A country where everyone acts like they want to be your friend is hell for a non-people person like myself. Sometimes when you travel, you have bad days. Well I guess you could say that about anything you do in life, but it is perhaps more affecting when you are in another country. Sometimes there is an anger within you that you can't really control, that the best thing for you and everyone else, is to be alone or at least with someone who understands what's going on and has the sense to leave you be. Such times make it difficult to function, especially in another country, where you do not have a place to chill. And in Sri Lanka they do not leave you alone when you would really prefer to not talking. And they do it in such a polite and friendly manner that it makes you even more irritated that you can't be as irritated as you want to be. What is also very much annoying is the fact that often this friendliness is the wind up to a sales pitch of some sort. And it is bloody difficult to tell the difference between genuine friendliness ("Hi, how are you? Where you from? Welcome to my country. I have lived here all my life. I like your country….") and the opening lines of a sales pitch ("Hi, how are you? Where are you from? Welcome to my country. I have x, you want buy? I give you good price. Or maybe y? Very nice, right….."). I would rather be in a place where there was a lot less of that, no matter how interesting some our encounters have been.
I was trying to explain this and more to Nancy (on why I was in a bad mood) when a bunch of cows ran by us followed closely by a man in motor cycle helmet. Besides the motorcycle helm, he also had a crazy smile and even crazier eyes and he had a large axe raised above his head as he ran by after the cows. His appearance was made all the more disturbing to us by the fact that his general appearance reminded us strongly of our friend Sarjak (minus the crazy eyes and smile). We quickly departed the area.
We were in Tissamaharama, or Tissa for short. I had an inkling that we wouldn't like Tissa during our bus ride from Matara (which I will get to in a moment). As we were sitting on that bus (the only light of the journey was the little girl in front of us who kept looking back at us shyly and waving, but at this point she was gone), nearing the end of our ride a man approached us. I should say, a man got on the bus, shoved his way from the front to the back, rather roughly, and asked us if we had a moment to listen to him. I had already reason to dislike his actions and I was not about to listen to a sales pitch, so I said, "no."
He did not seem to hear me and started to get his sales stuff out. I said, "NO!" again, a lot more sharply and then stared grumpily at the seat in front of me. Nancy said that we already had a safari (which is what he was pitching to us) and he left us alone. But I still think my second "NO!" helped in that regard.
When we got off the bus we were almost immediately surrounded by touts with similar little folders, that talked variously about guesthouses or safaris or combinations of both. We rushed past them and did our best to get to a place where we could consult our map in peace. That turned out to be about 500 meters from the bus stop. There only a lone tuk-tuk driver asked if we needed help and I asked him what road we were on. He told us and we got our bearings pretty quickly after that, no ride necessary, sorry, we like to use our feet, unlike, apparently all the other lazy ass foreigners who come here (this last part we kept to ourselves). Seriously though, if you're not capable of walking 2 km with whatever bags you brought, there is no hope for you as a real traveller. There, it had to be said. That's not really fair, most travellers here have a) more money than us (though if we did, we still would not take a tuk-tuk) and b) less time, so they probably don't want to spend it walking from a bus station to a hotel/guesthouse. This non-tuk-tuk attitude got us into a bit of trouble in our previous destination, though.
That destination was Matara, a place that we only wanted to stay one night, but wished we had not booked ahead in Tissa when we finally got to our guesthouse (in Matara that is). The getting there was a bit of a problem. We had decided that we would stop at the book store along the way and pick up The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaanjte if it was there (we had seen it in the previous book store in Negombo). It was in the Matara one too and we bought that and The Fountain's of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke (our original inspiration for coming to Sri Lanka). Now we are good for reading material for quite some time and we plan to hang on to Clarke and Ondaantje as mementos of Sri Lanka.
About an hour after this purchase I found myself not wanting any reminders of Sri Lanka at all as we found ourselves hopelessly lost. We wandered up and down the sprawling streets of Matara looking for for the guesthouse we had reserved a room at, to no avail. People pointed us one way and then another way, but no one really seemed to know what we were talking about. We called the guesthouse and the owner found us on his motorcycle and with him came a tuk-tuk. We reluctantly took it to the guesthouse, which was called Sunhil's Rest. As it turned out, the map we were using was entirely incorrect in its placement of the guesthouse, which was actually off the scope of the map. So there, we used a tut-tuk, may it be for the last time.
Our guesthouse was pleasant and large two building family dwelling with guest rooms on the first and second floors of one building and the family's home connected by a bridge from that building on the second floor of the other. We fell into our bed, turned on the fan and relaxed, only rousing for a beer and lunch. We also took a walk down to the beach and found it to be quite nice as well, with no tourists. We then found ourselves regretting the fact that we booked ahead for Tissa the next night. As it turned out though, this might have been a blessing in disguise. We had not actually asked how much the meals we were consuming cost (a mistake we shall not make again) and when in came bill time the next day, we found that they were far more expensive than we had expected. Fortunately we still stayed in budget.
Now back in Tissa, we again found our guesthouse, this one called Traveller's Rest. After settling in a bit we walked to a man made lake to take a look at the birds there. Not in the greatest of moods, it should be said. This is where I started. After our encounter with the crazy cow herding man we went back to the Traveller's Rest and didn't leave.
The reason that we were in Tissa was to possibly take a safari jeep into Yala National Park. This hope died though, the moment we saw how much the prices had gone up on this venture. The cost for one person was our entire daily budget. So we did not get to go on a safari. When we're rich and perhaps only if we find out that the money that we would be paying actually went toward helping our friends the animals. As this was about the only thing to do in Tissa and we were there for two days, we found ourselves at a bit of an impasse.
What we thought was the answer came in form of what the Lonely Planet described as a pilgrimage town near by. For next time, we will leave pilgrimage towns to the pilgrims. But you don't learn these lessons unless you actually go to there.
We left the guesthouse at 6 am. We had little choice in when we woke up, as the safaris left at 5 am and they started preparing to leave at 4:15. And we just happened to be residing right beside where all this was taking place. Needless to say, we did not get much sleep in-between 4 and 5 am. But it allowed us to get up early (at least we thought this was a good thing), and get to the bus station early for a 6am ride to the town.
Our journey did not start on a high note. As we walked to the station we saw a dead dog lying in the road. We looked away and walked on hurriedly. It took an hour to get there and we were crowded in by unhappy children on their way to school. It was a packed bus and we were happy to hop off of it with all the school kids at the last stop. We stepped out right at the site that we were aiming to go to, a place that was surrounded by a park fence and that we had to cross a river to get into.
We did not enjoy our brief time within the fence, perhaps because we had come when most Sri Lankans also come. It was crowded, noisy and surprisingly dirty. I was reminded immediately of a line from Paul Theroux's "Great Railway Bazaar", that wryly stated, it appeared anyway, that to the Hindu's the dirtier the water of a temple the more holy it was. A disturbing shade of brown and green being the most holy. This pilgrimage site was not just for Hindus, but Buddhists and Muslims as well. If they all went by the same scheme then it was a pretty holy place. It seemed very odd though, that people would just toss their garbage on the ground wherever they were in the holy site. I did notice, later, that there were people cleaning up the garbage around their own temples, but in the moment we both stood aghast at just how much garbage was lying around the place. We did not enter any of the temples or mosques or shrines, but from the outside we could see garbage piled up in, as without. We did not enter anything because the moment stepped down from the bridge that spanned the muddy green river, we felt entirely unwelcome. Perhaps we had forgotten to do something, but knowing temple etiquette (at least so we thought) we had removed our shoes and dressed modestly. Some people pointed and laughed at as, something I've never really minded for some reason, but most people just stared hostilely as we passed them by. The only people who talked to us were a few tuk-tuk drivers that were within the site's grounds for some reason (there were some pretty clear signs saying they shouldn't be there). We did not want a ride. Though we were pretty happy to get out of the place when we did. We were not there for more than 20 minutes.
I suppose that going to a place of pilgrimage is not really something we should have been doing, despite the mention of it in the Lonely Planet. Or maybe we had just come on the wrong day. Or at the wrong time. We did not know, but we were happy to leave.
We were looking for a bus stop when we met an older couple coming the other way. The man was Sri Lankan and the woman was Irish. They were in the town on a bit of a vacation. The man seemed immediately worried for our safety and helped us get to the bus stop as fast as possible. He even hurried ahead to find a bus for us. The woman stayed behind and chatted with us. She seemed to think that it was perhaps a mistake for them to have come to this village, it seemed a bit of a bad spot in her and her partners opinion. Evidently, with lines like "You'd likely get abducted if you walk down the wrong street here", they did not much care for the place. They both exuded a protective sense of caution around us that was actually quite touching and not at all patronizing, though we both later thought that perhaps they were a bit too cautious.
They did mention a story that we had read in the online Sri Lankan paper recently, which was perhaps why they seemed so concerned. A British man had been killed at a restaurant during a party is what we had read. They told us that it had not exactly gone like that. It was more that he had come to a restaurant and started eating where a group of Sri Lankan men were having party. He was subsequently attacked and killed by the men having the party, though nobody could tell why. Sounded pretty grim. But as we were heading away from the South (where this had happened), we were less concerned about it now. It happened about a year ago and the reason it was in the paper was because the British Government had sent representatives to investigate further and demand justice (which has yet to be served, apparently).
The man (we never got their names) found us a bus that was leaving right away and we got on it. They admonished us again to be careful around the area as we got on. The last thing he said to us though was "I have a son about your age", which might have explained the caution. We stood the whole way back to Tissa and returned to our guesthouse, passing the same dead dog. This time thought someone had moved it onto the sidewalk. We had a better view of its crushed skull before we again averted our eyes and walked on.
Helped by breakfast, though, we slowly relaxed.
Later the same day we were eating lunch at a local rice and curry shop when a Sri Lankan man was seated next to us. He turned out to be a doctor who was working at the local hospital for a bit, as something of a final residency. When we told him that we were Canadian he told us that he had almost taken a job at the University of Alberta (the University where I got my degree), but his wife could not stand the cold. One of his best friends was Canadian and worked at the University. He asked me if I had heard of him, but as he was a doctor and medical professor (and obviously taught nothing in the History department), chances were pretty slim. He told us a lot about the area. His home was actually Matara, which was where his wife was currently working (she worked in Paediatrics). He said the Tissa area was a bit less settled and we said we could tell. He was a little surprised that we had gone to the pilgrimage town, but not really surprised by our reaction to it. He and his wife were planning on moving out of Sri Lanka when they could so that their skills could be put to better use (he was more interested in research). That being said, he told us that Sri Lanka's government health care was improving rapidly and there were some nifty lower tech ways for doctors to get medical information quickly using smart phones (perhaps that's actually a high tech).
After we finished lunch he offered to take us to his favourite place in Tissa for bird watching. He drove us to a man made lake, where there were a lot birds, he even lent us his binoculars so that we could see them better. He told us though, that the best time for bird watching was in the early morning. We noted the place and said that we would ride to it in the morning on the bikes provided by our guesthouse. He could not stay too long as he had to get to a private practice that he did on top of the hospital work. It sounds like, from what he said, Sri Lankan doctors are very busy. On the way home we passed a bunch of Sri Lankan people swimming in one of the man made lakes. The doctor shook his head at this and mentioned that there were many crocodiles in that lake and that everyone knew about them. He did not understand why people still swam there. He dropped us off at our guesthouse and we exchanged Facebook information. Our day was turning out to be better than its dismal beginnings seemed to indicate.
We watched swarms of bats pouring through the sky as it darkened from our guesthouse and chatted with a younger British guy, who said he liked how friendly people in Sri Lanka were. I did not argue, he seemed a more gregarious type. We also had what is advertised as a Sri Lankan breakfast but was fine for dinner too. The tea was also good.
In the morning we took the bikes to the lake again and looked at the birds. It would have been more enjoyable but the bike that Nancy had, kept losing one of of its pedals. While we were there four young men approached us and talked to us for a little bit. I don't really remember much of what they said, but I do recall them telling a Sri Lankan version of Aesop's The Bear and The Travellers (where one traveller is good at climbing and his friend isn't and when the see a bear he runs up a tree leaving his friend to play dead; the friend on the ground realizes that perhaps this tree climbing friend is not such a good example of friendship, even though neither of them get eaten by the bear). This conversation came about because we were talking about bears in the national park and Sri Lanka in general (I did not realize that Sri Lanka had sloth bears; yikes!).
We returned to the guesthouse and dashed off to the bus stop, stuffing the last of our toast from breakfast into our mouths as we did so. We ended up taking 3 separate buses to our next destination, Ella, all the while we were told that yes, this bus does go to Ella, only to be told at another station that we transfer here. We arrived in Ella at last, after a hair raising final few turns. We got off in front of the Curd Shop, which happened to be owned by the son of the owner of the guesthouse we had booked in at. The place was called Beauty Mount Hotel a place we were to stay for a very long time (relatively speaking).
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