October 26th, 2007
The Big Trip: IT’S SMALL. BUT IT’S GOT IT ALL
Peace and cricket, that’s what’s done it.” Niaz Maharoot manages Helga’s Folly, in Kandy, a hotel whose eccentricities speak volumes for the confidence growing within Sri Lanka’s tourist industry. Let’s hope he is proved right in his prediction that this year will be one of the best seasons ever for Sri Lanka’s hoteliers.
Early in November, I found them poised to receive not only devotees of the imminent test cricket series against England, but an army of visitors. “Bookings for 2004 are up 30 to 40 per cent over last year’s” reckoned Sarath Wickremasinghe, the manager of the chic Saman Villas at Bentota - a figure echoed by the Taj Group.
Nearly two years after the signing of a formal ceasefire between the government and the separatist Tamil Tigers, international tourism seems at last to be prepared to overlook Sri Lanka’s political troubles and allow the country to step into the upmarket gap left by the Bali bombing. Two big highways are under construction; Sri Lankan Airlines is opening several new internal flights and international hotel groups are making heavy investments. Angsana Resorts and Spas, a sister brand to Banyan Tree, has taken over the delightful Deer Park near Polonnaruwa. Tea country guest houses and historic seaside villas are being expensively converted.
On 5 November, the day I left the island, all certainties wobbled once again. In her Prime Minister’s absence abroad, President Kumaratunga, widely believed to feel that too many concessions were being made to the Tigers, suspended parliament, dismissed three members of the cabinet and declared a state of emergency. But this was lifted two days later and, two months on, the blip appears to have had little effect on the projected boom in tourism.
Which is all to the good: Sri Lanka packs in a bigger share of sheer gorgeousness - more dazzling archaeological sites, more lavish scenery and ravishing beaches, more elephants, more leopards, more almost everything - than any small island (it’s about the size of Ireland) has a right to claim.
More interesting hotels, too. The recent building spree has resulted in high levels of comfort and considerable contemporary style. Overlooking the sea at Bentota, Saman Villas has the champagne- on-arrival, the open- air bathrooms and the frangipani-on-the-pillow considered de rigueur in contemporary Serendipityland. “Too much effing good taste,” grumped one of my travelling companions, a celebrated photographer, confronted with the lazily revolving fans, the old Dutch furniture interspersed with witty contemporary takes, the designer fabrics and bathroom fixtures which grace the Sun House and the 18th-century Dutch House. I could see what he meant but, hey, I’m not proud: lead me to it.
It’s inland Sri Lanka, however, that has my heart. “India designed by the Swiss” observed the photographer. Here is the same green profligacy that you find in Kerala, only more so. Cathedral-sized bubbles of rock swell up from a lavishly clothed landscape, its trees noisy with birds; its waterways stalked by pelicans and herons. Butterflies flop like silk hankies through air scented with incense, wet tea, gardenias and ripe- to-bursting fruit.
What’s missing is the hassle. Compared with India, Sri Lankan roads are miracles of sobriety, their most dashing drivers pilot motorised rickshaws sporting rackety names: Strange Boys, Innocent Bird or All That Glitters. Beggars are fewer and eventually leave you alone; the same, glory be, goes for the salesmen.
“Give me your hand, Madam,” said an idler at Sigiriya: “You are a heavy person”. I’m a what? The tone was of spurious concern, the message ill calculated to appeal to one who reaches neurotically for the Weight Watchers cookbook the minute the scales creep over 8 stone. Only my heart felt heavy; it was already doing the lumbering somersaults which only the vertiginous endure.
For, ahead loomed a cheesewire-sliced precipice, 590ft (180m) high and studded with metal ladderways, some of them connected by superannuated London Underground spiral stairs. Citadel of a 5th century playboy king, whose good-time girls still frisk across the rock face, as fresh as the day they were painted, Sigiriya occupies star position in the cluster of World Heritage sites at the centre of the island.
At Polonnaruwa, a group of schoolgirls, looking good as gold in their white dresses, drifted barefoot through the ruined temples and pavilions of the old capital. Their teacher, the Rev Beragama Anananata Thero, a Buddhist monk, asked me to take a class photograph. “If people want to know about Enlightenment”, said my guide, Gamini Mendis, “this is where I bring them.” We contemplated three colossal stone statues of the Buddha, their serenity enhanced by the rippled effect of layered granite and not at all disturbed by the crowds of irreverent monkeys.
The same sense of tranquillity reigns at the cave temples of Dambulla, where the roofs billow softly as canvas, decorated with a thousand Buddahs, looking down from the biggest rock painting in the world. “These people are lazy” said Gamini, severely, when I asked him to translate some of the prayers written on the rags hanging from the nearby bodhi tree: “They think a tree can remove their troubles without any effort of their own”.