Sri Lanka

We took the ferry over to Sri Lanka. It was a nice calm short ferry ride and it was a breeze getting through customs and immigration. Colombo is the capital city and was a nice clean quiet city for a capital. Almost as soon as we got off the ferry we met a family that we started talking to and they soon invited us to stay at their house which we took them up on. They were a fairly well to do and well educated family. There was Grandma, Mom, Dad, a young boy and two young girls plus they had an 11 year old girl that was an indentured servant. They told me they purchased the servant from her parents two years earlier. The servant worked from sun up to sun down doing house cleaning, cooking and laundry or whatever they told her to do. I would have called her a slave but they insisted that she was not a slave.

The family introduced us to all the classical foods of Sri Lanka. Foods like string hoppers which were a deep fried noodle nest that was served with various curries, eggs or vegies. Their main staple is rice and curries. They always served multiple curries at a meal. The curry was made with coconut milk and there were white, green and red curries with variations galore. I loved the food. It was very spicy and flavorful with lots of chili. Sambol was another typical side dish that was always served next to the chutney and other condiments. There was some problems when I was there with certain foods not being available for purchase due to import restrictions. Things like soy sauce, pepper, cheese, ham, bacon and many other common foods were banned by the government to reduce the deficit. The people did not like having their foods limited especially their spices. There were constant complaints. To solve the cheese problem I told the dad how easy it was to make cheese and told him he could learn to make it and sell it as a good business. He took careful notes and promised me that he would follow through with the plan. I don't know if he ever did.

After about a week hanging out with the family and spending the days touring the city and area around Colombo we took off to hitch hike to all the places we had heard about in Sri Lanka. The first place we went was a big rock fortress called Sigiriya Rock Fortress. We enjoyed climbing up the winding stairs to the top and looking at the view of the steaming jungles from above. On the way up you pass some old frescoes that must be the earliest bikinis ever depicted. Very voluptuous women were in the frescoes. The local women looked nothing like these caricatures or cartoons in my opinion. The people were all very nice and friendly with us. I also enjoyed seeing the huge tea plantations. The women picking the tea leaves were very entertaining. It looked like they enjoyed the work even though I am sure they made almost no money for all their hard work and long hours. We frequently talked with them and always had fun doing it.

They used elephants for lots of things in Sri Lanka. Every night they brought them to a river to play and bathe in the cool water. I liked watching them play and swim in the water. The water buffaloes were also some of my favorites to watch. They were not much smaller than the elephants.

A lot of the countryside was cultivated if not with tea then with rice and other cash crops. The scenery was spectacular from the high spots overlooking the valleys. We went to the northwest coast and hung out on the beach for a short while. The beach was nothing like Goa which forever spoiled me. For such a small country I was surprised how much uninhabited land there was. The drivers told me it was because of the war going on. There was civil unrest and a lot of people were getting killed but I can't explain who was who and what it was all about. They told us we were not in danger because it was more of an ethnic clash and we would be left alone by all sides in the dispute. I never felt like I was in danger.

We went up to a mountain resort called Kandy. I loved the place. It was higher in elevation and so it was a bit cooler for a change and there was a very nice lake to swim in or boat around on. We stayed a few days there to rest up and enjoy each others company. We met some people in Kandy working for an international television company that was here to find and film a lost tribe of people that had recently been discovered. They invited us along to watch them film the lost tribe. So we went along with them. The tribe was in a remote area off the roads so we had to take Landrovers to get there and it took us most of the day to find the location even with our guides.

It was strange to see this lost tribe. They lived in a ramshackle house made out of bark and sticks. They danced around the fire for us and could only speak with our guides who were interpreting for us. The family consisted of some adults and some children. Something was just not right about this lost tribe. We finally came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a hoax. The lost tribe had tan lines on their feet from wearing flip flops but they were going barefoot for us. Their language didn't sound like a real language but more like gibberish that babies would say. Upon closer examination we confronted out guides and after much self defense they finally admitted that it was all a hoax. I got a good laugh out of how close the television company came to getting punked like that. I still like the pics from that day.

I think we traveled on every foot of roads in Sri Lanka before we had had enough. We went everyplace we could get to and did everything we could do so we headed back to Colombo and spent a couple more days with the family before we headed back to India.