Sri Lanka: Pearl of the Indian Ocean

All is well! It has been a while since we posted, initially due to slow wifi and poor photo uploading to the blog site, and later due to sheer laziness. Sorry. Several family members and friends have inquired to make sure we are ok. We will try to get all of Sri Lanka posted in the next week as we are onto Tanzania now!

We had a relatively easy journey from Cairo through Dubai to Sri Lanka. The Dubai airport was immaculate. I was able to upgrade us at check-in for a nominal fee which was lovely. Emirates is a fabulous airline with really good food and award winning in-seat entertainment. I watched almost all of Mare of Easttown which is really great. Trey watched Dune which he highly recommends. We landed in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, around 1 AM, got off the plane quickly and picked up all our bags. Initially, we could not find the person who was picking us up inside the airport. In Egypt we were used to them meeting us at the gate before the security checks and baggage claim. KVB helped us find him as he was outside in the queue of guides holding signs to pick up tourists. They are not allowed in the airport. A sleepy 30 minute ride to our hotel, Jetwing Beach in Negombo, and we were ready to start 3 lovely days at the pool and beach.

Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean and shares a maritime border with India and the Maldives. It has a total area of 65,610 km² (25,330 sq mi) making it a little bigger than the state of West Virginia. Colombo is its largest city and has a metropolitan population of 5.6 million people. It was made the capital of the island when Sri Lanka was ceded to the British Empire in 1815 (at the time it was known as Ceylon) and its status as capital was retained when the nation became independent in 1948.

Sri Lanka’s documented history goes back 3,000 years. Due to its geographic location and deep harbors is has had great strategic importance since the earliest days of the ancient Silk Road trade route. The country’s trade in luxury goods and spices has attracted traders of many nations. The Portuguese controlled parts of Sri Lanka from 1505-1658 until the Dutch took over. The Dutch lasted until the British extended control over the entire island colonizing it from 1815 until 1948, when Sri Lanka became a sovereign nation.

Sri Lanka has over 22 million people. The population is divided between the Buddhist Sinhalese (74.8% of the total population), Hindu Sri Lankan Tamils (11.2%), Islamic Moors (9.2%). and Christian people (7.4%). Accordingly, Sinhala and Tamil are the two official languages. Buddhism is by far the largest religion and is considered the country’s official religion. Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka in the 2nd century BCE when a sapling of the Bodhi Tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment was brought to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankans have a life expectancy of 77.9 years at birth, which is 10% higher than the world average. The infant mortality rate stands at 8.5 per 1,000 births and the maternal mortality rate at 0.39 per 1,000 births, which is on par with figures from developed countries. A universal health care system has contributed much towards these figures. With a literacy rate of 92.5%, Sri Lanka has one of the most literate populations amongst developing nations. It is one of the few countries in the world that provide universal free education from primary through college.

Our first hotel had 2 adjacent first floor rooms that overlooked the pool. Beyond the pool was a shady palm tree area and then a large beach. The pool was 62 yards which was more than twice the usual pools at home. The laps went on and on! Marin and Sy had no trouble with the distance and continued to beat me with ease, but I am getting better…up to around 1300 yards a day when we have a suitable pool.

We were eager to see what breakfast had to offer and to get into the Sri Lankan cuisine. The buffet was fantastic…more things to try and plenty of western food. There were lots of fruit juices and plenty of fresh passionfruit (Trey’s favorite and mine now also!). We switched from Egyptian coffee to Sri Lankan tea (which they are famous for) and the boys continued their taste test of international hot chocolate. This one ranked in the middle. Trey did a 3 mile run along the beach and got to see a ton of locals. There were kids playing a version of cricket. He took our kids on an adventure for an ATM that took them to a Sri Lankan concert and party.

The beach was quite wide and flat and the waves were a decent size. There was some trash in the sand and the water was a bit cloudy due to rain that came through the day prior. This did not stop the kids and Trey from jumping the waves for a while on our first afternoon. Marin said, “Don’t look now, but there is a monkey wearing pants on a leash walking on the beach.” Sy didn’t believe her and ran back into the ocean…but she was right! Random.

We also solved a mystery after a few days…the trees shading our poolside chairs sometimes had strange, black pots hanging down from them on a long rope. Sometimes they were empty and sometimes they had a cloudy, white liquid in them. We also saw a whole row of pots lined up on a table each afternoon. Finally, we saw a man climbing a tree and walking on a tight rope from one palm tree to another, raising and lowering the black pots. Trey followed him and asked what he was collecting. It turns out that he was collecting the flower sap from the coconut palms (Cocus neusifera) to make toddy, an alcoholic drink made by the fermentation of the sap. Toddy is white and sweet with a characteristic flavor and contains between 4 and 6% alcohol. It is also called palm wine. Trey tried the raw product and said it was “ok”.

I could get used to passion fruit margaritas! We also got caught up on some school work and finished up our Egypt posts. We had dinner each night at a different place…2 hotel buffets and a nearby restaurant which was really good. Sri Lankan food is a mixture of Asian, Indian and its own cuisine…curries, rice, lot of salads, vegetables, fish and chicken.

After three days to ourselves we met up with our lovely tour guide Dhanushka Priyashantha. This is actually just part of his name. He goes by Dan. We drove about 4 hours past some Hindu temples, people working in rice fields and harvesting water lilies, and herds of water buffalo (it turns out that each buffalo had an accompanying white egret to eat its bugs, just like in Hawaii), ultimately reaching Anuradhapura, the city of Kings.

Anuradhapura is one of the ancient capitals of Sri Lanka, famous for its well-preserved ruins of an ancient Sinhala civilization, and was the center of Theravada Buddhism for many centuries. The city lies 127 miles north of Colombo and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and one of six cultural World Heritage Sites in Sri Lanka (we saw 5 of them on this trip). Anuradhapura Kingdom was founded in 437 BCE and was the first established kingdom in ancient Sri Lanka by the Sinhalese people. Buddhism played a strong role in the Anuradhapura period, influencing its culture, laws, and methods of governance. This influence was further strengthened by the arrival of the Tooth Relic of the Buddha to Sri Lanka (more on this in a later post). The kingdom was largely based on agriculture and the construction of irrigation works ensuring water supply in the dry zone and helping the country grow mostly self-sufficient was a major achievement.

We walked around various sites in ancient Anuradhapura Kingdom. It is a sprawling site with ruins in varying degrees of decay some of which have been restored. We saw a lot of Buddhists who were honoring a religious holiday by wearing white. You have to take off your shoes whenever you enter a religious area and everyone wears respectful clothing which means pants and a shirt that covers your shoulders, and possibly your elbows, but that wasn’t totally clear. The true Buddhists go barefoot, but the stones and bricks are quite hot in the sun so we were encouraged to wear socks (we learned to go barefoot like the locals over the course of the trip).

Along the way, Dan told us about the history of the place. There are several Buddhist stupas, statues of the Buddha, and man-made ponds throughout the site. A stupa is a mound-like, hemispherical structure containing relics (typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation. In Buddhism, circumambulation occurs around these sites and is an important ritual and devotional practice.

The most impressive of the stupas is the Jetavanarama stupa. It is located in the ruins of Jetavana monastery, and at 400 ft tall, was the world’s tallest stupa and the third tallest structure in the world when it was built (273–301 CE). The structure is no longer the tallest, but it is still the largest, with a base-area of 2,508,000 sq ft. Approximately 93.3 million baked bricks were used in its construction. A part of a sash or belt tied by the Buddha is believed to be the relic that is enshrined here. The entire compound covers approximately 14 acres and is estimated to have housed 10,000 Buddhist monks at its height of influence. With the destruction and abandonment of Anuradhapura kingdom in the 11th century, the stupa was covered by jungle until 1909 when restoration started.

We saw our first monkeys of the trip at one of the stupas. They were chowing down on flowers left at some of the offering tables. We also saw Moon-stones, a unique feature of the Sinhalese architecture of ancient Sri Lanka. It is an elaborately carved semi-circular stone slab, usually placed at the bottom of staircases at entrances to Buddhist temples during this period. The carvings of the semi circular stone slab were always the same, a half lotus was carved in the center, which was enclosed by several concentric bands. The first band from the half lotus is decorated with a procession of swans, followed by a band with an intricate foliage design (known as Creeper) which represents desire. The third band has carvings of four animals; elephants, lions, horses, and bulls. These four animals follow each other in a procession symbolizing the four noble truths or the four stages in life: birth, old age, disease and death. The fourth and outermost band contains a carving of flames, usually interpreted as representing the never ending cycle of life and the pains of passion that the people experience.

We saw monks dressed in bright orange. These orange robes are called Kasayas and are worn by Buddhist monks and nuns. They are named after the saffron dye used to color them. In Buddhism, orange (or more precisely saffron) was the color of illumination, the highest state of perfection. The saffron colors of robes to be worn by monks were defined by the Buddha himself and his followers in the 5th century BCE. The robe and its color is a sign of renunciation of the outside world and commitment to the order.

The Buddhist flag was designed in the late 19th century as a universal symbol of Buddhism. The flag’s six vertical bands represent the six colors of the aura which Buddhists believe emanated from the body of the Buddha when he attained Enlightenment.

• Blue: The Spirit of Universal Compassion.
• Yellow: The Middle Way.
• Red: The Blessings of Practice – achievement, wisdom, virtue, fortune and dignity.
• White: The Purity of Dhamma – leading to liberation, timeless.
• Orange: The Wisdom of the Buddha’s teachings.
• The sixth vertical band is made up of a combination of the five other colors’ rectangular bands and represents the aura’s spectrum. It is referred to as the Truth of the Buddha’s teaching.

Buddhist monks live a hard life relative to our standards. They all have shaved heads. The typical day of a Buddhist monk follows a fixed schedule: wake-up call very early (often at 4:30 AM including Saturdays and Sundays), gathering in the temple to recite mantras; personal hygiene in one of the several fountains scattered around the monastery (there are no showers, but they wash themselves with the help of buckets); in the morning they go barefoot through adjacent villages to ask for alms of food and money. They return to the monastery to eat breakfast with whatever was collected. School in the morning for the novices until 11:30 AM when the second and only meal of the day is served. Monks eats only two times a day and from 11.30 am onwards they can not touch food until the next day’s breakfast. In the afternoon school resumes until 5:30 PM, when everyone meets in the temple to pray to the Buddha, and by 7 PM they are all in bed.

While in Anuradhapura we visited a religious complex that houses the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, a sacred bo tree, or Ficus religiosa. It is the closest authentic living link to the Buddha and also the oldest human-planted tree in the world with a known planting date. It is thought that about 2,600 years ago, Lord Gautama Buddha sat with his back against an Esathu tree in India and achieved enlightenment. In doing so, the tree also gained a venerated status and became known as the Bodhi tree, and pilgrims came to see it even within the lifetime of the Buddha. In 236 BCE, a branch of the original sacred fig was ceremoniously planted in Anuradhapura and became known as the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi. It has since been cared for and protected by Buddhist monks and dedicated kings. Buddha statues, water canals, golden fences, and walls have been built around the tree over the centuries, and many vows and offerings have been made by Buddhists at the foot of the sacred fig. They have a strong belief that offerings made to the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi have produced significant and positive changes in their life. While here we gave an offering of a purple lotus flower and were blessed with a white forehead dot and a white string bracelet.

Our last visit of the day was to Kaludiya Pokuna, or Black Water Pond. After a short hike, you reach some old monastic ruins that were built next to a beautiful pool of water. They date back to the 2nd century BCE. The entire complex is well planned and shows evidence that the people here had an advanced hydraulic civilization with artificial moats running through some of the buildings, bath houses, and toilets within the buildings. There is also a cave dwelling that is impressive. We reached the top just as the sun was setting and the place took on a very serene atmosphere. You can tell why there was a monastery placed here.

There were a few stray dogs around and some puppies playing. One difference we have noticed here is the stray dogs are actually fed by the people. Buddha honored all lives, including animals, and the culture here is to take care of them so you will see people setting out bowls of food for the stray dogs in the street. They also are very careful driving around the streets as numerous dogs will sleep in the road and move just enough out of the way to let the cars get by. I don’t know how they aren’t run over all the time, but they seem to be quite savvy and the drivers are very aware of them.

We arrived after dark at our new hotel, Seerock The King’s Domain. Several people greeted us and offered cinnamon tea and a cold wet hand towel. We skipped dinner and went straight to bed. The hotel is really beautiful with lovely suite-like rooms. We have 2 adjoining rooms that are built on stilts over water that back up to the jungle. The first night Trey was convinced an elephant was just outside our room making noises now and then. In the middle of the night, when I was NOT sleeping due to the loud honking, meowing bird noises outside and Trey’s elephant, I went to the bathroom and realized it was the plumbing causing the elephant noises. Trey hasn’t lived that one down yet! The next morning on the way to breakfast, we realized that the meowing bird noises were peacocks. There are at least 5 that live here and they seem to be awake day and night. The service and the food have been great. Everyone is very flexible and amenable to making you anything you want. They will tell you the menu and ask for your choices, but will also add that they can make anything for you.

Next stop Sigiriya!