Sri Lanka 6. Going as far north as you can in Sri Lanka

 

 

early morning reflection near Jaffna

no caption required

This trip was chosen as a six week one back in May when Ben (highly recommended) of Dial-a-Flight suggested that Covid restrictions would lift at some time and air ticket costs would rise.  As we got to our flight date and C wasn’t about to disappear we decided on an organised tour rather than our usual plan of just arriving in a country and not having a plan except to use public transport.  Just us two plus a driver/guide for two bespoke fortnight tours with some time at each end and a break in the middle.  Tikalanka Tours organisation, itinerary and guide have all been excellent and we found them through Rosy Responsible travel.  Our time in Galle was the middle break, Niroshan dropped us at our hotel and we were to meet up with him back in Colombo a few days later.  The last picture in the previous blog was us proving we could still organise something off our own back.  Our hotel in Colombo really went to town on the precautions though.  Our temperatures were taken before we went in, the luggage was sprayed, presumably with anti-Covid magic, then the luggage was scanned as we got inside and we then had to produce our Covid certificates before we could sign in.  You ought to know that we wouldn’t have even got into the country without the certs. So that was pointless as so much bureaucracy is when the process isn’t thought through.  Then at the excellent dinner buffet we and everyone else had to wear a plastic glove on our serving hand.  A new first for us was at the breakfast buffet where a fellow guest arrived and had his breakfast while still in his pyjamas.  We didn’t want to see much of Colombo and didn’t.

 

passing in roadworks - the no quarter given style of driving

Langur mother and baby

We had an eight-hour drive north to Mannar Island which sits adjacent to the west coast of this teardrop shaped island.  At about ten o’ clock if you imagine Sri Lanka as a clock face.  Once there, there were more lagoons and more water birds watched comfortably through our binoculars while we remained sitting in an air-conditioned car.  We sure know how to rough it.  Mannar is about 20 miles long, joined by a road causeway to the mainland.  At the far western end is a series of low sandbanks and islands collectively called Adam’s Bridge which run across to India a further 20 miles away.  It’s suggested that it is possible to walk across at low tide but I doubt it.

 

sunset over Adam's Bridge

rice drying

On the way north and cutting across country (but on a road) on a short cut we
saw a whole spread of grain on the tarmac and thought that someone had had a sack fall off their vehicle.  Then we saw another and another.  It turned out that this is an accepted way of drying rice or corn using the heat from sun warmed road.   All drivers avoid driving over the grains and sometimes over a hundred yards of road is reduced to a single file because of it.  Now when you see a packet of rice which advises you to wash before use, you might decide to do so. 

 

Black-necked Ibis

Hotel Palmyra on Mannar was really stunning.  A large open sided, high roofed dining area with water alongside looking across to a managed wild garden.  The beds in the garden were shrubs, grass and open areas with vegetation left at different heights.  Paths were curved.  Further away from the dining area was a raised boardwalk through a large wetland area full of birds, all part of the hotel grounds.  Rooms were in individual buildings dotted throughout the grounds and our upper floor room had a large balcony with views straight across some wild country with no other buildings in sight.  Easily the best set up hotel for wildlife I’ve ever seen and beautifully designed buildings too.  Prior to covid and the subsequent huge reduction in tourism they even had a resident wildlife guide here.

 

breakfast at Palmyra House

Palmyra House bird walk

Brahminy Kite

Our brief to John at Tikalanka was that we were interested in wildlife but wanted to go easy on the temples.   On other trips we’ve regularly ended up being ‘templed out’ and the itinerary arranged for us here has got it just about right
although we know there will be a sudden temple and ruins extravaganza in a few days time when we get to the Ancient Cities area of Sri Lanka.  This lies very roughly mid-way between the east and west coasts a little further north than the vague centre of the island.

 

Here at Mannar it was wildlife and an early morning start to see flamingoes, hundreds of flamingos looking very grey pre-dawn then flushing to a deep pink in places as the early rays of sun hit them.   Whatever goes on in a flamingo brain meant that lots of them were walking to join other groups of flamingoes, sometimes in single file.  We were clearly in a good feeding zone and most of them were breakfasting with gusto as we watched.  We’ve been lucky enough to see flamingos in a variety of different locations and they always seem to me to be the Barbra Streisand of the bird world.

 

dawn over the flamingo lagoon

Greater Flamingoes

One of the great delights for me of visiting the tropics and sub-tropics is the abundance and variety of bananas which have been properly ripened rather than shipped halfway around the world to arrive still green on a supermarket shelf.  I eat a lot of bananas and from what’s often on offer at home think there must be people who believe that bananas are supposed to be green.  The small thin skinned ones that we’ve only seen in the tropics are about four or five inches long and delicious. They sell for between 80 and 150 rupees (30p-50p or 40c-60c) a kilo depending on how green a tourist I look or whether Niroshan is hovering nearby.   As a counter to my beef about green supermarket bananas we stopped to buy some at roadside stall (of which there is a multitude) and when I said I wanted a kilo was asked if they were for today or tomorrow.

 

the beach at Talaimannar

We took a drive to the western end of Mannar to Talaimannar which today has a sort of end of the world feel about it.  Before the civil war a ferry ran from here to India but now there’s not much more than a sorry looking railway station and a very rusty jetty to see.   The sandy beach has a sizable collection of small fishing boats attracting the usual group of opportunistic sea birds looking for fish scraps of which there were plenty.  If you were very charitably minded you might think that fishermen find a rubbish dump and haul their boats onto it.  The beach was littered with plastic bits, old netting and other junk and this was a pattern we’d seen elsewhere in Sri Lanka.  I’ll write about litter generally before these blogs finish.

 

winner of the Jaffna fete's
'Decorate Your Cart Like a Politician' competition.
lost some points for being too tidy

the two car ferry, about 20 minutes to get across

Then off to the city of Jaffna, the heart of the Tamil part of Sri Lanka where we are to spend a couple of days.  Jaffna is approached on a road causeway between some more very large lagoons and to an educated eye I suppose it must look different to other towns but not I’m afraid to me. It is a much more Hindu area than the mainly Buddhist south.  Our hotel here has a lovely garden and two large underground bomb shelters from civil war times.  One is now a small museum and the other an art gallery.  It was another holiday weekend and the grounds are now a favourite for wedding and engagement photography sessions.  And I really mean favourite.  One morning we were woken at just after six by chatting and flashguns going off and while we had our breakfast a little later we reckon about ten different sets of photographs were being taken.  These are all highly posed with unnatural fixed expressions and abnormal hand positions but that seems to be the local fashion.  Some of the dresses were really lovely and makeup and hair is a big feature.  Beginning the photography at six must have meant a very early start for the hair and make-up, no wonder there were a lot of fixed expressions.  

 

the wedding photography at our breakfast time

us at the northernmost point of Sri Lanka

young Mangrove trees just getting going

One evening there was a wedding or engagement celebration dinner with a disco.  It was a very small affair with no more than forty people or fifty people although I do mean small by Sri Lankan standards.  One groom-to-be told us that he was getting engaged soon and having a small party of no more than 150 guests.  We’d asked the hotel staff when the evening event was due to finish and were told 10.00 which we took with a large pinch of salt.   At 9.45 it was still going strong, lots of what we assumed were Sri Lankan pop songs and incongruously at one point a rendition of Congratulations (no not by Cliff) and we were thinking probably midnight or thereabouts.  To our astonishment at 10.00 the hotel just cut the power to the disco mid song and that was it.

 

 

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