I have often read tourism magazines, paper articles and internet blogs that laud the mystic beauty of the country I live in. But it had never hit home until I took to adventuring in the least adventurous means with a young family on tow. Makes me wonder what real trekkers and trackers must be experiencing with all the adult activities like snorkeling, surfing, mountain climbing, backpacker cycling, hitch- hiking, bungee jumping, hot-air ballooning and camping out there…As for me, I don’t think even when my children shred of chaperoning age, I would still opt for any of the above. I'm not the adventure-loving sort. For one I have severe vertigo and am claustrophobic underwater. But it would be ridiculously thick-skinned for any one even as absolutely un-happening as me, not to enjoy the generous disposition of nature in its purest and most dynamic form, scattered around this dot of a country on the world map.
Away from Sri Lanka in a land with North Pole its neighbour, where I stayed a considerable number of years to understand its diversity, was my turning point and shocking eye opener to give a good rap on my head and to appreciate Sri Lanka, where I have in my heart had thought under-developed and less important. Maybe the bloodshed and the terror aspect that was a part of growing up in my generation had a lot to do with the sense of desolation that surfaced with the mention of the country’s name. What a shame, and what a loss of precious years of bubbling, carefree irresponsible and impulsive adolescence. I convince myself -here is the time, today, now to enjoy life’s bounteous indulgence.
It is almost a sin to be living in a land with so much of bio-diversity and to be missing out on savoring its openhanded display of nature’s wonders.
The land is a theme park, offering various types of weather, transferring from one plate to the next ascend and diverting to the immediate descent. It’s a marathon of sights from boulders and earth- mountains, to lush greens to winding rivers and sandy beaches to gushing or sprinkling water falls. A Hollywood movie set of wild animals, coral reefs to UNESCO World Heritage Sites and tri-lingual human inhabitants of varying skin color and costume changes, depending on where you are headed to.
Hibernate in to the heights. To Nuwara Eliya. The Little England of Sri Lanka. Drive higher and higher through elevation after elevation on narrow winding mountain routes – now carpeted and dangerously motion-sickeningly- smooth.
Through the very unassuming Nuwara Eliya Town, you see an unusual sight of people wearing winter clothes. You would wind the shutter down and put off the AC and savor the shockingly cold gush of air passing through your fingers in your outstretched arm. It’s amazing how a four- hour drive from the scorching Colombo with sweating people could transform to a sight of mist and teeth-chattering kids held on by parents buying their daily produce from the Nuwara Eliya market.
Scrap the 5 star hotel stay and settle in a bungalow for 2 days.
Taste the home-grown strawberries and “lokets” with its indigenously sweet-sour taste. Abandon your fleece and play a bit of handball or badminton or even stroll down the bungalow gardens extensive and butterfly-infested on a furor of colored blooms. Marvel at your body’s upsurge in stamina, boosted by the lapse of the familiar heat beating you down.
Absorb the absolutely haunting tone inside the bungalow in the dusk and even on a muddy afternoon. Its never-ending corridors, Period furniture and the brass ornaments, revered by the "Appu" in the weather-beaten mansion.
Take note of the arched doorways and the broad, chair-spaced window panes.
Of fireplaces, soot-blackened chimneys and the 18-feet high ornamental ceilings with swaying chandeliers.
Discard your footwear and feel the electrifying chill under your feet. Think of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyer.
Detour to the farms in the day time. Witness the cattle grazing the picture-postcard green.
Sense the tranquility of rural self-sufficient living; Of vegetable beds and flower-farms on the fertile fruitful lands, the milking of cows at dawn and the lazy train passing by on meandering tracks.
Stop to see the humble abodes in the villages nearby on plains of various ascent, posing for your photo.
Heave a sigh on sighting the unmistakable Sri Pada, yonder innumerous mountains perked up to reach the sky.
Isn’t this paradise? And who said it is “small” miracle? Isn’t it the biggest and the best place on earth to live?
Off the beaten track is my forte! - But you've been able not only paint the picture of this 'paradise isle' in its true serendipity (just dwell upon the fact that it was Sri Lanka which added the word 'Serendipity' to the Oxford English Dictionary through the English author Horace Walpole - connoting 'always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of ...) & colour. Isn't just that very element of 'Serendipity' that this tiny country is made up of - which awe-inspires someone every time they take an excursion - though they may have seen or experience it before? Your piece has just done that - & revived that feeling I've shared with you once before;'I really don't know whether I'm patriotic - just that I know I love the smell paddy & the blow comes out from a 'Wav Thawulla' & knowing that i do not wish to migrate!
ReplyDelete"--- you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously." (John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor)