“Aryubown” – Sri Lankan greeting meaning ‘long life to you’.
I spent a slightly hectic but very interesting five days in Sri Lanka in May. It was my first visit, and I only got a quick feel for what the country is like, but it was enough to want to go back again for a longer visit some time.
After being in India for several months I immediately noticed some very positive things about Sri Lanka – it’s very clean, the traffic is not crazy, the countryside is beautifully green and lush, it has a relatively small population, the food is good, the water is clean, the people are friendly and helpful, and many of them speak pretty good English.
I spent two days in the capital, Colombo, staying at the Ceylon City Hotel, which was relatively central for sightseeing, did a good breakfast and had comfortable rooms. The staff were generally helpful, too.
On my first day I took a trishaw to the National Museum, which is a bit dusty and ill lit, but gives you a good idea of Sri Lanka’s rich history and some of its important historical sites. I recommend the canteen, where I had a very nice cup of sweet milky tea and a kind of coconut cake. Your ticket also gives you access to the Natural History Museum, which is even dustier and more old fashioned than the history museum. However there was a nice bonus - on the way out I met two staff members who had found a tiny baby squirrel that had fallen out of a tree, and were feeding it with drops of milk. Very cute. I hope it survived.
Colombo has a couple of important Buddhist temples. The first one I visited, the Gangaramaya temple, has a relic of a hair of the Buddha, as well as a cutting from the branch of the Bodhi tree which was brought to Sri Lanka by the daughter of the Indian Emperor Ashoka. It also has its own resident baby elephant, which was having a bath and obviously loving it. It’s a large complex with many rooms, a museum, and some fine Buddha statues. Well worth a visit.
The other temple, Seema Malakaya, which is an offshoot of the Gangaramaya temple (keep your ticket from Gangaramaya) is built out over Beera lake, and there were some very large pelicans swimming around it. Seema Malakaya is very minimal and elegant, and has daily meditation sessions morning and night.
I had dinner both nights in Colombo at Saraswathi veg restaurant just round the corner and up the road from my hotel. Cheap, busy and great food!
On my second day in Colombo I went to Mount Lavinia beach. You can swim at the beach, where there are lifeguards, or you can go to the large hotel on the point and swim in their pool for around 1000R. I swam in the sea, or rather, I bounced around and was felled by the waves, as the sea gets quite rough around monsoon time. If you want to visit Sri Lanka and dive or snorkel, January – March are apparently the best months.
About 200 m south of Mt Lavinia Hotel, on the beach, is a small turtle sanctuary which is worth visiting. I was shown around by a knowledgeable guide and was allowed to hold various flapping turtles. The entry fee was 500R, plus at the end of the tour I was asked for more money to support their activities. It’s hard to refuse (and also hard to avoid the feeling of being railroaded into a donation..)
I was guided to the turtle sanctuary and generally taken care of for the day by a lovely local fisherman, David Sanjeewa, who also took me to his home and introduced me to his family. If you go to Mount Lavinia and meet David, you’ll be in good hands. I had a really pleasant and most interesting day.
To get to Kandy, about 120 km away, I hired a car and driver. (www.colomboairporttransfers.com) It cost around US$95 but was well worth it, as I had a very comfortable drive with a knowledgeable driver/guide, Suresh. Thanks to him, I saw a number of things that I would have missed had I gone by train.
We stopped first at the elephant orphanage at Pinnawala, where we saw many elephants having fun in the river, and were entertained by the baby elephants playing ducking games – a beautiful sight!
We also saw three very interesting 14th century Buddhist temples: Gadaladenya, carved out of granite with some very old faded murals; Lankathilaka which was plaster inside and also had murals similar to those at Gadaladenya, but whose original colours were amazingly fresh; and Ammbekka, which was a wooden temple with 32 pillars carved from one tree, with square panels around the top of each column on which were different scenes and figures – over 150 different ones in all.
We drove through some very lush and beautiful scenery, and saw farmers ploughing paddy fields with hand ploughs and water buffaloes, fruit bats hanging in trees, and various villages specialising in pineapples, watermelons, cashew nuts, pottery, brass and wooden items. We also stopped at a fruit stall where I tasted some of Sri Lanka’s 50 varieties of banana, and toured a spice garden where they make Ayurvedic remedies. Our last visit of the day was to a gem factory in Kandy itself.
Kandy is in the hills, so it is cooler than Colombo, and is situated rather beautifully around a lake. It has a number of somewhat faded buildings from the British time, but is most famous for the temple beside the lake, Dalada Maligawa, which houses a revered relic of the Buddha – a tooth. The main temple and its various smaller shrines are spread over a large area. The very beautiful grounds were full of Sri Lankans dressed in white with flower offerings – I visited on a Sunday so it was particularly busy. I also visited the Museum of World Buddhism on the same site, which was extremely interesting. I’d recommend staying in Kandy a few days as there are some very fine looking cave temples not far away, which unfortunately I did not get a chance to visit.
I stayed at the Sovereign Hotel which was within easy walking distance from town, had very comfortable rooms, friendly helpful staff and provided a superb, reasonably priced dinner on my first night. (From the information for guests in my room: Please not keep the windows open, the monkeys might inter the room.) The second night I ate at the Garden Café beside the lake – local, busy, cheap and good. Try their kutta, a Sri Lankan dish of chopped meat, veg and egg, with a tasty sweet/sour sauce.
The Sovereign Hotel sold tickets to a cultural show which was in a rather shabby Red Cross hall near the temple. It was good – not top class, but an interesting introduction to Sri Lankan dance and drumming. The show ended with a fire walking display.
For a quiet break from temples and city busyness I took a walk in Udawattakele Park near the city centre. It’s a natural forest park and provides a lovely, cool circular route of about 4.5 kms. Monkeys, greenery, many birds (which I generally heard rather than saw). Very peaceful.
I took the train back toward Colombo – a very good ride at an extremely reasonable cost – I went 2nd class. My last hotel was the Airport City Hub near the airport, so I got off the train at Gampaha and took a local cross country bus to Katunayake, where the airport is, about 30km north of Colombo. The ancient bus was even more packed than the Indian ones I’ve been on, which is saying something!
The Airport City Hub is close to the airport and provides free one way transfers, even in the middle of the night, which is good. However, on the negative side, it was obviously designed by an architect and landscape designer who went for looks, not convenience. There are no covered ways or navigable paths to the rooms, so it would be useless for someone with a disability or anyone who didn’t want to get wet in the monsoon rain; the outside lighting is hopeless when you have to leave at 3am, and in my room the aircon unit was directly over the bed.
But those are minor details, and all in all, I had a very good, brief introduction to Sri Lanka, which has definitely made me want to go back there again.
