PACK YOUR TRUNKS!
From crocodiles gliding past at breakfast, to elephants in the reception, there’s so much to absorb in Sri Lanka – including the monsoon rains
IS THAT what I think it is? With steam rising gently off the open-sided wooden breakfast pavilion as the morning sun sets about the remnants of a tropical downpour, something is gliding steadily across the adjacent little lake.
It looks like a theme-park alligator pulled along by a cable. But this isn’t Universal Studios, this is Vil Uyana, a super-stylish ecoretreat, hidden away in the rice paddies of North Central Sri Lanka. The amiable manager, Kingsley, arrives to confirm that it is indeed, a crocodile.
In a not particularly successful attempt at reassurance, he informs me that this is the smallest of the four. Four! Why did they stick four crocodiles in there? They didn’t, he explains, they just turned up one day and never left. Long-term guests; always a good sign in the hospitality industry I suppose, although with this one now in residence right next to me, finishing breakfast without becoming breakfast, is emerging as an unanticipated concern.
Against the faint hypnotic hum of Buddhist chanting drifting across the fields from a distant village and the cacophony created by hundreds of giant fruit bats hanging upside down in the trees, two peacocks sit stock-still like topiary atop a thatched roof. Watching them haul their ungainly frames right up there is a sight to see, although doesn’t come close to a male peacock suddenly spreading his turquoise tail and dancing his spectacular dance.
THE majority of visitors to Sri Lanka cluster around the south and west coasts, but balancing the famous palm-fringed beaches with an exploration of this extraordinary island by car and driver can, and invariably will, deliver once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Vil Uyana’s isolated tropical tranquility, in the heart of the socalled cultural triangle, is easily accessible to the spectacular Sigiriya Fortress, the Dambulla caves, with their captivating Buddhist imagery, and Minneriya and Kaudulla National Parks.
Smaller than Ireland, albeit with nearly five times the population, it’s remarkable just how much there is to absorb in Sri Lanka, not least the national parks covering 12% of the island. Yala, in the south, has the highest concentration of leopards in the world, whilst Minneriya is home to ‘the gathering’, the largest congregation of Asian elephants anywhere, and it’s not long before we’re gathered into the back of a safari jeep, and out looking for them.
Unlike busy Yala, with its preponderance of under-regulated and over-zealous jeep drivers, Kaudulla amid the wild peacocks and buffaloes contentedly wallowing in the mud, proved an altogether more sedate experience. Rounding a corner on to a huge expanse of verdant wetland, suddenly there they all were, nonchalantly and determinedly ripping up clumps of grass before bashing them on a raised foot and popping them into that enormous frame. It’s a serious business, requiring up to 140 kilos of food per day just to keep the dietary books balanced. We estimated to have found ourselves in the midst of 200 to 300 elephants, and for a while, totally alone with them.
For those hoping to spot a leopard amid the congested ‘jeep thrills’ of Yala National Park, Jetwing Yala — an expansive 80room hotel deep in the dunes of the buffer zone between the park and the outside world — represents excellent value. Like Kingsley’s crocodiles, it also has a VIP guest; Natta Kota (short tail), a male elephant with a tendency to just saunter into the hotel and start sticking his trunk wherever he feels like it.
Now a YouTube sensation, there haven’t been any ‘elephant in the room’ situations so far, as he hasn’t actually tried getting into one. But he definitely enjoys a bit of socialising in the reception area, where, as with the crocodiles, the relaxed attitude toward his antics by the staff is notable. Elephants have been inextricably intertwined with Sri Lankan culture for millennia. Until the British turned up and started shooting them, killing an elephant, by direct edict of the king, was punishable by death.
Sigiriya, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1982, looms out on the horizon like a South Asian Ayers Rock. A volcanic-plug, shaped like a giant batch loaf, its vertical walls rise up a sheer 200m from the surrounding jungle. Originally constructed as a refuge by King Kaspaya in the 5th Century, with a fortress on top and pleasure gardens around its base, it continued to function as a Buddhist monastery until it was eventually abandoned in the 14th Century.
Braving the lightning strikes from thieving monkeys to hike all the way up and marvel at the spectacle of human ingenuity cradled within the jaw-dropping views, is demanding but rewarding.
The landscape of Sri Lanka, at just 650km from the equator, is relentlessly lush and tropical. Vast stretches of stunning scenery drop
away at each turn, amid a neverending tussle between the sun and the rain. Up in high-tea country, with the monsoon refusing to recede, there’s no shortage of the latter.
As in India, British colonists went to almost ludicrous lengths recreating patches of mother-country at the very highest, and coolest, altitudes. The town of Nuwara Eliya, 2km up, with its racecourse, ornamental lake, theatres and other vestiges of Victorian life, welcomes us with a sheet of non-stop torrential rain.
At nearby Warwick Gardens, a former planter’s bungalow, the manager, Faris, bounces out of a rain-swept troglodyte twilight dressed like a Hebridean fisherman to shower us with a welcome as warm as the fire he’s got going inside.
The single-track approach isn’t for the faint-hearted, but any concerns about being swept down the mountain are swept away with Faris’s infectious laugh.nforming us that it’s been raining like this for the last six months, I suppose all you can do is laugh, and soon we’re all giggling along with him.
In the morning it’s not only sparklingly clear, there are drop-dead gorgeous views in all directions. They may have led isolated lives, these high-altitude agricultural ambassadors of empire, hidden away in their mini-fiefdoms of tea and rubber, but they’d also staked a claim to their own little pieces of paradise. We’re so high up now, breathing in air fresh enough to be bottled and sold, the clouds hang below us like strips of cotton wool.
A meticulous multi-year restoration has seen Warwick Gardens slotted gently back into its surrounding sea of tea, at the heart of a working estate, exactly as its original Scottish incumbent conceived it. Delicious Sri Lankan curries, complemented by a comprehensive wine list that I certainly wasn’t anticipating 2km up in such splendid isolation, make this a diversion worth taking; rain or shine.
With two separate monsoons impacting the country at different times of the year, the sun is shining somewhere, even if it’s tipping it down somewhere else. With that in mind, it was time to leave Faris with his monsoonal mood swings and seek out some sun.
The picturesque colonial town of Ella, currently re-colonised by backpackers clambering off the clanky old train that still meanders through the misty hillsides, leads out on to the Ella Gap. This plunging valley of brooding rockfaces, spectacular waterfalls and Lost World-type landscapes alone justifies journeying into the interior. The siren song of sunshine lures us down it, all the way to Kogalla beach and into the Fortress, a 53-room seafront hotel that really is constructed like a fortress.
Like many southern hotels and resorts, it’s close to the busy coast road, but that’s hidden behind the big fortress walls. All I can hear are waves crashing gently on to the reef, and all I can see is a never-ending slab of sun-spangled Indian Ocean disappearing away toward where the Maldives must be. I pull up the Fortress’s drawbridge.
Vitamin D replenished, we head to the nearby city of Galle and its UNESCO-listed walled fort. Originally Portuguese, the existing structure of the fort is mostly 17th Century Dutch. It’s evolved into a tapestry of intertwined streets and alleyways, where restaurants, craft shops, old Dutch churches and fashion outlets coalesce with crumbling bits of British empire into a tableau of irresistible charm. Many of these colonial buildings are recently reborn as boutique hotels, making it possible to stay right in the heart of this open-air museum, where everything is a short stroll from everywhere.
At the tastefully restored Fort Bazaar, a former merchant’s mansion, our arrival coincides with the granting of its long-awaited liquor licence. Underneath slowly swishing fans in its stylish minimalist restaurant, Church Street Social, already lauded as one of Galle’s best, we drink a toast to a future full of gins and tonic on a colonnaded terrace looking as though it was constructed precisely for that purpose. Permission is still pending on the swimming pool, but Galle Fort is for wallowing in one of the best-preserved colonial urban landscapes in Asia, not pool parties. The beaches are just a tuk-tuk ride away.
SKIRTING around Colombo, we arrive in Kandy, the cultural capital, back in the centre of the island, where the last Sinhalese kingdom fell to the British in 1815. It’s an atmospheric, gentler-paced place, surrounded by hills and tea estates, more like an overgrown town still struggling with the concept of time than Sri Lanka’s second city. It’s not difficult to see why Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was filmed here, although it’s the Temple of the Tooth, one of Sri Lanka’s most significant Buddhist sites, playing to packed houses every day.
Plucked, supposedly, from his funeral pyre, and so the only bit of Buddha left, the sacrosanct tooth is venerated daily, and joining the assorted scrum of humanity inside the spectacular temple compound to witness this elaborate spectacle will be worth every effort.
As delightful as Kandy undoubtedly is, with its lake and botanical gardens, we seek solace in another tea-estate turned hotel, lost in the undulating landscape, an hour or so away. The only sounds here are from exotic birds echoing around the valley below as it evaporates into a vista of far-reaching greenhued tropical perfection. Rosyth Estate House was in the family of Farzana Dobbs for decades before she and British-born husband Neil transformed it into one of the most endearing hands-on boutique operations on the island.
Feeling more like the country home of wealthy friends you never knew you had, a stream of staff busy themselves quietly and politely across the 62-acre estate. Eleven bedrooms of differing accommodation levels culminate in the spectacular Rock Villa, perched precariously on a huge boulder like a Mulholland Drive stilt house. Farzana is passionate about her native cuisine and there can be few prettier perches from which to enjoy it than Rosyth’s glass-sided dining room that seems suspended in thin air like a gastronomic viewing platform.
Neil takes me on an estate walk where we’re enveloped by a hidden valley of rice paddies sealed into an exquisite silent seclusion. Subramanium, wizened estate manager of indeterminate years, working for Farzana’s family for more decades than anyone remembers, emerges from a Lord of The Rings house, enmeshed within a maze of creepers and softly sploshing streams. He smiles a smile with whatever teeth he’s got left before escorting us on a tour through his empire of biodiversity, demonstrating along the way, where tyres come from, by expertly tapping a rubber tree.
LOOKING down on the estate, the little tea factory, almost unaltered since its inception in 1926, chugs nonchalantly through the solitude of the afternoon heat. There’s hardly anyone around apart from a few giggling girls sweeping leaves about in their saris. Amidst the ancient whirring machinery, a manager appears to courteously demonstrate how sacks of ordinary-looking bits of bush are magically metamorphosed into the drink that cranks my own machinery into life every morning.
In almost three weeks travelling around Sri Lanka, I heard not one voice raised in anger — not one — making the violence that’s bedevilled this gentle place in recent years, all the more perplexing.
A brutal 26-year-long civil war between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and the predominantly Tamil Hindu north, only ended in 2009. A semblance of stability and healing had been gaining traction until last year’s Islamist attacks plunged the island back into turmoil, stealing 277 innocent lives, and throwing the all-important tourist industry into chaos, as it was surely intended to do.
The teardrop island has shed no shortage of tears lately, although normality is edging closer every day. Marco Polo, in the 13th Century, described ‘Seilan’, as ‘the finest island of its size in all the world’, an assessment with which a great many have since concurred. For those yet to go and make their own assessment, the welcome, just like the weather, is always warm.