SRI LANKA: ARRIVAL AND DRIVE TO ANURADHAPURA

We aren't ones to sit around when we travel, and so even though we knew he would be tired after 30+ hours of traveling between Los Angeles and Colombo, Sri Lanka, we decided to hit the ground running. 

WHAT WERE WE THINKING? 

Our guide Sanjay met us at the airport at 5:30 AM with a big, welcoming smile. His energy was contagious. We stopped at the ATM in the airport for some cash, and then we were off to Anuradhapura, some ruins about five hours northeast of Colombo.  

One of the great things that Sanjay did for us was that towards the end of our trip, he gave us a map that showed all the places we had gone and how we had gotten there. This is actually something that Bob often does when we are driving ourselves and actually know our route. It is a very large fold-out map with lots of detail and a whole bunch of labeled pictures on the back that also help us identify some sites.

I am using that map to verify our routes and approximate distances and driving times on a Google map. Here is our route from Colombo (on the west coast) to Anuradhapura (northern central Sri Lanka):

We learned right away what great guide we had when he made a few stops along the way--maybe in an effort to keep us awake.

Our first stop was at a roadside stand where a woman took a big knife to a king coconut. Coconut IS king in Sri Lanka. Locals drink the milk, grate the flesh and use it in dozens of dishes, and use the shells for lots of different things. Along with tea and rubber, coconut is one of Sri Lanka's main exports. One website I looked at claims that coconuts provide 15% of Sri Lankan's calories, 70% of their fat, and 5% of their protein.  

This woman was pretty amazing with her cleaver-style knife. In seconds she had removed the outer husk and cut the the top off the coconut. She gave each of us a coconut and a straw, and we eagerly drank the coconut milk. 

Then she whacked each coconut in our half, and we scraped out the soft layer on top of the meat (with a spatula made from a coconut shell) and ate some of the coconut. It was delicious, and two cocunuts cost about 30 rupees each, or about 35ȼ total.

I guess our reaction to getting some food was pretty positive because before too long, Sanjay stopped at a fruit stand. Without even getting out of the car, Sanjay paid the owner for a large chunk of jackfruit, which he then separated into layers, kind of like an onion, and gave us each a piece. It was sweet and mellow, a new favorite for me.

Our third stop was at a rice field. Sanjay explain how these days most of the rice is harvested by machine, but in smaller fields like this one, it is still harvested the old-fashioned way. Six women were using scythes to cut the rice:

We finally made it to our first hotel to drop off our bags, wash up (by now it had been about 35 hours since we had left our house in California), and get some lunch.

The Sanctuary at Tissawewa Hotel, located in Anuradapura, was built in 1907 during the British colonial period. It is surrounded by a large park, and we were warned to watch out for thieving monkeys. (Sadly, we didn't see any.)

The open exterior corridors remind me a lot of the California missions. That's our Sri Lanka hotel on the left and Mission San Luis Rey in California on the right:

Our lovely room:

The grounds:

Our first meal, which we ate at the hotel, was a mixed bag. I had some of the best samosas ever and some pretty good prawns cooked with tomatoes, red onions, and peppers:

 Bob had a very average club sandwich and french fries:

I had ice cream with fudge sauce (definitely not a Sri Lankan dish, but it was so hot outside) topped with one of Sri Lanka's big crops: cashews.

With food in our bellies (but no additional sleep), we were ready to hit the road.

READING

Set in Sri Lanka during their civil war in the 1980s and 1990s, Anil's Ghost is a novel full of terrible cruelty and horrific imagery, but Michael Ondaatje's writing is so beautiful and his style is so intriguing that I couldn’t put it down. Part of that may also have been the fact that I had been to many of the places that figure in the book. I may not have enjoyed the book as much if I had come to it without my own Sri Lankan experiences. 

The title character Anil is a Sri Lankan who has left her homeland to be educated and to live in England and the US. As a forensic anthropologist, she is sent by an international human rights group to investigate the gruesome murders that are occurring all over Sri Lanka. Together with a Sri Lankan archaeologist named Sarath, she tracks down the details of the recent murder of one man whose skeleton they find where it does not belong--in an ancient burial ground. 

At times very disturbing, I think if I had read this before our trip to Sri Lanka I would have been very hesitant to go. Having been there, however, I see how far the country has come since this horrible civil war.