Yala national park

What did I see in yala?
Leopard x 3. Lounging on a rock like something out of Kipling. Sprawled on a tree camouflaged almost beyond recognition. I wonder how aware they are of us? Sitting there in our jeeps, forbidden to step on the path, straining with our underpowered lenses to capture a woeful and disappointing faraway shot. Something to show friends. Look I did see a leopard. The jeeps converge en masses each time one is spotted, drivers liaising by phone then putting their foot down on bumpy rutted muddy paths ignoring the deer, peacocks and whatever else may be in the undergrowth to get us to the place in time to catch a glimpse of the big cat. The 20 or so jeeps vie for position reversing, squeezing together. It's a circus and exactly what I hoped we wouldn't be doing.
The park is extensive and very beautiful. Big rocks. One that looks like an elephant. One with hundreds of black faced monkeys scampering around. Lakes, wetland, filled with storks, hornbills, crocodiles blending into the rock, pink lilies. Herds of deer, males with metre high antlers, another spotted breed hanging out at the edge of the forest. Peacocks display their plumage to disinterested females. Eagles swoop, a serpent eagle squats on a mount looking for prey. Wild boar moosie along the path. A stray baby elephant stumbles through the bush then behind our jeep to find its mother on the other side.
Birds are in colossal abundance. Little yellow green and orange kingfishers, cormorants, cuckoos, ones I don't know the names of. I should try to research these.
By the beach is the base of an ex-bungalow. All that remains from a camp from before the tsunami. There is a memorial to the 40 or so tourists killed on that day.

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Some Sinhalese

Some singhalese

Thank you

sthuthie

Es too tee

Good night

suba rathriyak

Soo ba rah tree ak

Good morning

soba udesanak

Soo ba oo day se nak

Excuse me

mata samawenna

Ma ta sam a wen na

What's your name?

Oyage Nama mokadda

O ya ga nam a mo ka da

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Tissamaharama

Two guys get onto the bus as we enter tissa and try to sell me their hotel and a safari, but I stick with the one I booked, the travellers home. Walking there along the main road a guy in a jeep with 2 little boys standing up on the seat, like toys, gives me a ride down the road. I ask him about safaris, but his prices are high, and I get the later repeated story that it is not worth going to Bundula, And I should go to yala instead.
Travellers home is set among muddy paddies and near some rice mills. It is
A bit disorganized, and it's actually a home stay, which turns out to be great fun. Umami is the wife of the boss ebert. She speaks broken English with a smile and a cackle and jokes about her husband and how they met on a plane. He calls it "love is in the air" . They have a big chubby son, and a smaller version daughter. It is raining. It rains for 4 hours. I sit on the veranda and meet heid from Austria who has come from Ella and done some of the things I also plan to do. Umami is covering school books with pink paper. Her shy daughter is demanding a puny and shows her mum pictures of the kind she likes on the Internet.
Ebert also tells me the will be no trip to Bundula and quotes me a price to yala. I'm not sure how competitive and plan to check out some other operators when the rain stops. It does temporarily. I borrow a rickety bike and set off for town holding an umbrella which does little to keep me dry as the rain begins again with a dismal vengeance. I get as far as a roti shop and buy some snacks and fruit.
Back at the guesthouse I order Rice and curry: this is a big and delicious spread
Coconut potato
Crispy cabbage
Dahl
Green bean
Chewy red rice
Umani calls me mister, Heidi, madam. There is a Procession of visitors: friends, family, small kids. I meet a cousin who Works at the local airport. He has a photo on fb of him with the president. He is Amazed by my iPad and ex play with the translator app.
His friend is a singer and sings some beautiful songs. He Works in car leasing, and gets other work singing at weddings. He has a band and writes his own songs. He sings for me. He does the same the next day too. He has a beautiful voice. He asks me about Cameron? They are not impressed with him sticking his nose into Sri Lankan affairs. Not for the first time I hear that he should understand that peace is a good thing. We laugh about the commonwealth and how ridiculous and unwanted it is.
I pass through living room to get to my room. Umami is chatting to her friends, the kids are playing in the yard still. I need to sleep for my early 5am safari start. As I shower I can hear Jingle bells in singhalese outside.

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Bus from Matara to tissamaharama

The bus journey is a riot of sights and vignettes of life in Sri Lanka.

Storks flying over paddies and picking for grubs

Lazy dogs defying the traffic, lying in the road and licking their sores

The occasional cow wandering down the middle of the road

Betel chewing, red spitting old boys in sarongs, wrapping roasted peanuts in cones of recycled old school books, replete with the red ticks from the teacher.

Lime green clad cops shouldering machine guns. Statues of recent heroes with machine guns, crude, like the functional rather than decorative painted Buddhas in from of the temples.

Matara has a statue of what looks like a Gurkha soldier also with gun slung around neck, it's arms are dangling off, neglected and ignored.

Lotto sellers with big boards, tickets bulldog clipped on, come on and off, walking through the bus shouting out their wares.

Around. Harampola there is serious investment and development. I later learn this is the home province of the president. I see his poster everywhere, variations of the same theme. A benign distant smile, a sad am moustache, cloaked in a long white shirt, serene, finished off with a red scarf. The long shots show him striding forward with confidence, and focus. There is a big new highway. With little traffic. A pristine conference centre. An international airport and a new hospital in construction.

The bus itself. Well, fortunately being the first to get on, I have a seat all the way. I sit at the front with a great view of the driver and all of his decorations. Incense sticks are alight by my seat. The engine box is covered with a plastic quilted cover, fenced off by a chrome rail with ornate chrome flowers. A small gold dish on the dash, instruments covers by a thick plastic sheet, containing white lotus petals. His steering wheel is warped with a red and gold sarong. Above the windscreen is a boxed illuminated row of shiva, Ganesh statues. Garlands of red and pink flowers hanging loosely around them. I guess to ward off the very real threat of crashing on these crazy roads, where buses push tuk tuks to the verge and overtake everything in sight.there are rashness the slow down cautionary photos of crushed buses reveal. His other form of protection is the ubiquitous blare of his horn, sounded whenever he chooses to pass. This means get out of the way.

Orange coconut sellers using their rough blades to hack them apart at their roadside stalls. Dusty drink stalls. Grandmothers sitting vacantly behind crates of empty returned bottles. Skinny fey looking boys standing one leg bent, hand on hips, in brightly coloured striped shorts.

I'm the only white guy on the bus. Next to me sits a guy of I guess the same age in a blue and gold sarong. He pokes me in the arm. Aboard clamber women with kids, babes with arms wrapped round their necks. It's standing room only for much of the journey. Gap toothed men, betel stained stubled faces.

Institutions: functional Buddhist temples, uninspiring Buddhas, simple white chellis. A white mosque, an Assembly of God. Numerous posters offering maths, chemistry, English elocution classes. A Montessori school, st Thomas school. Open prison work camp. What is that?

Posters warning of heroin and the consequences of trafficking it.

Shell of an old bus abandoned and overgrown by roadside.

 

 

 

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Last day in Mirissa

Final day involves getting up late again. A habitual breakfast of roti and wood apple lassi. The woman at the food corner seems amazed at this request, telling me that wood apple doesn't taste nice. She is wrong. Mahesh has a new business idea, and I'm wracking my brains to help him come up with a name and to find a way for him to market himself. Right now he stands behind a coloured umbrella and some tatty boards, meekly saying hi to the scant passerby.

I have a coconut, from the keep the doctor away stall. They have orange ones here, and green. Taste is the same. A dip in these a. It's overcast, the water slightly cooler. A nice float. I walk to the other end of the bay. It's here that the surfers hang out. I watch a long haired Sri Lankan with a bob Marley board ride the waves then paddle in. A posse of Japanese with a collection of cameras with long lenses photograph from the grubby scrub of the shore.

I return to poppies for a shower and a doze in the hammock.

My last jaunt to the beach coincides with rain.i take shelter at a reggae themed bar and have a couple of piña coladas made from fresh pineapple and coconut, meanwhile reading Ondaatje's anil's ghost. A story of an expat Sri Lankan forensic scientist returning home on a humanitarian mission, which results in the discovery of a re-buried skeleton, evidently the victim of a political killing. The book begins to uncover some of this country's very murky past.

I spend my last night with mahesh talking through the next venture he has, ie whale watching on his friend's boat. I create a Facebook page for him show him how to build a network, create an email template. I always seem to be at work!

I manage to wake up at a reasonable hour, with the sunrise annoyingly on my face.

I buy roti from a place I went to last night. The same old guy is there, with his half a mouth of teeth and his purple sarong. His eyes are less bloodshot than last night. Today he doesn't ask me if I want any weed. Anyway we chat and ai take his photo. He wants me to send it to him and become my pen friend! His name is angas, 64 ( though I'm not sure about this as his English comprehension ain't so good), dead wife, and works with his friends at the best roti house in town,he says.

Another wood apple lassi, and it politely refuse a throng of tuk tuk drivers who want to take me to Matara. I stick to my guns and wait for a bus with a Dutch couple. Several sweep past, horns blazing, conductors hanging off the footplate, passengers hanging out of the rear door. Too full to stop. After 10 mins a weligama bus stops and takes us to Matara.

Matara bus station is not very easy to navigate, but at least not full of touts. I find the bus....

 

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Mosquito net

A grimy net hangs from a metal frame around my queen size bed swayed gently by the ceiling fan. its swishing through the air is a noise I have got used to. How have these bugs got inside? Meanwhile the bright green LED abdomens of fire flies pulse and crawl on the outer side of this veil.

 

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Mirissa

After a hour lull in my hammock..it felt like drifting on the sea...I wander the beach at night and grab a cocktail. The tide washing around my table legs. The beach is quite low key, several bars, this one playing goldfrapp, a distant fire swinger. Everything has closed up on the road by about 8 pm.
I don't feel sleepy and spend several hours changing my possible itinerary again. Sleep until 10.30 in the end. I get a whole fresh pineapple and some folded vegetable roti from a shop on the corner for breakfast. The young guy who runs the place joins me for a chat which goes on for hours.
His name is mahesh, born and bred in mirissa and his home is next door, with his mother, aged grandmother, she of one tooth, and 2 tuk tuk driving brothers. He is 24 and has learntenglish through doing this job. The guest house is newly built and looks ready for a second floor to be added. Mahesh' dream is to have a place like this as his own. But, he earns around £150 a month. I talk to him about being patient, building himself a reputation, working on his skills. Afterallhe he is the reason I took the room here. He made me feel welcome. We have a long talk about developing economies and that his dream may be short sighted. I can see mirissa being exploited by monied big shots who will buy up, build and homogenise this place, squeezing out the small guys. He and his family should hold onto their land and house. Maybe one day a hotel group will make them an offer too good to refuse. I feel I have deflated him a little. He needs a dream, a we all do.. I'm sure there will always be a place for budget traveller guesthouses anyway. I need them, that's for sure, and I'm not alone. I and so many others travel to be in places that are precisely different from what we experience at home. But, if money making is the over-riding factor, then he may well have to end up working for some faceless franchised operation that sucks up the local essence, repackages it and spits it out as something sanitised, familiar and profit making.
It becomes afternoon, and I take a walk. Up the steps to a little nondescript temple that shares it's hill with a radio mast. The view is special. I carry on along the beach westwards, negotiate the narrow beach a nd rocks and find myself on some less visited beaches, lined with beached fishing boats, coconut stalls: a coconut a day keeps the doctor away, says the sign, a guy peddling massage, and a mother cadging cigarettes. I'm looking for the so called lonely beach and don't know if I actually do find it. The guy in a store back on the road says there is no beach the way I'm heading, at least not a nice one. Opposite his store are the overgrown ruins of a colonial mansion. I cut down some dusty lanes and come out on a beach with a rocky shelf, full of pools and crazy geometric rock formations, lots of little fishes and eels skittering around. To return I climb a grassy hill studded with the ubiquitous palms bearing orange coconuts, back onto the sandy beach and wallow in the water, which surges a little too much to be relaxing. After a 30 minute read I walk back towards mirissa, breaking the walk up with a stop at the craggy outcrop I swam near the day before. This time I feel confident enough to wade out to it and climb up the top for a beautiful view of the bay. I clamber down the side where the crashing waves leave the black rock shimmering. There are scores of crabs scuttling across the rocks. I spend a while attempting to photograph them. Next, a float in the sea as sunset approaches, then I dry off watching another impromptu cricket match by the waters edge, played by local lads. Dinner is curry and rice, but the best thing is a wood apple lassi. New fruit, new flavour. Fab. As I leave for my room rain is in the air. 20 minutes later it comes pouring down. The air smells fresh, earthy, invigorating.

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