Sri Lanka.

Noise

Grinding steel.

Cutting concrete.

Cawing crows.

Screeching parakeets.

The distant boom of a bittern.

Tiny frogs’ tropical croaks.

The tri-tone horn of the Lanka Ashok Leyland bus.

Crows. So many crows.

Dogs barking at monkeys, monkeys screeching at dogs.

Cicadas in the background. Always.

Hoopoes.

Traffic, more traffic, more traffic.

A scurry in the leaves, it’s a lizard as long as my leg.

Slapping oars as fishermen divert their prey towards the nets.

The crow cares not. He’ll have the last word.

Dive Bar

The first time we walked to Malli, the only bar nearby, it felt like stepping into the unknown. 

Once past the area security you’re on the A30, one of the arterial routes into Colombo. 

It’s dirty, busy, noisy. It’s a nasal assault.  It’s exciting. It’s frightening. The air is thick with diesel particulates, thick with the noise of a thousand horns, tuk tuks, and ancient buses. Yet everyone smiles at the crazy foreigners.

First right and the noise level drops. 

We negotiate the bridge. The bridge is just wide enough for two cars but needs to fit pedestrians too. There’s so much to take in, but the greatest danger is from looking away from the road at the same moment as the oncoming driver.

After a couple of beers, served from the can, we order arrack. The guy can’t believe we’d want to drink the local hooch and instead brings us gin. Neat gin. Hey ho, it was fine.

Today’s price was completely different to yesterday’s, but it’s too cheap to quibble.

Dog Bite.

Back at the hotel the gate is closed. Places are always closed. Security in the city is constant. 

It’s OK, someone is coming. 

The French couple staying at the hotel arrive on a tuk tuk.

Dogs came running. We’ve seen them before. 

Yesterday we’d admired one of them reclining for a Henry Moore composition. 

Today she’d brought her angry mate. Her angry mate called Angry. Angry was upset about many things, but he’s is particularly disappointed that his name in no way conveys his antipathy towards the world.

Angry wasn’t the reclining type.

Angry was a snarling ball of teeth snapping energy, and the teeth found purchase – on my leg. I swiped down at him (bad move) and immediately he was off my leg and onto my arm. It was lightning fast, there was a gaping wound in my forearm. It wasn’t bleeding.

I didn’t panic, but thoughts of the dirt that the creatures live in were racing, and the picture emerging in my mind wasn’t the best.

Action.

It’s Dushy, the hotel owner. She has my arm under tap.

There’s a hose to my leg. 

A medicine chest appears that a French mother would be proud of.

Saline wash was rubbed in. Ooooh! That smarts.

Taxi. (Tata Nano, there can’t possibly be a smaller four door car in production).

Hospital.

Delightful, but stern nurse.

Alcohol wash – “This will hurt, not a little bit, hold something. Hold tight.”

Tetanus.

Antibiotics. Two lots.

They’re not sure of the dog’s vaccinations. I wouldn’t have expected him to have had any, but the street dogs are jabbed by the hotel as a precaution. 

Doctor calls for anti-rabies serum (ARS). Shit. That stuff’s nasty.

Thankfully they didn’t have enough and sent me to another hospital where I met the consultant virologist, Mr Cool Hair. Mr Cool Hair counselled against the rabies jab. Phew. 

Everyone took the injured foreigner very seriously. 

The injured foreigner had a glass of wine and went to bed. And slept like a log. Thinking he’d got away with it rather lightly.

Today the vet has to prove the vaccination history, and if that’s OK I don’t need the ARS.

Sick. Sicker.

That was all a week ago.

A fine fellow drove us the four hours inland to Kandy. 

Three and a half hours of built-up sub-urban traffic hell, and half an hour of mountain joy – but I was already slipping out of it by then.

We checked into Dr and Mrs Niwal’s beautiful homestay overlooking the city. Far enough up the hill to have breathable air and a stunning view, but still very much part of the racket that characterises the hill town. 

I would like to spend time with the doctor in the future. At 84 he’s slim, spritely, and curious. I asked if he’d been to Europe and was told “No, not yet. That’s next”.

And that was that. I pretty much passed out for four days.

I do remember on one lucid moment hobbling to the loo and considering the ridiculousness of being gifted height but mere size nine feet. I was finding balance a real problem. 

What I wasn’t having difficulty with was my mind. For the first time ever it was blank, completely blank – all energy directed to defeating whatever was knocking me down.

I don’t want to return to this blog in years to come and read about Santa KC laid low, so let’s consider what we missed.

What we missed.

Tea gardens. Eventually the concrete sprawl lining the road falls away and is replaced by the calming sight of tea plantations covering the mountainside. Just like the pictures on our packs at home, they’re dotted with colourful figures picking the young buds. It’s a surprisingly beautiful sight.

Temple of the Tooth – One of two major Buddhist sites on the island and centre of many festivals. Nosiy drumming goes on much of the day and night.

Kandy Lake. Great for people watching on an evening promenade, like a Spanish ramblas but far more polluted.

Botanical Gardens. I wanted to get there – no chance.

Bahiravokanda Vihara Buddah Statue. Massive white Buddah with stairs so you can share his view.

Ambuluwana Tower. Beautiful sinuous tower with winding staircase and serene far reaching views.

Commonwealth War Cemetery.

Thankfully Minty was able to get out and see the Cultural Dance show.

Nuwara Eliya.

Transfers and accommodation had long been booked so they rose the dead (me), bundled me into the back of a car and bumped us along the fifty miles of probably incredible mountain roads to Nuwara Elia. 50 miles? It’s not like at home. 50 miles took three hours.

Little England they call it – with a fine golf course, post office and 15 degrees Celsius, you can see why. The population’s answer to the temperature is to wear the same clothes as their countrymen down the hill, but with a massive bobble hat stuck on top. At about 1890m above sea level you’re truly in the mountains, and the air is cleaner here. 

I missed it all.

A new respect for rain.

As I drifted in and out of awareness there was one constant. Rain. Even in our craziest storms we don’t experience rain like this in Britain. It frequently sounded like gravel on the roof, drowning out every other sound. Despite the excess of concrete in every town, the massive roadside gullies take all the water away and there’s no flooding.

Ella.

“Excuse me folks. Can anyone help move this corpse?” Santa was bundled into the back of another car for another short hop that took hours.

It’s now five days since the incident and for the first time I feel slightly warmer than death. The fever has subsided, and I can stand unaided. Suddenly my size nines are perfectly adequate. 

My private nurse (Minty) has been completely brilliant. Patient, tolerant, and she has applied some extremely neat dressings.

We’re staying in the land of the masters of superlative, and so when your digs are called Divine View you take it with a pinch of salt.

Our taxi dropped us at the foot of a steep flight of steps to where Ruan, our host, descended to meet us. We followed him back up, and up, until he announced that this was our room, and this was our balcony. Afterwards we both confessed to stifling a sob of pure joy when we turned and looked out over this.

So many elements of the perfect view stretched before us. High jungle forested mountains with sheer cliffs, a waterfall, a gap offering a line of sight stretching many miles into the plains and lakes below.

Ibis Lake, Wirawila Lake.

I dreaded another transfer. I’ve been a patient for three long rough drives through winding roads clogged with traffic and pollution. It’s with heavy heart that I leave our room for the car.

But there’s a pleasant surprise in store. The road south is better, better than most at home. Once out of the mountains it’s wide, smooth, and quick. Descending from Ella was incredibly beautiful – lush forest, thundering waterfalls, the flash of many iridescent birds.

At the end of the two hours there’s Lali, the most wonderful host. He’s wiry, philosophical, and wants to look after his guests as best as he can. Within no time we’re booked to get up at an ungodly hour tomorrow to go on another drive.

Safari Days.

The closest I’ve come to a safari has been a family trip to Longleat in the 1970s (utterly magical, I still remember the thrill), and us together at West Midlands Safari (similar emotions 30 years later, especially when a giraffe put his massive head through the sunroof).

Today we were up at 03.50 to do the real thing. It’s pitch dark and raining. We’re bundled into the back of a Jeep like the world’s most compliant hostages. Two others are shoved into the truck further down the road, then we’re off for an hour or so’s drive to the northern most section of Yala National Park.

The unseasonal rains are playing havoc with the harvest and have led to much of the park being closed, but our man knows his way.

By 0615 we join as many as 100 Jeeps, Land Rovers, Mahindras and pick-ups filing through the national park gates. If we don’t see a thing it has already been an adventure.

“Deer. Look there are deer.” OK, but we have them in the garden at home and they’re a pain in the arse. Likewise peacocks strut about as if they’re in an English country garden – except of course that they belong here.

At a weir our man stops and lets us get excited by the herons, painted storks, egrets and others. But he’s watching the crocodiles – two lie with the weir’s flow going through their open mouths, ready for any poor fish that happens by.

There are eagles, white chested sea eagles, serpent eagles, Brahimey’s Kites. There are many many long legged poky things. There are Kingfishers, flycatchers (incredible tails) and corvids. There are even horned billed toucans, a stranger looking bird you’re unlikely to see. But the bird that captures our hearts is the little bee eater. Think Kingfisher, but iridescent green, a similar size, and more neck movement than an owl.

A monitor lizard hopes for the sun to warm her rock.

A family of mongoose scurry across the road to the lake for a ratty breakfast.

In the tress there are often monkeys, crazy macaques who nick anything from you, run away with it, then, realising they can’t eat another iPhone, they lose interest and discard it.

Wild boar. Bison. More crocodiles.

Despite all these, the thing we’re most likely to remember from our journey through the animal kingdom is the tiny rabbit. Our driver had stopped and was pointing into the road and repeating “Tiny rabbit”. We were all searching for tiny rabbit and missing the shrew ambling around minding his own business. From here on in a mouse will always be a tiny rabbit to us, and no one else.

The sheer joy of this gentle drive through a corner of the 378 sq miles lush green park was what we were there for. The Jeeps soon separated and there was little feeling of procession. Each sighting was a bonus. The bonuses came frequently. Hours later when it was time to leave we hadn’t seen any of the big game, but it didn’t matter. It had been an amazing experience, especially in the unseasonal rainy cool – tomorrow’s 35 degrees would have made it a lot harder (except heavy rain overnight meant that next day the park was closed completely).

We’re tired from the 4am start. Tired from the many hours of driving, and probably most tired from the time spent in far more intense observation than we’re used to. We’re happy/sad to leave.

Rolling down the open road back towards Thissamaharama, we’re probably all dozing off. Then the brakes go on, hard. There’s a bull elephant emerging from the undergrowth, and he just stops there, in front of us. He’s only a youngster, but he’s beautiful, fresh from his morning bath.

He poses for photos. Minty got a beauty. One the photographers will be envious of. I was rather obsessed with elephants as a teenager. I still feel the love.

I’m surprised at how fleshly a live elephant is. I guess that while we see pictures of the real thing, our actual encounters tend to be with something carved – the wood bookends at home, a stone elephant on a grandmother’s mantlepiece.

Breakfast.

Most days breakfast has been a plate of fruit and egg hoppers (vaguely pancake like). Today I’d have been happy with that, but when Lali laid down a plate of eggs, sausages and tomatoes I felt like a king. I think my mouth is OK again now after a week of a horrible taste for a companion, so what a meal to enjoy – perhaps a first beer tonight?

Lali is delighted with Min’s elephant photo and tells the story of a driver who got things badly wrong with the same bull. (I love that they can recognise an elephant at a glance as I might a dog). 

An inexperienced driver of a brand-new bus, with 28 Chinese tourists on board, accidently blocked the bull and upset him. He rammed the bus, smashing the windows (no mean feat, you couldn’t do it with a hammer) and started to search inside with his trunk as pandemonium broke out among the tourists. Lali was on hand to guide the driver away and a complete disaster was avoided. Our bull was intent on rolling the bus.

Bring out the Bats.

17.45. A tuk tuk makes its way along the flooded road to our pad on Wirawila Lake. Ten minutes up the road we’re dropped at Tissa Lake to stare into the trees for a while.

In the trees thousands of black bags hang. 

Bags that slowly come to life.

These bags are fruit bats, and apparently there are around 100,000 that roost here.

By 6.15 many are going through their cumbersome waking up routine and the first are taking to the wing.

Their bodies are cat sized, and furry, a surprising side that you see as the vampire cloaks are opened. They clamber around in the trees like upside down monkeys. They pay little attention to each other. Slowly they take to the wing.

As the light falls the darkness is deepened by clouds of bats, and with a wing span of up to 1.7 metres each can black out a fair patch of sky.

As children we can hear bats, but their frequency is too high for adult ears. Not these guys though. Their sonar screeches are loud, similar to that number of birds. They’ll fly through the dusk, finding their diet of fruits and nuts before returning to their spot, hooking on, and zipping their batflesh sleeping bag around them for another night.

South to the beach.

We’re disappointed to leave Lali, our most genial host. He’d trained as a merchant seaman on forged papers and sent all his earnings home. He owned a house by 23! Now he does his very best and looks forward to a simpler life. 

Our next taxi is an immaculate, but tiny, Suzuki. The driver was upset to get his shiny black alloys dirty on the road around the flooded lake but was welcoming and led a steady cautious drive for the 90 minutes down to Tangalle.

A drive here can’t possibly be boring. 

You watch and watch, absorbing so much, then, without meaning to, you sleep for a bit, jolt awake and watch some more. 

Monitor lizards make their lugubrious way down the roadside. Our man stopped for a big sighting and took us back to see an enormous crocodile basking on a river island. 

It’s life that interests me the most.

Nothing is broken here until it can’t be repaired again. Scrap yards still exist in the underbelly of Britain, but here every high street has several vehicle breakers, in every village there’s someone welding, stripping, tyre jacking, adjusting, spraying – and sending the machine out to work again.

There are supermarkets but other than the weird veg on sale they’re a bit boring, and expensive too, more interesting are the individual item stores. 

A fish stall may have a huge range on fast melting ice. Next, the light bulb store that has a few hundred identical bright white LEDs. Banana man next to him piles hands of yellow bananas (they eat them small), and if you’re lucky some of the super sweet red bananas. King coconut? There’ll be a stall for that. First they’ll hack the top off for you to drink the milk, then split it and fashion a scoop for you to eat the flesh, all deftly managed with a fearsome machete.

Clothes in spite of surroundings.

Litter aside, Sri Lanka isn’t as a whole dirty, but it’s hot, damn hot, and therefore there’s a lot of dust, or mud when it rains. 

Oblivious to this the school uniform is generally white. Bright white. Brighter than the adverts would dare pretend was possible.

Women wear beautiful bright colourful clothes, most often pretty dresses, but you see saris as well. 

And the old men – they wear my favourite uniform, usually barefoot, or with flipflops, a brightly coloured sarong to the floor, topped with a smart shirt, or just a carpet hairy chest. It might not go down well in St Just, if I’m to adopt it I’ll have to move here.

The Beach.

Most people I’ve spoken to who have been to Sri Lanka have been to the beach. And nowhere else. I was a bit sniffy about that, but walking out onto Silent Point, just west of Tangalle, yesterday I began to understand. Suddenly the dirt and squalor are left behind and palm trees rise from golden, sometimes apricot sand. The tropical Indian Ocean is a gorgeous blue. Little palm leaf huts dot the shore. Ask most people to picture their paradise and it’s likely to look like this.

Everyone who isn’t working is western (some clipped English accents you’re not likely to hear down west), there’s a ridiculous (and no doubt wonderfully comfortable) resort poking through the tops of the palms, with carpets down to an immaculately raked section of beach, a cool dark kitchen, starched white tablecloths. But we’re not here for these, so let’s ignore all that.

I’ll leave you here for this installment. I have a slowly healing hole in my arm but no other after effects from my meeting with Angry. Next week there’s more beach, and the Dutch colonial city of Galle.

On leaving Penzance Station.

On leaving PZ station I started writing long hand in my notebook but I haven’t transcribed those few hundred words. There’s not much missing, just a general moan about the state of urban Britain as seen from the train. That and my deep dislike of enclosure, whether that be the long train tunnel into Terminal 4, or the hermetically sealed hotel world once you get there. As for the plane, I best not think about that.

Pulling out of Reading station I noticed the garden trampolines in their abandoned gardens.

Abandoned Gardens.

Abandoned fag ends piled into a soggy abandoned ashtray that a starling is trying to drink from.

Abandoned bike of an abandoned child, rusting. Those wheels won’t turn again.

Abandoned trampoline, now slick with algae, lying on its side after the gale last year, or the year before that.

Dog dirt.

Abandoned spaces that those in flats crave, yet some who have them see as just somewhere to abandon the abandoned.

End note.

Sorry that’s a bit grim, let’s leave you with this beauty of Bus Buster, taken my Minty hanging out of the back of our Mahindra.