and it was achieved!
i arrived in sri lanka in the middle of the night, and made my way to to the beachside town of negombo. a unique thing about being a tourist in sri lanka is that you can stay in “guesthouses,” ie. rooms in people’s glorified houses. the hosts happily make you meals on demand and help with whatever you may need. my need was to find a scooter for the next week, and my nice grandmotherly host quickly found the man for the job, a guy named anton who runs negombo’s premier scooter rental enterprise – “cockney rebels east riders.” if anyone reading this ever needs a scooter in sri lanka this is your man! i promised i’d promote him. it was an excellent scooter. i devised a way to squeeze my backpack into the scooter where one’s legs should probably be, and set off on a week of cathartic scooting! i headed south into the chaotic traffic of sri lanka’s capital colombo where i quickly became profoundly lost and had countless brushes with road accident death in the first few hours alone.
i was putting off deciding which direction to go in, but eventually decided on south. south of colombo i spent two nights in the beach town of hikkaduwa. after requisite ocean-swimming wake ups, massive and cheap full english breakfasts were leisurely enjoyed on the beach each morning, with copious sri lanka coffee and tea (tea is the country’s claim to fame). during the intervening day i scooted down the coast to galle, the centerpiece of which is a picturesque moss-covered walled fort from the british colonial era. in it there are many old churches, a famous lighthouse, and some of the best rice and curry at a place called “mamas” where i made friends with some french people. sri lankan rice and curry is a plate of rice with about three to eight different bowls of different curried things – all mixed together and eaten with one’s right hand. near galle is one of the most idyllic beach towns imaginable called unawatuna. better than hikkaduwa. i scooted up an obscure mountain path for a few hours and found a bunch of buddhist temples.
sri lanka is mostly buddhist. there are also some christians, which is great, and some hindus and muslims as well. most of the country speaks singhalese, while those in the far north speak tamil. the country is impressively on the mend after the end of a terrible three decade-long civil war that just ended in 2009. the war was between the government and the secessionist tamil tigers in the north of the island, who desired to create an independent state called tamil eelam. for decades they maintained complete control of the north of the country, which was was separated from the south by a militarized front. a friend of mine from college and probable future president of sri lanka, prashan, started an excellent ngo called “sri lanka unites” to bring youth from disparate ethnic and religious backgrounds together in unity after the war. he also had been the host of a nationally-syndicated talk show in sri lanka and chills with foreign dignitaries when they visit, making him probably the most important person i know. unfortunately we weren’t able to meet up when i was there as he had just moved back to the united states to attend grad school. next time.
i then continued scooting around the south coast to an even more impossibly idyllic town called tangalle, where i stayed at a guesthouse called frangipane. it was around this time that it finally hit me that the sweet water of freshly opened (via machete) king coconuts was readily available from vendors along the side of the road for next to no cost, and i started stopping very frequently to indulge. i also began preferring to ride the scooter helmetless, as the traffic was finally less frenetic. in the tranquil town i went on some shirtless long runs (and i thought people stared elsewhere), and chatted with a local english-speaking dentist over a dinner of hoppers, the local ten cent foodstuff that consist of a egg inside something like a crepe! the south coast of sri lanka was one of the hardest hit areas of the 2004 tsunami; over 35,000 people lost their lives here 🙁
near tangalle i found a unique cave-temple complex called mulkigara on the side of a mountain with lots of monkeys. the scooter made all the difference as i never would have found or been able to get to all this cool stuff without it. the next big town was hambatota, which is seeing massive infrastructure development of late, not so subtly because it is the hometown of current sri lankan president mahina rajapaksa. the largest port in the country is being constructed there, and a brand new international airport, the country’s second, has just opened. it currently handles only two flights a day which is a little underwhelming, but maybe there will be more in the future. there are also hundreds of kilometers of brand new six lane expressways replete with state-of-the-art interchanges and flyovers around hambatota and the new airport, all of which are essentially unused as it is a relatively sparsely populated corner of the country. it was fascinating to scoot around on these roads and be the only traffic for miles. safe to say that all that money probably could have been put to better use elsewhere in the country.
the journey continues in the next post.
