Over the summer I decided to get another stamp on my passport. That's right, I admit it, I only travel to add notches to my bedpost, so to speak.
So why not Sri Lanka, and I went there. I have several caustic observations to make, so be prepared.
First my summary points:
- Colombo: beach smells of fish, also the hotel. I am talking about the old wing of Galle Face.
- Habarana: Cinnamon Lodge - nice resort, but you can either enjoy all the resort facilities or see something outside
- Ancient cities: a whole lot of Buddhas, interspersed with Lingas. As our guide said, "Our kings always married South Indian (Hindu) women".
- The president: I think they should get a better looking stand-in who can smile.
- The language: an incredibly strange mix, sounds closest to Malayalam but is apparently Sanskrit-based
- The history: shrouded in mystery and unclear who the Sinhalese are.
- The women: buxom.
- The tea: generally quite excellent.
As it happens the most enjoyable part of my trip was in the high country near Nuwara Eliya, at a place called Hatton, specifically in the Dickoya estate. A pleasant bungalow, two Tamil-speaking staff (one an amazing cook), set amidst tea plantatsions complete with friendly stray dog at the entrance. I managed to enjoy this trip primarily by not taking my Blackberry along.
Tea plantation tips:
- Helps to be Tamil. The area is nearly half-Tamil. This made certain members of my party very happy, and every meal was an Indian-like curry.
- Do not be alarmed by the dog. Even if they get excited that you made eye contact and jump on you with their fore legs.
- Take deet. There is a dengue situation in Sri Lanka and I have no idea how I did not manage to get it as I tried to maximize my verandah time requesting copious amounts of tea served in very nice looking china.
- Take a book. The quiet, the weather, the verandah, the lack of a Blackberry all conspire to make for an ideal time to actually read more than two pages, which in this Twitter-age is my concentration threshold.
- Do not be afraid of death, however strange. This is because there is a tin shed with an official board stating that it is the "Office to investigate strange deaths" or something to that effect. It's like CSI before CSI.
I rather think I'd like to go back for along weekend every year. I feel sorry for the country, coming out of its long and tortured past. That is for another post, but for now, I can say that Sri Lanka has lots more to offer than tea, and I will be sure to write more in the coming days.
3 comments:
For the record- Malayalam is also sanskrit based- which is why Sinhala sounds similar.
:P
Just out of curiousity- do the Sinhalese theris (insults) sound like Malayalam?
~deviousDiv
For the record- Malayalam is also sanskrit based- which is why Sinhala sounds similar.
:P
Just out of curiousity- do the Sinhalese theris (insults) sound like Malayalam?
~deviousDiv
Actually, it is generally accepted that Malayalam hived off Tamil around the 10th century. It is still Dravidian. I am not sure how it went on to adopt so many more Sanskrit words than Tamil has, but the key is sentence construction and verbs, rather than nouns.
This is somewhat analogous to Hindi and Urdu, with the latter borrowing Arabic and Farsi words, but mostly nouns. Verbs and sentence construction is practically the same as Hindi, so it falls in that interesting middle space.
Do you know that all Indian script, including Devnagari and Tamil, is considered descended from Brahmi - which is sorta old Aramaic like. I find that hard to believe. Very hard to believe. Where are the Indian historiographers? White man writes all the crap.
Finally, I am not sure I heard any Sinhala bad words. But maybe that is what all the buxom women were yelling at me. Hehe.
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