The old lady sits on the flight teaching me the pronunciation of both the Tamil and the Singhalese alphabets. I explain I will be walking from the airport to the train station. She shakes here head. It’s not safe. She insists on having her son drive me there when he picks her up. Things are very hard for the Tamils, post war. They have had their rights stripped down, making them second class citizens in their own country. The skin the Tamil people is darker. I ponder this brown to black apartheid as our car, full of Tamils and me is stopped at military check point, after check point, after check point. The journey takes over an hour as we’re stopped and checked every fifty metres.
I queue at the train station, a gigantic British colonial structure with a seedy, intimidating feel to it. People stare at me. The war has only just ended, and it feels like I am one of the first backpackers to visit this country. People seem surprised to see me. Some stare and look away. Others just stare fixated, as if I am an inanimate object. I am the only foreign face in a sea of Sri Lankans. A man stares from opposite me on the train. He stands out from all the other starers since his eyes are a bright azure blue, seeming sharper set amidst the browns of his Singhalese skin. He tells me his is an official tourist guide and shows me his papers. I’ve never seen these documents before so it means nothing to me. They could say anything and on the journey I hope I have not taken up with a rascal or a swindler, seeming more like an unsavoury estate agent than a tour guide. We stop at a small town in the south where the man invites me to stay at his ‘guesthouse’. It turns out to be more of a family home. But it is clean and safe, even if they are annoyingly pushy, always trying to sell me things I don’t want. We queue up and get curry filled pastries in a small indent at the side of the road, posing as a cafe. Unfortunately they seem to think it’s normal to eat king prawns with the shells still on. I head back up north to Colombo to get a new camera charger from the middle of nowhere. I walk around through streets and streets of duty electronic stores until I finally find the Nikon store. I enjoy the freedom of carrying just an overnight bag. On the return one of my sandals breaks and I have to walk barefoot on the filthy streets. The sun is coming down quickly and I’m lost. Finally, when all my hopes at survival seem to be lost, I come across a shoe shop next door to an affordable hotel. I like when things occasionally work out. The man with the bright blue eyes brings his uncle to dinner and drinks. He has a thick, bristling moustache which he often strokes as if it were a lap cat. We sit sipping local made whisky and talk through some of the horrific memories of the war. A lot of killing took place. The government, backed by the west pitted Tamil against Singhalese. Stories of pride, duty and honour. I press the point over civilian casualties and the deliberate bombing of refugee camps. Tears, regret, fear and anger rise up and the conversation comes to an abrupt end. There always seems to be a secret cost to things here. People assume I am rich because I’m from a rich country. The lady of the house would offer me dinner and tea, and then with a gesture of her hands, she begs for money. This daily routine made me a little uncomfortable. I ask the blue eyed man to take me to Udawalawa National Park. It has a sign with a price for locals and an inflated price for tourists. When the sun sets and the elephants graze. I stand on a rock formation gazing out over the great plateau. It's serene and beautiful, peaceful and cool, but kind of lonely as if it should be an overture to one of Beethoven’s sonatas. Later we visit a Buddhist temple full of statues that he says I just have to see! The entrance to the tunnel is surrounded by cows. It leads into a large cave epitomised as Buddhist hell with flame orange paint and silhouettes on the walls. Dark skinned figurines torture their lighter skinned enemies in various horrific ways. It's quite terrifying. It seems there's a magic to the place. A dark magic perhaps, like an elf might suddenly burst into flames. It's the feeling you expect to feel in a war museum, a graveyard or at stone henge on a dark night, when nothing really comes. Anyway, whatever the feeling. They look like they might come alive and get me. There are painted statues of natives torturing the incoming colonialists. I know little of buddhist hell and this place has an eerie feel to it. I look around to see I’m the only white face there. I feel a hand on my shoulder. I spin around in a state of sudden panic. But to my relief. it's only the man with bright blue eyes. Let's go. He says, with a toothless smile. I can drop you at the train station, at a cost of course. The mountains are my favourite part of this country. There’s something beautiful about the quaint little towns set amongst such humungous scenery. The British built train chugs on up the mountainside no faster than ten miles per hour. It’s a rickety journey up a track of rails, through mountain forests covered enshrined in blankets of cloud. I make a friend from The Netherlands who shares the beauty of this journey with me. He leads the way to a guesthouse he’s heard about that turns out to be the most hospitable place in the country. The bongo playing hipster, and the ever smiling cook make sure our stay is unforgettable. I meet an Australian journalist and two Canadian aid workers, who’ve been living in mud huts in Sudan. We are never short on fireside stories. I see the dog’s eyes in the moonlight. I hear their growls. I walk towards them. But they are not backing up. And it’s dark. They know they can see me better than I can see them. They lunge for my legs and I take two steps backwards. I reach into aå hedge for a stone. But there is no longer solid ground beneath my feet. I’m falling. Black. I wake up on my back and very wet. Water surrounds me. I pull myself up and out of the pond and walk through the cloud that cascades over everything. I am just putting pen to paper by the lake in Kandy when I realise the days have run away with me. My flight is this evening. I run back up the mountain and check out of my guesthouse. I run to the train station and hop in a taxi to the airport. But I am too late. They urge me to book another flight. But I refuse. I want to leave the airport, but the men at the checkpoints won’t allow me. Eventually I am forced to bribe one of the porters to drive me out through the staff entrance, while I lay motionless under a tarpaulin on the back seat. I end up spending a few more days in a small town near the airport. I manage to buy myself an onward flight to Malaysia.
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w.j.daniel
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