I met Charlie on the steps of American Express in Delhi in 1969. We all used American Express to pick up our mail from back home in those days; incongruous for the Hippie Trail. Anyway, I was climbing the stairs and he was descending and he sort of recognized me from Stony Brook. He was a couple years behind me. We exchanged some Hippie Trail pleasantries and the next thing I knew, he had knocked up a friend of mine a few years later, married her and came to work at the Kosmos, where I was managing the restaurant. We became close friends.
A couple of nights ago— so 50 years later— we had dinner at Ubuntu, a Ghanian vegan restaurant in Melrose. His wife is a travel writer— and she was off somewhere writing— and Charlie and I started exchanging travel stories. When I asked him if he had ever been to Sri Lanka, he recoiled. He said ever since I had told him about a crocodile jumping out of a pond a few feet from us and grabbing a small deer, he had taken Sri Lanka off his list. I had no recollection of that. But then it slowly started coming back to me. I texted Roland and asked him if he remembered. He did and said it was a Yala National Park. That rang a bell.
Then it all did come back to me. We were in Hambantota and we had a couple of days before we had to drive up to Kandy to meet our friend Steve (this Steve) and we decided to see some wildlife. But Yala was kind of on the frontlines of the civil war and we were warned to not go there. Ah ha! And Roland’s the one with the photographic memory! So we went to another national park, Bundala, which was also near Hambantota. But before I get into that day that freaked out Charlie and that had so traumatized me that I had repressed it, want a little Sri Lanka background? Here's what I could remember from the trip to Ceylon in 1970 and the trip to Sri Lanka in 1997 (I think). This picture of Charlie was neither in the Hippie Trail days no more recent. I think we were on a trip to Maine in something like 1976.
Honestly, I don’t remember too much about my first trip, still Ceylon, in 1970. I had spent a couple of months in Goa and drove down through Kerala to Ramaswarman. In those days there was a ferry from there to Talaimannar, a narrow peninsular jutting out into the Gulf of Mannar. Ceylon seemed like about the most faraway, exotic place I had planned to go to on my drive across Asia, a place I had always fantasized about. After months in India, anything would be a breeze so I had no trepidation whatsoever
I do recall that the road wasn't great— but that wasn’t out of the ordinary— and I can remember that I never saw a plate or eating utensils on the whole drive south; all food was served on banana leaves. I guess it’s kind of a truism to say that the food got spicier and spicier the further south you ventured, but even a truism is based on something. I love spicy food and it didn't bother me at all. South Indian cooking is very different from North Indian cooking and I dove in wholeheartedly. Yeah, so the roads were definitely not as good as the food. I remember once there was a big boulder in the middle of the narrow road but I realized immediately it was a trap set by dacoits (bandits). Fortunately they were lethargic and lame and we somehow managed to avoid being killed or even interacting much with them, besides flipping them off as we drove away.
I can't remember who I was with at this point. I used to meet people who liked the convenience of a nice new VW van. They got transportation and paid the gas and other car-related costs. I was thoroughly broke at this point, having run out of whatever money I had in Goa. All I remember about the Cochin to Sri Lanka crew is that everyone got tattoos when we got to Jaffna except me (who thought a- it was probably unsanitary, and b- it would nix any chance I had of being buried in a Jewish cemetery if I ever changed my mind about the religion thing). But I'm jumping ahead of the story.
After outsmarting the dacoits and arriving in Rameswaram, I don't recall much about the town. Supposedly it's a big pilgrimage scene but I don't recall anything but it being a small, grimy port town with a ferry that crossed the Palk Strait to Talaimannar at the tip of a small peninsula that jutted out of northwestern Ceylon (which is what Sri Lanka was called then). The problem was that the ferry was too big for the port at Rameswaram and one had to be rowed out to the ship on a small boat. My recollection— colored by unabated terror even after decades— can't possibly be precise. They put a wooden plank between two small boats and had me drive my van (which was my entire universe at the time— and not insured) onto it, so they could row it out to the ship which had a crane to lift it aboard. It sounds beyond belief— even to me! But what I do remember in vivid detail is being on the ferry with my van hanging in mid-air, courtesy of the crane, and a representative of the Indian (or Ceylonese) maritime workers union approaching me for some baksheesh, a kind of tip or bribe. It was a smart time to ask because I was thoroughly terrified and in no position to bicker, something I had become adept at over the preceding year. I think he wanted $6 or 7 and, although that put a serious dent in my budget, I was happy to give it to him and get my van back safely. The Ceylonese side had a pier where the ferry actually docked.
I forgot to mention that I was smuggling. I had found that the Ceylonese wanted cheap saris from India and the Indians wanted large tins of coconut oil from Ceylon. No one ever checked the van for anything ever. I made a lot more money later in the year smuggling alcohol from Pondicherry, the old French (Christian) colony just south of what was then called Madras (now Chennai), to Madras’ YMCA where Muslim gentlemen put out by Madras’ dry laws were eagerly waiting. Like I said, no one ever checked the van and I scraped up enough to live for a month or two at a time.
There were literally no tourists traveling this way; I mean I never met one driving around southern India the whole time. So we had no real advice about what to do or where to go. I suppose the normal thing would have been to drive south to Colombo. So, of course, I drove north to Jaffna, the Tamil city. I remember it being a big, busy exotic city without a lot of charm, but with delicious food. I remember eating omelets cooked in coconut oil; delicious! The taste stayed with me for decades and eventually brought me back to Ceylon (by then Sri Lanka) for another visit. Everything was cooked in coconut oil. I bet you didn't know that coconut oil is very healthy, did you? We were all brainwashed into thinking it was horribly fattening and disease-causing. But that's completely false.
I don't remember much about that first trip beyond the tastes and smells... and the beautiful tropical beaches. It was a real chill-out time for me after the hustle and bustle of all-consuming India— kind of like a vacation. I made a point of circumnavigating the island— something that was impossible later because of the guerilla war and I can remember a few towns that I really liked standing out, Walauttu, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee on the east coast, Hikkaduwa, Hambantota and Galle on the glorious south coast, Nuwara Eliya, Kandy (home of the sacred Temple of the Tooth), and Anuradhapura in the middle. I never stayed at one hotel, just slept in the van or on the beach every single night. I have a recollection of swimming and lounging around the beach during the hot days and then driving into the cooler highlands to sleep at night.
I know for sure that in my mind and in my tales, I had painted a picture of Ceylon as an earthly paradise. I certainly remembered it that way from the month or so I spent there in 1970. So for some of my friends, it also became a place of their dreams, especially for my adventurous friends, in this case, good old Roland and Steve, both of whom decided to join me for a trip there in 1997 or around that time.
Actually, Roland and I flew there and Steve met up with us— almost randomly, in Kandy, after a couple weeks. First off, Sri Lanka is about as far away as you can go and still be on earth. I remember the plane trip there in terms of days instead of hours. We flew on Cathay Pacific, one of my over-all favorite airlines, but no matter how good the airline, even in first class, a plane trip this long is a nightmare.
When we got to Colombo I was a physical mess from the flight. Scorning the corporate modernity of the Intercontinental, I opted for the (faded) grandeur and glory of the dowager of Colombo hotels, the legendary Galle Face, which was built during the Civil War— the American Civil War! I remembered back to 1970 when I used to park my van nearby and sneak in to use its luxurious facilities, and dream that someday I might be able to stay in such an august and venerable establishment. I usually tend to opt for that kind of hotel over a newer flashier one.
Now, I notice on their website that the Galle Face underwent a much-needed facelift in 2005. When we arrived late one night, bedraggled and exhausted from the planes, we dragged ourselves up to the room and barely noticed the antiquity (not antiques, oldness). It wasn't just a little (understandable) mustiness either. Everything was too small, like built for little people in the 1800s. There was a sink in the room and when I woke up the next morning I had to bend down so low to brush my teeth that I totally pulled my back out! Since basically no improvements have been made to the country's infrastructure (read: roads) since (their) civil war started, I knew bumping along pot-holed roads with a screwed up back would be no fun.
Fortunately, the hotel directed me to “the blind masseur,” who was reputed to have magical abilities. I figured he must be good because he was the masseur who was used by the mother/daughter team who were the President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka at the time: Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. I also figured he must go to them once I was in his establishment which had the distinct vibe of a house of ill-repute. He gave me a great massage and I later found out— from Roland, of course, who was “waiting”— that it was indeed a whorehouse!
Sri Lanka's many much-ballyhooed charms, though, aren't in Colombo and we were soon bouncing along the roads, which were noticeably worse than they were in 1970; wars'll do that to a country. We headed south in a rental car. And south from Colombo means one thing: beautiful tropical beaches without compare. I think the first one we came to that I recalled from my 1970 trip was Hikkaduwa. It was nicer in my youthful memories but it was still ok-- just a gorgeous beach, maybe a little too touristy. We stayed in a charmless motel-type hotel right on the beach. All the charm was the proximity to the ocean, the palm trees, the blue, blue skies... We met a monk who was very friendly and showed us his hut.
The only really unpleasant thing about Hikkaduwa that I recall was when we hired a boat to show us the coral reefs. The guy was a real doofus who seemed to actually take delight in smashing off pieces of coral. Roland and I both freaked out and told him to take us back to the beach. But the freak accidentally beached the boat on a huge coral reef. I mean it had taken thousands of years for this to grow and he was smashing it to bits in minutes. He told me to get out of the boat and give it a push. The coral is razor sharp and my feet immediately started bleeding. Right then the coral reef protection police saw him and started screaming into a megaphone. He actually took off and left me bleeding on the coral reef. Roland was still in the boat. I had my snorkel mask on. I painfully made it to the edge of the coral and jumped in the water and decided to swim back to shore through the labyrinth of the most gorgeous living coral environment I had ever experienced. It blew my mind. Unfortunately, as I navigated through the schools of incredibly beautiful fish and the colorful coral corridors, every now and then I'd see a real big fish, big enough to be a shark. And then I would remember about my bleeding feet and how blood attracts sharks. I'm more afraid of sharks and crocodiles than anything else in the world. I managed to hold down the panic and eventually get back to the beach. I filed a formal police complaint against the boat operator.
After a couple of very relaxed days we headed further down the coast. We stopped for an hour in the historic old colonial town of Galle; nice. Then we went to a relatively secluded beach town, more up my alley: Tangalla. I think we were pretty much the only tourists in town. It's a real paradise, very tropical and peaceful with an undisturbed beach. We stayed in some weird bizarro hotel shaped like a boat. We went swimming in a secluded bay— just us and some Lankan kids in a big truck tire— and found a big cow bone. I seem to recall that we didn't eat in restaurants per se but in people's homes who prepare fresh food for passersby. The food was the best. I would have been happy staying there for the whole time but after a few days we headed further down the coast to Hambantota.
It's not as lush and green as you head east along to coast, although I remember passing a swamp filled with the biggest array of birds I'd ever seen just before we got to Hambantota. Hambantota is a little misty in the ole mind except for a few very vivid memories. I think the hotel we stayed in— a dump— was called the Suisse Hotel. An entire wing of it seemed to have been abandoned to a huge colony of bats which would come flying through the hallways— much to the delight of everyone (all locals)— around dusk everyday. There were a couple of Germans, a couple of Frenchmen and me and Roland staying there. They didn't need the other wing. The hotel was right near the huge expansive beach which was so pure and beautiful and— as we soon found out— thoroughly treacherous. We had heard the best diving in Sri Lanka was just east of Hambantota. The “just” was something we should have paid more attention to. You're going to think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that the undertow was so powerful that before I was in the ocean barely above my ankles I was being swept out to sea. I never experienced such an awesome force of nature before (other than once when I was in an empty field in Afghanistan and there was an earthquake).
Anyway, that pretty much put an end to our swimming adventures on the south coast of Sri Lanka. We decided to spend the day at the Bundala National Park instead. We hired two guys and a jeep for our own little safari and we were really happy with how pristine the scrubby jungle was— tons of birds and monkeys and little deer. We were lovin' it. Then one guide told us to come with him down a path on foot while the driver waited in the jeep. He brought us to what looked like the original Garden of Eden, a lake that appeared to have never been in contact with humanity. The birds were singin', the monkeys were chattering; there were elephants on the other end of the lake spraying water on each other. Can you imagine how beautiful it looked and sounded? And then a tiny spotted deer approached the lake. He was as big as a large dog and maybe 5 or 6 feet from me, a little tentative at first, watching us but when he saw we made no aggressive moves towards him he stuck his face in the lake for a drink. What happened next took one second— considerably quicker than my description. The whole forest exploded in sound like a nuclear bomb blast. The monkeys went ape-shit; the birds were yellin' their heads off and flying around like madmen and the imperturbably happy-go-lucky elephants started trumpeting excitedly. Roland and I lost our breath. A gigantic crocodile came flying out of the lake and in one movement grabbed the deer, sank back into the lake, rolled over once and disappeared.
The guide noticed our discomfiture and started kicking the water to attract more crocodiles. We scurried up the bank and blindly started running out of the jungle, forgetting that Sri Lanka is the snake bite capital of the world. When we were all back safely in the (open) jeep the guide told the driver to drive along the non-jungle side of the lake and scare the sunning crocs by getting real close to their tails. I wasn't happy about the jaunty angle the jeep was at and was completely terrified. I was delighted to get back to our own car and head up into the highlands. As we headed away from Hambantota we passed a snake bigger than me slithering down the road. Half a kilometer on we saw two little barefoot girls in school uniforms walking down the road in his direction.
Wow! VG