picked away at me, working his way to Alex who clearly held all the cards. It took a bit of time and a bit of cagey diplomacy but he succeeded in proposing a plan to board the train at a halfway point in the mountains where he predicted many locals would get off. To get to this halfway point, he, of course, offered his van along with all his tourguide knowledge for a mere fortune, virtually guaranteeing success and Alex’s happiness. Unable to resist for lack of a better plan, and being pretty much fed up with Kandy, we accepted his offer. But not without negotiating a free pick-up from our guest house on the mountain. Six in the morning, there he was with his van waiting for us to finish packing and off we went for a long drive into the mountains.

  Honestly, it was a fairly spectacular ride. Most of it was an endless, switch back climb through gorgeously groomed tea plantations dating back to the British Empire. All the plantations are located at high elevations and all continue to be maintained in exquisite condition despite being owned entirely by SriLankans funded by SriLankan banking. The British names have been retained so Lipton still shows up on the signs. Blackie had a nearly new van with excellent, mild air-conditioning; and he drove well, stopping now and then to let us see the sights. Tea in Ceylon is not native but a creation of English business. In 1824, the first tea plant was brought to Ceylon from India as a botanical experiment. By 1870, coffee cultivation was wiped out by fungus, but in 1867 James Taylor
already began the rescue by starting the first tea plantation in Kandy. By 1972, the government nationalized the plantations and began strict control of cultivation. Today it is a $1.5 billion business employing millions including over 200,000 on the estates. According to Blackie, the pickers are third generation descendants of Indian Tamils first imported as cheap labor by the English to work the coffee plantations. Women do all the picking, men work in the processing sheds, and the jobs are hereditary. They pick a quota daily which they can exceed for more pay. It was impressive seeing them high on the steep slopes shouldering heavy bags either barefoot or with thin sandals. From the comfort of our van, I appreciated, with some feelings of guilt, the gorgeously manicured mountainsides, a stark contrast to the endless shanty shacks of roadside businesses that spoil SriLanka. Along with tea, the mountains provide an abundance of fresh vegetables that thrive in the cooler, pure air. It's agricultura intensivo requiring intricate terracing and complex water management, but the crops go year ‘round eventually finding their way to the messy markets in Dambulla. A nice contrast.