North and East

It’s been a while since we were in the north and east, so we made amends recently with a short tour to Habarana, Polonnaruwa and Trincomalee. Still officially pre-season on the coast (February) though I don’t really know why, since by this time the weather is generally good. I suppose because the seas are a bit rough still, so those who want to dive, scuba, surf etc. are well advised to wait for another month or two. Since I don’t do any of those things, it mattered not.

We decided on a first stop for a couple of nights at a Polonnaruwa hotel, the Siyanco, which has been around since the seventies. Despite (or actually because) we run a homestay guest house, when we travel we tend to stay in hotels as we get the chance to be thoroughly anti-social and keep to ourselves for a change. And we prefer the older hotels, which are more likely to have got the basics of hospitality right. The Siyanco has been around since the seventies and although it shows its age, and the menu is a bit basic, the attitude of the staff is perfect.

Polonnaruwa is close to Minneriya national park, which we have never visited. We knew that the same elephant herd frequented Minneriya and the slightly more distant Kaudulla park, and that hotels providing safaris would know where the herd was at any time. But we were surprised to be told that the pachyderms were currently in neither park but in the much more distant Habarana Eco Park, which we had never heard of – it’s a fairly recent creation. We dutifully headed off there in an ancient jeep with no suspension to speak of – about ninety minutes’ journey from our hotel. It’s not a park we would consider visiting again.

No shortage of elephants, for sure. But the landscape is scrubby and uninteresting, lacking any significant expanse of water. The roads are so deeply rutted that moving around is both painfully slow and painfully painful! Almost no other animals – no deer even – and hardly any birds. Time was when on a safari, which are not cheap, one got a driver and a tracker, the latter not having to worry about navigating deep ruts and also being a professional naturalist. Our guy was simply a driver. He could not understand why we didn’t enjoy being among thirty other jeeps full of people taking selfies with elephants in the background.

We asked if we could go somewhere else and maybe see some birds. He obliged, and after a short while stopped the vehicle and said “bird!”. It was a spotted dove, common as muck. Then another “bird!” – this time a red-vented bulbul, ditto. In short, the few birds we did see were ones we can see in our own garden every day. There are some excellent national parks, Wilpattu being our favourite, and lesser-known ones such as Gal Oya are well worth a visit. But Habarana Eco Park is not one of them. Ironically, a few days later in Nilaveli we ran into some of our former guests who had been in Minneriya, at their own insistence, at the same time. They also saw elephants (so perhaps the herd doesn’t stick together all that closely?) and plenty of other wildlife around the lovely lake on which the park is centred. And almost no other jeeps. We’ll be more assertive next time.

Polonnaruwa, the next day, more than made up for the disappointments of Habarana. Nearly twenty years since we were last there, though we’ve visited Anuradhapura several times in that period. I’d forgotten just how extensive and varied the ancient city is, with its eclectic mix of religious, municipal, royal and simply decorative ruins. It was also more shady than I remembered, and a sheer pleasure to stroll around one section before climbing into the van and parking up for the next one. Many visitors hire bikes to cycle around. Sally doesn’t ride bicycles and it’s a very long while since I was on one, but I thoroughly approve as the terrain is completely flat and the roads around the site are well maintained. As a tourist destination, Polonnaruwa seems to be as well-managed as Habarana Eco Park is poorly managed.

And so on, finally, to Nilaveli and Trincomalee. We asked our driver to take us the slightly longer coastal route – the coast road is joined near to Passikudah, north of Batticaloa. Actually, ‘coast road’ is a bit of a misnomer as for most of the route one is a couple of kilometres inland with no view of the sea. But that is made up for when you come to the far reaches of the magnificent Trincomalee harbour, specifically Koddiyar Bay, where for a few kilometres you have wonderful sea views, with the spectacle of row upon row of drying fish, and glimpses of the local fishermen hauling in the catch on the shoreline.

We have stayed at the Nilaveli Beach Hotel several times. Like the Siyanco, an established place which we will always admire for its sheer determination to survive whatever is thrown at it; civil war, the tsunami and all the more recent challenges to Sri Lankan tourism. It also has a setting to die for: single storey rooms set among trees next to a wide ocean beach. The beach bar and restaurant sits between a huge swimming pool and the beach, which the hotel keeps clean on its frontage, though sadly if you venture north or south the beach is littered with plastic waste. Unfortunately, the NBH is trying to move with the times and the results aren’t all good. When we visited it was massively overstaffed with trainees, all meaning well but not really having got to grips with the job yet. We went for dinner one evening and asked for the menu. “Tonight, set menu, no choice.” “Why is that?” “Tonight no chef”. “What is the set menu?” An a la carte menu was then produced and we were told we could have anything from it! We’d avoided lunch as I’d spotted that it involved being serenaded at table by the most out-of-tune guitar-and-vocals trio I have ever heard. Off out for some short eats instead. And our enjoyment of dinner was reduced by having to endure two solid hours of Jim Reeves, which is about an hour and fifty nine minutes more than I can stand. Hopefully they will finally learn that getting back to the basics and doing them well, as they used to, will be the best route to success.

We were feeling unwell – nothing to do with the food, though the music might have contributed – so confined our daytime activity to a trip into Trincomalee where we hoped to revisit Fort Frederick and the spectacular Konesvaram Hindu temple. Fort Frederick, which we have wandered freely around in the past, has now – according to our driver – been entirely taken over by the army. There was always an army camp there but, like Kalpitiya’s Dutch fort on the opposite coast (which is navy), the military’s requirements trump those of tourism and the economy. Sri Lanka has the world’s sixtieth largest population but the world’s fourteenth largest standing army. There are reasons, of course, in the recent past but surely it is now time to trim the bloated military establishment in the wider interests of the nation.

Konesvaram temple – where religion meets Disneyland. I do love these crazy Hindu temples and Konesvaram ranks as one of the very biggest and best in the island. Just beyond the temple is Lovers’ Leap, a cleft in the sea cliff named after the suicide of a local woman who was deserted by her Dutch lover. Last time I came, the spot was festooned with coloured rags. These have now been replaced by decorated little wooden cribs, left by women (or couples) who have been trying unsuccessfully for a child. The connection with an ancient suicide is beyond me, I’m afraid.

But then, who understands Sri Lanka? Not me, for sure.

Jerry.