Of Sri Lanka - The Best And Worst Of Serendib

Sri Lanka! Land of Fibreglass Monks!

So this ends Sri Lanka week. I've enjoyed it, getting all this stuff out of my system and down on paper but it's been disastrous for traffic. Lucky I don't lie awake at night worrying about traffic, isn't it?

Given our disastrous week in Galle led to us fleeing the place and swearing never to go back to Sri Lanka, Deepika gets props for talking us down off the ledge and she and travelling companions Ishara and Duminda take full credit for the remarkable turnaround this hectic and madly varied week have shaped. We'd go back at the drop of a hat as a result of this latest visit. And no more Worst Meals Of My Life took place! By the way, should you ever find yourself in Galle don't do what we did - eschew the rumpled twit up the hill and go stay at the excellent Galle Fort Hotel.

So what's the takeaway?

Sri Lanka is a land of contrasts, of poverty and wealth, beauty and dirt, glory and failure. It's never less than fascinating, often entertaining and amusing - sometimes toe-curling, sometimes beam-inducing.

From flying in, getting 40 winks and then being pitched into the dubious pleasures of the Elephant Orphanage at Pinnawala - as well as the madcap dash up the mountain road to Kandy - and the Earl's Regency Hotel, we were plunged into a full-on experience that confounded our suspicions and fears. Sri Lanka's fun, people. Truly.

Sigiriya's Citadel and Lion Rock - that immense ruined palace is well worth half a day of your life. And dashing around the veldt-like drylands of Kandulla National Park is a great way to round off that day, too.

One of the charms of Sri Lanka was the constant presence of a government that never comes across as anything other than sublimely venial. Every street corner is bedecked with the Cheshire Cat grin and trademark red sash of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, a man who looks as if he'd eat you raw if you were salted and there were a few Rupees in it for him. Sri Lanka's politicians are to be celebrated as a breed: conflict of interest, corruption and a clear appetite for the trough sit hand in hand with ostentatious acts of seeming philanthropy which are as shrilly celebrated as they are phony. It's all quite fun in its way.

It was that sense of power corrupted that had me questioning the cosy version of history we found as we visited Mackwoods' Labookellie Tea Factory, which we enjoyed tremendously. It seems like a bitchy way to thank our hosts by penning an expose of Sri Lanka's morally indefensible tea industry but obfuscation does that to me. It makes me want to scratch the itch. Hence this post about the story of tea that nobody's telling because they're so busy trotting out the press release version.

Sure, there are tourist scams and scamsters. Just go along for the ride and keep your money nice and dry. Remember, you've got a lot more money than the average Sri Lankan and they can't be blamed for trying to part you from some of it. What kills me is at the top of the pile are fat cats who could buy and sell the likes of you and me and they're squeezing everyone below them in the system. Armchair socialist, me...

And then there are the cool, gorgeous highlands of Nuwara Eliya, mountain passes and misty peaks, rolling hills and gushing waterfalls cascading for hundreds of feet down wooded slopes. The delightfully potty, charming and excellent Warwick Gardens Hotel was our reward and we regret not having tarried there longer - despite the bonkers, broken track that leads up to it.

We should have been more disappointed and perhaps even angrier at how screwed up the Mount Lavinia Hotel was - how the lovely old building and its rich heritage have given way to a lazy, sloppy hotel that manages to get nothing quite right. But we weren't - we'd learned the most important lesson there is to learn if you're to enjoy your time in Sri Lanka: Just go along for the ride.

Anyway, that's the wrap. Thank you for coming along for the ride this past week. Business as usual from tomorrow - well, usualish - because I'm just finishing the final edit of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy and hope to have that up online next week. So you can look forward to the odd book promo here and there. Nothing de trop, you understand... Subtle and understated is the watchword...

Kaudulla National Park, Habarana

 Making tracks...

Having endured the awful sight of these majestic animals chained up and herded around for tourists at Pinnawala's Elephant Orphanage, seeing them in the wild really rams home how awful that place is.

We actually got taken to Kaudulla National Park by a guide who is a friend of Duminda's. It's a good couple of hours' drive and more away from Kandy, the other side of Dambulla on the Trincomalee road - the last section of the drive courtesy one of the best roads in Sri Lanka, recently built following the cessation of hostilities with the Tamil Tigers - this was Bandit Country and perfect it is, too, if you want to fight a guerilla war.

We met our safari car in Dambulla and hared through the country in an open-backed jeep. If you're staying in Kandy and up for a long day, set out early and visit Lion Rock at Sigiriya in the morning and Kaudulla in the afternoon.

Kaudulla is a typical Sri Lankan set-up in that the park is managed by the government, which sells concessions to 'licensed' tour guides and tickets to tourists. I can only say you're best off with an English speaking guide who has a proper four wheel drive vehicle rather than a pickup, which is liable to get stuck in the coastal mud or in wet weather.

The Kaudulla Park is based around the Kaudulla 'tank', one of sixteen man-made lakes created at the end of the C3rd AD by the then king, a visionary-seeming chap. It was restored in 1959 and preserves the waters from the rainy season to keep a year-round resource in what is, for Sri Lanka at least, an arid part of the country. The contrast between this area and the cool, wet highlands of Nuwara Eliya is quite stunning.

Elephants in the wild. The kids are kinda cute...

The ride through the park is great fun, the tracks are rutted and you'll ache the next day from standing up and getting jolted around, but that's okay. A good guide will stick to the tracks in the main - they know what the punters want and that's elephants - and lots of 'em. The park is home to a rich abundance of wildlife, including cats, buffalo, a rich variety of bird life and reptiles. But it's heffalumps wot draws the tourists and our sighting of painted pelicans (some rat has daubed all their bums with pink paint), ibis and buffalo was an incidental - elephants were the game d'jour.

 It's great seeing them in the wild; the dexterity of their trunks as they knot them around tufts of grass, knock off the sand then roll them up and pop them into those big mouths is something quite spectacular. We caught small herds, family units with ridiculously cute babies and protective mothers, old tuskers standing alone in the grasslands and all along we bounced and juddered along the side of the huge lake.

Fishermen buy licenses to net Tilapia and other freshwater fish from Kaudulla Tank.

For you, Tilapia, ze war is over...

Late afternoon in autumn is when the elephants amble down to the lakeside for a nice, cooling bath and the jeeps start gathering in anticipation but there's a been a shower of rain and the elephants are in no hurry and don't pitch for the occasion. Slowly the cars peel away en route home - others have seen but a lone elephant and we're gleeful at our own elephantine cornucopia.

Home, elated and weary, we've had tremendous fun and feel blessed to have seen something good to counter the feeling of mean dirtiness we took away from Pinnawala.

We're due to leave Kandy and make our way up to the highlands of Nuwara Eliya tomorrow. We've timed out and never did make it to the Temple of the Tooth. To be honest, that's no bad thing because it gives us an excuse to come back...

The Citadel Of Sigiriya - Lion Rock

 "Right lads, I'll have a palace up there and some pleasure gardens please. 

Quick as you like now. Chop chop!"

Sigiriya is an ancient palace built by a king who decided that if you're going to do 'palace', then it might as well be a gigantic, sprawling moated complex topped by a 200-metre high rock with a pleasure garden, pools and harem at its top.

The guy certainly had style, I'll give him that. 

Fighting off the insistent and rather seedy-seeming gentleman who wanted to be our guide to the sight, we bought our tickets (Rs3,900 for foreigners, Rs50 for Sri Lankans). These were expensive by UK standards, let alone Sri Lankan and our Sri Lankan friends felt shamed by the difference in prices. Oddly enough they seemed more annoyed by it than we were. 

But to be honest, we were a little taken aback. Understanding we earn more than Sri Lankans do, put in a system of concessions for schoolkids and the aged then find ways of presenting the experience that wealthier European or Asian travellers would pay premiums for rather than out-and-out gouging. There was no guidebook to the site and no audio guide on offer. There were no official guides and little evidence of any attempt to structure the experience as a value-added one beyond 'pay up and go up'. 

In some ways, this adds to its charm - it's not slick and over-developed. But then in others it detracts - the pestering freelance tour guide, the lack of any facilities or information. Even the availability of cold water until you get to the stalls in the drivers' car park at the exit. That apart, the site itself is splendorous.

I'm sure there was more information in the museum, but that was 500 metres the wrong way away from the site and we decided to skip it and get on with what looked to promise a hot, gruelling climb.

You travel through the ruins of glorious water gardens and what once must have been an amazing citadel towards the rock towering above you. You can see the steps stretching up to the foot of the rock, then the gantries and walkways stuck to the side of it and vertigo already cuts in. We chose a hot, sunny day and it was certainly warm going. There are delightful signs all over the place telling you to stay silent to prevent hornet attacks. Shame they weren't in Korean or Japanese. 

The hornets, presumably unable to speak Korean or Japanese themselves, let the babblers pass. 

The climb up, taken with care, is not onerous if you are relatively fit. Many choose to go as far as the 'lion's feet' and leave the final - and most vertiginous - part of the climb to more foolish folk. 

The Mirror Wall. No, it's no longer shiny. 

Not even Dubai could be shiny after 2,000 years...

On the way up you pass the Mirror Wall, a porcelain wall once apparently so burnished the king who built his palace atop this 200 meter-high boulder could see his face in it. You also get the chance to clamber up a spiral staircase to look at the remains of the frescoes some experts believe once adorned much of the rock. We passed, it was too hot, too busy and none of us much liked the look of the buttressing holding the viewing platform together. 

It's only when you're traversing rock a couple of hundred feet from the staging point below looking out over vistas of Sri Lanka's forest carpet that you realise you're standing on a flimsy structure nailed to a rock and maintained by the Sri Lankan Office of Public Works (or some such). The presence of a broken strut on the ground below doesn't add to any vestigial feelings of confidence.

It's not until you're on the way out you get to see what you've been walking on. 

Which is lucky, really...

Struggling to the top (not because of the climb, but negotiating the press of people coming down - even a section which had two walkways, clearly intended to be one for up and one for down, was crammed with people going both ways), you're rewarded by an amazing view of the lush countryside, as well as a scramble through the stepped ruins of the palace, complete with a huge cistern and water pools. 

Apparently yer one had 200 wives and liked to disport with them here. You can't blame him. If I were the King Of All I Surveyed, I'd be tempted meself...

Mind, it didn't do him much good - he was defeated and fell on his own sword in AD495. 

This is where Sri Lankans discover why their ticket only cost Rs50...

Delightfully, once you've struggled to the top and wandered around a bit, you come across a sign that says 'GOING DOWN IS DANGEROUS'. Thanks, you might have mentioned that before...

Sigiriya is a true marvel. Suck it up, cough and pay the inflated fee. Give this at least half a day. Do not, under any circumstance, pass it by.