Rasa Cama Tours Trip 2009

 

 Rasa Cama 2009

 How long should you leave Ceylon Broken Orange Pekoe tea brewing for it to reach its peak flavour? [i] How do you measure the height to the shoulder of a Sri Lankan elephant without getting way too up close and personal?[ii] What ingredients combine to make a pathola snake gourd salad that’s soothing to the chili assaulted palate?[iii] How many games of Who/What Am I can you play on a bus between Dambulla and Matale?[iv]

A trip to Sri Lanka raises questions like these every day, and the 2009 Rasa Cama trip was no different. Ten of us set out off in our reassuringly air-conditioned bus (okay, I know, carbon footprints and all, but it’s welcome to travelers not used to near-equatorial humidity) to explore the food, temples, wildlife, and architecture of Geoffrey Bawa, centered around being in Kandy town on the last night of the Sri Dalada Perahera, one of the world’s great religious festivals, and big night out for many a lucky Sri Lankan elephant.

As usual, our partner on the ground was Jetwing Eco Holidays, Sri Lanka’s premier eco tourism company, this time in the very capable hands of Suparna Hettiarachchi as our local guide,  with his play list of  birdsong ring-tone, traitorously favouring the Indian cuckoo, Indika as our much taxed but skilful driver whose negotiation at midnight of the winding road up to Hunas Falls Hotel was gentle enough not to wake his sleeping passengers, and the silently efficient Arunjan, whose small frame seemed incapable of but proved very much up to the task of lifting increasingly weighty luggage in and out of small spaces.

We changed the trip around a bit, starting off this year from the Bawa designed, Jetwing managed Beach Hotel at Negombo, where there really are ‘red sails in the sunset’ from the catamaran fishing fleet, heading off directly to Sigiriya, with stops along the way to sample roadside rambutans (love being here during the season), pot set buffalo curd with kittul (treacly palm syrup), and the obligatory avocado shake from Juiceez, a fresh juice joint just out of Dambulla. (For those not familiar with Sri Lankan cuisine it’s one of the few in which avocadoes are prized for their sweetness and so are dessert).

The Cultural Triangle

As in the past our Sigiriya stay was at the Sigiriya Hotel with its outstanding daily breakfast and dinner buffets, and where we had a cooking demo from second chef Vijaya that ended up coaxing all the chefs out of the kitchen and putting at risk the lunches of the other hotel guests. Too bad for them, say I.

This was our base for visits to three sites in the Cultural Triangle. At the Dambulla cave temples the new lighting system works well to recreate the impact of seeing the murals by oil lamp as they would originally have been seen, Hetti pointing out the evidence of the changes and additions made over time by the various occupants. Then to Polonnaruwa, for an amble around the remaining stone and brick walls, columns, dagobas and statues of Parakrambahu’s magnificent planned city, hitting the site on the weekend before perehara and so finding it crowded as it would have been at its height on festival days. Finally climbing up Sigiriya itself in the early morning to avoid the heat of this dry country, marveling again at the hazardous labour of love that is the cliff side frescoes of women on whom the jury remains out, it seems, on whether they are meant to be apsaras (heavenly creatures), court ladies or the fabled numerous wives of Kasyapa. We made our visit to the latter just in time; a couple of days later a rowdy crowd had disturbed the wasps at the Lion’s Paws, leading to 70 plus of the crowd being taken to hospital with stings and bruising from their charge back down the rock, and closing off the climb at the Mirror Wall for some time after.

This was also our staging point for our visit to Minneriya National Park for the safari that never fails to deliver its hundreds of elephants in several herds as they emerge from their forest retreats for their late evening promenade, graze and taking of the waters from the Minneriya Tank. This is one of the truly awe-inspiring wildlife encounters to be had, being right there amidst these wondrous clans of mums, young bulls, and nervous newly borns, in the still and hush of sunset, with the shores of the tank crowded with painted storks, egrets, stilts, and fish eagles and kites riding the thermals effortlessly. It is in its way as spiritual an experience as standing before the Gal Vihara Buddhas at Polonnaruwa, with the purring of idling jeep engines like some kind of mantra to aid concentration.

We were treated to dinner at Jetwing’s new hotel here, Vil Uyana, the setting being the pavilion beside the pool, with its echoes of Polonnaruwa’s manadapas. I couldn’t resist having a look at the site during the day, as I had only seen it in the development stage before. What can I say? It is stunning with its beautifully restrained units set among the now profuse padi fields (source of the rice for the hotel), or beside the expansive lake (now complete with a couple of non-threatening but very much alive crocodiles), it’s dark wood and white cushioned reading room and an entrancing floor to ceiling mural in its upper level dining room. I am looking forward to staying here next time, abandoning my much loved Sigiriya Hotel for 5 star luxury.

Hunas Falls and The Perahera

More elephants of course at the night perahera, gorgeously caparisoned in their bright embroidered coats, made the more brighter by strings of electric lights, walking regally (more so than the locals dressed up as Kandyan kings and courtiers!), swaying in time to the drumming and horns when the parade inevitably stops, unconcerned by the flaming coir and kerosene torches carried beside them, nor the swirling rings of oil flames of the fire acrobats, nor the seemingly endless groups of dancers clacking sticks, rattling hoops, jingling metal costumes. We had excellent front row seats organized by Hetti in the upper floor of Paivas Hotel with plenty of room to stretch our legs over the long wait and equally long parade, which I still think could do with some judicious editing; ditch the flag wavers and give us more elephants and fire acrobatics.

It’s always a pleasure to plan the Kandy part of the trip around the Hunas Falls Hotels, set in the tea plantation beside the lake that feeds the falls, with its nine-hole golf course where you face not only the hazard of a severely uphill hole or two, but also have to beware of smacking down gorgeous dragonflies hovering over ponds dotting the green, or having your ball mistaken by a grass snake for one of its eggs. Waking up here in the cool of up-country Sri Lanka, with kingfishers darting over the lake, the scents drifting up from the English cottage garden style plantings always in vibrant flower, spying on the Colombo honeymoon couples, is so welcome a respite from the humidity of Colombo and the hugger mugger of Kandy at perahera. And of course, the Raja Bojun (King’s Banquet) they created for these Rasa Cama tours, is the most magical and theatrical of dinners, crafted with real enthusiasm and pleasure in being able to deepen the experience of their guests.

Still more elephants at the orphanage at Pinnawala, mired in controversy this year by donating two young male tuskers to the Temple of the Tooth while they were still dependent largely on their mother’s milk. Tuskers are rare in Sri Lanka, something like only 6% of the male elephant population and there are concerns that taking the two bubs away from their mums may harm their chances of survival. Still, it’s always a pleasure to sit over lunch on the terrace of a hotel overlooking the river here and watch the elephants as they amble along the rapids, and occasionally engaging in acts that would lead to viewer warnings even on the Discovery Channel.

 

Colombo & Galle

Down to Colombo for a short stay at the Galle Face Hotel, with a quick stop at the Jinadasa Thalaguli & Sweet Shop in Warakapola for some green tinged coconut ice, pink translucent muscat, and hard little balls of sesame crusted thalaguli. I was disappointed at not being able to promenade on the green under the heightened security arrangements; hopefully the newly arrived at peace will free up the space again, and also open up of the old Fort area which retains so much of the Dutch and British architecture that is being lost outside of Colombo. A shop among the deliriously colourful fabrics of Barefoot and a jaggery ice cream at Paradise Road almost compensate.

Down the road south, still reminders of the brute force of the tsunami; brick and plaster walls with gaping holes, boats beached 50 meters inland, and the two memorials by the roadside, one a plaster relief graphically detailing the moment it struck the villages and the train travelling the coastal rail, the other in contrast a serene Buddha in a lake, hand in a gesture almost of calming of the still potentially murderous sea.

At last to Galle and a stay at what I consider Bawa’s greatest hotel, The Lighthouse, with its incomparable terrace perched just above a rocky outcrop against which waves ceaselessly break, its extraordinary circular staircase with is banister sculpture by Laki Senanayake of the violence of the Portuguese landing in Galle, and its at first startling but then so appropriate expanses of orange plaster walls echoing the walls of the old Fort. Jetwing are lucky to have secured the management of this hotel, too. A stroll around the Fort ramparts in late evening, with the sea breeze, the boys jumping into the water of the walls, the easily brushed off lace and coin sellers, and the view up and down the coast line of golden sand fringed by coconut palms is almost too perfect an ending.

Coda

Oh, wildlife count for the trip, other than a couple of hundred elephants, included those relics from the age of dinosaurs, the lumbering land and water monitors, several slinking mongoose, a late evening postcard perfect sighting of a small group of spotted deer, an unfortunate baby giant squirrel in the clutches of a scurrilous boy wanting money for a viewing, the daily companionship of palm squirrels, troops of lithe grey langurs and devious toque macaques, coucals, kingfishers, orioles, storks, egrets, barbets, bulbuls, cormorants, Indian rollers, kites, eagles, drongoes (the bird, not the Aussie epithet), honey-eaters, bee-catchers, doves, jungle fowl, crows, mynahs, swallows, blue  moment and Indian crow butterflies, all of these without even trying!