In January I took a flight from Madurai in Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka. I had never been there before and was not at all sure what to expect. My plane with Sri Lankan Airlines landed in Colombo in the afternoon and from there I took a taxi to Colombo Fort, the central business district of Colombo in the proximity of the harbour and the site of the first landings of the Portuguese in the early 16th century. I had booked a budget room in the Grand Oriental Hotel, a three-star heritage hotel located in a historical building of the 1800s. The splendid foyer with its antique furniture immediately gave a taste of the former grandeur of this hotel.
To my utmost surprise I had been upgraded to one of the two famous hotel suites which was a huge apartment consisting of a dining area, a lounge, the bedroom with a grand bedpost and a gigantic bathroom with a tub. My lodgings were in the Jose Rizal Suite. Dr. Jose Rizal was a Filipino nationalist and writer who had advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain. He had stayed here in 1882. Next door was the Anton Chekhov suite, who had stayed there for five days in 1890 when he was starting to work on his novel ‘Gusev’.
After checking in I went to the 4th floor restaurant to enjoy a meal and a beer and the panoramic view of the old harbour. The restaurant also served a great breakfast buffet, so I came back the next morning for some traditional Sri Lankan delicacies. I just loved the old-world charm of this hotel!
After breakfast I walked past some of the historical buildings which contrasted with the modern ones such as the World Trade Center of Colombo (reminiscent of the former two towers of New York) over to Pettah, an area with buzzing local markets and the railway station.
It was easy enough to purchase a 2nd class train ticket for my journey to Galle later that morning. I was surprised about the fact that there were no seat reservations and naively assumed that these were perhaps not necessary on Sri Lankan trains. Maybe there were plenty of seats… I was soon to be enlightened about the truth and regretted having made the wrong assumptions. When the train rolled into the station a couple of hours later, I only made it onto the train because a tall young Russian kindly first pushed my suitcase onto the train and then he pushed me on into the crowd. We travelled for three hours in the confined space of the corridor (with around 12 other people). I never made it to the compartment. After helping me on, the Russian couple had eventually pushed their own way inside.
At one point a woman in a wheelchair came up to the door of our coach and started beating us with a stick in order to force her way onto the train. There was no room to move our feet where we were standing and at one point, I thought I was going to lose my balance and crash into the crowd. The handicapped woman skilfully lifted herself out of the wheelchair and onto the steps of the train and then folded the wheelchair up and pushed it in at one side of the train. An hour later she started to use a lot of force trying to push her way towards the opposite exit as she was beating people’s feet with a stick. There really was no way for anyone to move (or so I thought). The woman panicked and burst into tears as the train was coming to a halt. It was her stop and she needed to get off the train. Once people understood this everybody helped her to move and passed her wheelchair and luggage out to her. I was glad she made it and thought how brave she had been: she was a warrior who had learned to survive the conditions of this overcrowded train (I was later told that it was like this most days) despite her handicap!
What a relief it was to finally get off in Galle. The helpful Russians shoved my suitcase to the exit and got off themselves together with a Belgian woman in order to continue their journey by taxi. This experience also cured me of ever trying for public transport in Sri Lanka again as I heard many horror stories about overcrowded buses, too.
Galle was a great place to recover from this train journey and to hang out and relax, though. Galle is a UNESCO heritage site on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka. An old trading port, it was first fortified by the Portuguese colonists in the 16th century. Later it was taken over by the Dutch and the British. I had booked a budget room tucked away in a narrow alley with a little balcony that was very pleasant to sit on over a beer in the evenings.
I spent the days exploring the beaches flanked by the old fort walls and the lighthouse, the narrow lanes with the fancy boutiques and stylish coffeeshops. However, my favourite hangout was a simple eatery close to the old gate where I found authentic Sri Lankan veggie foods such as String Hoppers (Idiyappam) which are fine rice noodles with curry and coconut Sambol (made of freshly shredded coconuts with chillies, lime, onions and sometimes tamarind) for breakfast or the Sri Lankan staple of ‘Rice with curry’ for lunch, not to mention the delicious coconut rotis and typical street food snacks such as veggie samosas.
A two-hour Thukthuk ride took me further east on the south coast to my next destination near the beaches and backwaters of Netolpitiya, which I had chosen for its relative isolation as the southwest and South coast of Sri Lanka are also the areas that have the most tourism in the whole country. Here I found some spectacular and almost deserted sandy beaches flanked by forests of coconut trees.
Equally as impressive were the ponds and backwaters with waterfowl and turtles. I spent days exploring the trails of this tranquil place and enjoyed watching the water buffalos, kingfishers and herons in the swamp in front of my guesthouse, or the monkeys coming up right into the gardens.
One afternoon I walked to the Buddhist temple in the neighbouring village. I was all alone there and it was very peaceful. I was struck by the exuberant greenery of this place and Sri Lanka in general.
I only spent 12 days in total in Sri Lanka, hardly enough to get a first impression of the country, culture and people. However, I was definitely enchanted by its beauty and tranquility.
In order to get back to Colombo I went on another adventurous Thukthuk ride back to Galle, from where I took a taxi to a homestay near Colombo airport to catch my early morning flight back to India. I hope to continue my explorations of Sri Lanka some time in the future.
