To The Jungle

A five hour journey in two trains, the first uncomfortably standing throughout, brought us to Waikkal. Here, for our last two Lanka nights, we’re staying in a jungle chalets complex, right by the Gin (pronounced yin) Oya river. On the station platform at Hikkaduwa, we bumped into Anne Browne (Plantag), travelling with her friend Linda around the island.

Our chalet has a bathroom open to the skies & insects of all manner & sizes –  cockroaches, beetles, frogs & mantis. We’re in the jungle, yet within earshot of trains & airplanes landing / taking off from the island’s Bandaranaika International Airport. A small chunk of jungle, then.

The complex has two cows plus one junior, a ‘rescue’ called Elodi; they are friendly and roam wherever, incl. to your table in the restaurant, yet no sign of steaming cow pats. Domesticated or what!

Went to the beach & loved the not-so-high waves. Very few people there but many in the series of resort complexes just inland of the beach. On our return, both the manager & the chef warned us of the dangerous sea along Kammala beach; only last month three people drowned, with two trying to rescue the one that was dragged out by a wave. Kaff doesn’t want to go there today (our last in Sri Lanka).

This safari-styled hotel was sold last December. The manager & chef were brought in by the new owners, all the other staff being retained. Have had long conversations with two former and a brief one with the new owner, who appeared yesterday. He informed us he has bought a hotel for each of his two children – they’re 15 & 10. We explained it might not work out quite like that!

Some final thoughts:-

Fire – Lankans like making fire, little fires, border fires, bush fires, brush fires, even a fire in a frying pan. Any excuse, they’ll light up.

Tea – we was misinformed, tea leaves are picked every 7 to 10 days, not years! Agh! The tea pickers are nearly all Tamils, who were imported by Thomas Lipton & other plantation owners from India because the locals didn’t want such hard jobs. Remind you of more recent immigration in western Europe? The picking is eight hours a day for, we were informed, pitifully low wages. The workers mostly live just outside the plantations in what can best be described as shacks. Meanwhile, both the manager & the deputy manager are given houses inside the plantations. No further comment.

We’re due to fly out at 02.55 tomorrow morning. After a three and a half hour stopover in Kuwait airport, we should land at Heathrow at about 13.45. That’s a long day already. The time differential is five and a half hours.