Monday, October 17, 2005
Sri Lanka is India lite, middle class India, what India would be like if it didnÕt have 600m people living on the breadline. It is, in a weird, third world sort of way, rather middle class. Indeed, it is an interesting Sri Lanka fact that, in the mid 1960s, SL had roughly the same standard of living as Singapore. ThatÕs what forty years of vaguely socialist government and civil war does for you.
I pitched up at the airport and got a cab straight to Kandy in the hills, stopping en route for breakfast which was pretty good. It helps if you like curry: I enjoyed dahl, three kinds of curry and sambol. Sri Lankan food is an order of magnitude hotter than Indian and chilli and coffee are a bad combination. En route the driver told me many interesting facts, although the one that sticks in my mind is that using your mobile phone while driving and drunk driving attract the same fine, 5000R or about #30.
Built around a lake, Kandy is a strange place. ItÕs attractive and has a nice lake and temple. It also has an oddly metropolitan feel with a population about 120,000; in fact if anything itÕs a bit too busy for a hill town. ItÕs also not especially high, so too hot. Still, I found a nice enough guesthouse and had a lunch not dissimilar to breakfast.
Later on, I wandered into town, by now brutally jet lagged. Although pleasant in the day, by night Kandy takes on a slightly less pleasant air. I sat down for some tea to revive my jet lag and, shortly, a guy called Ravi sat next to me. Did I mind? No. We chatted and he seemed OK in a persistent slightly irritating way. I pumped him for information and, as the time came for a natural parting of the ways, he insisted we went for a beer. OK, I said, mainly because I was sop jet lagged that yes was easier than no.
So we went to a bar. I refused his choice on the grounds that I was quite sure he was a spiv. But, well you know, you have to give people the benefit of the doubtÉwell, actually you donÕt and you shouldnÕt. Ravi chose 8% beer, I went for 4 and we continued to chat. As he got drunker, he became cruder and started telling me about Ōtight thai p-ssyÕ and so on. Two of his friends joined us; right my friend, I thought, this is where you walk out without your wallet.
RaviÕs friends were even worse than he was, but I kept my wits about me. He started exhorting me to have a bottle of arak with him and his friends. No, I was too tired. DonÕt you trust us. I went for the non-answer: I donÕt know you. Ravi said heÕd get the bill (for me); I said it was fine. Not that it mattered: the waiter was in cahoots with him and all the beers were marked up by about 300%. Oh, and there was a bottle of arak on the bill. I couldnÕt be bothered to argue about the beers, but I had the waiter take the arak off which he did in that amused, of fancy that, sir, youÕve caught me ripping you off sort of way.
Ravi then appeared. Please by some arak for me and my friends. I explained I had, by my reckoning, already scored him six beers. No, he said, that is the price, donÕt you trust me. No, I said, I donÕt trust you. Oh just give me the money for the arak. No. He grabbed my shoulder, not violently, just to try and stop me from going.
ItÕs quite a nice thing when you get to the stage where you really feel as if you have earned the right to tell someone to fŃk off. And it really is an international piece of language. He did.
The next morning I got the train up to Nuwara Eilya, a proper hill station very high in the centre of central Sri LankaÕs appreciable mountains. There was the usual bureaucracy: you cannot buy a first class ticket because they are all booked. Can I buy a second class ticket? Not until 8. And you have to use the other line.
Still, it is one of the worldÕs great train journeys (if not one of its great trains). You clank across an incredible landscape, past hills, waterfalls and mountains. My journey was enlivened by the people in my carriage. I was next to a nice couple from Colombo who were doing what Sri Lankans like to do on holiday which is go somewhere cold. There were also a pair of English girls sitting underneath a sign saying ŌFor ClergyÕ. They were nice, but dressed identically Š what makes you wake in the morning and think ŌIÕll wear exactly what sheÕs wearing.Õ There was a sulky girl next to me and a German woman who was convinced the train was filthy and was very uncomfortable. Germans are a rum lot, you see them everywhere, in real third world places and yet they love hygiene and order. There is something Calvinist in the national character; who else would go on holiday to suffer?
Most Hill stations have a British theme and look like Surrey villages that have found themselves on the wrong continent. Not Nuwara Eilya: instead of being Ersatz English, it is sham Scottish. To be fair, the Scots did a pretty good job of approximating home. There are pine trees everywhere; Scottish houses sit all over the place (although mercifully no tenenement blocks.Õ Oh and it p-sses with rain about half the time. On the afternoon I arrived, the place looked very charicature of Glen Misery on an October afternoon. It required no effort whatsoever to imagine a Scottish tea planter sitting by his fire, murmuring contentedly, ŌOch, just like home.Õ
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I pitched up at the airport and got a cab straight to Kandy in the hills, stopping en route for breakfast which was pretty good. It helps if you like curry: I enjoyed dahl, three kinds of curry and sambol. Sri Lankan food is an order of magnitude hotter than Indian and chilli and coffee are a bad combination. En route the driver told me many interesting facts, although the one that sticks in my mind is that using your mobile phone while driving and drunk driving attract the same fine, 5000R or about #30.
Built around a lake, Kandy is a strange place. ItÕs attractive and has a nice lake and temple. It also has an oddly metropolitan feel with a population about 120,000; in fact if anything itÕs a bit too busy for a hill town. ItÕs also not especially high, so too hot. Still, I found a nice enough guesthouse and had a lunch not dissimilar to breakfast.
Later on, I wandered into town, by now brutally jet lagged. Although pleasant in the day, by night Kandy takes on a slightly less pleasant air. I sat down for some tea to revive my jet lag and, shortly, a guy called Ravi sat next to me. Did I mind? No. We chatted and he seemed OK in a persistent slightly irritating way. I pumped him for information and, as the time came for a natural parting of the ways, he insisted we went for a beer. OK, I said, mainly because I was sop jet lagged that yes was easier than no.
So we went to a bar. I refused his choice on the grounds that I was quite sure he was a spiv. But, well you know, you have to give people the benefit of the doubtÉwell, actually you donÕt and you shouldnÕt. Ravi chose 8% beer, I went for 4 and we continued to chat. As he got drunker, he became cruder and started telling me about Ōtight thai p-ssyÕ and so on. Two of his friends joined us; right my friend, I thought, this is where you walk out without your wallet.
RaviÕs friends were even worse than he was, but I kept my wits about me. He started exhorting me to have a bottle of arak with him and his friends. No, I was too tired. DonÕt you trust us. I went for the non-answer: I donÕt know you. Ravi said heÕd get the bill (for me); I said it was fine. Not that it mattered: the waiter was in cahoots with him and all the beers were marked up by about 300%. Oh, and there was a bottle of arak on the bill. I couldnÕt be bothered to argue about the beers, but I had the waiter take the arak off which he did in that amused, of fancy that, sir, youÕve caught me ripping you off sort of way.
Ravi then appeared. Please by some arak for me and my friends. I explained I had, by my reckoning, already scored him six beers. No, he said, that is the price, donÕt you trust me. No, I said, I donÕt trust you. Oh just give me the money for the arak. No. He grabbed my shoulder, not violently, just to try and stop me from going.
ItÕs quite a nice thing when you get to the stage where you really feel as if you have earned the right to tell someone to fŃk off. And it really is an international piece of language. He did.
The next morning I got the train up to Nuwara Eilya, a proper hill station very high in the centre of central Sri LankaÕs appreciable mountains. There was the usual bureaucracy: you cannot buy a first class ticket because they are all booked. Can I buy a second class ticket? Not until 8. And you have to use the other line.
Still, it is one of the worldÕs great train journeys (if not one of its great trains). You clank across an incredible landscape, past hills, waterfalls and mountains. My journey was enlivened by the people in my carriage. I was next to a nice couple from Colombo who were doing what Sri Lankans like to do on holiday which is go somewhere cold. There were also a pair of English girls sitting underneath a sign saying ŌFor ClergyÕ. They were nice, but dressed identically Š what makes you wake in the morning and think ŌIÕll wear exactly what sheÕs wearing.Õ There was a sulky girl next to me and a German woman who was convinced the train was filthy and was very uncomfortable. Germans are a rum lot, you see them everywhere, in real third world places and yet they love hygiene and order. There is something Calvinist in the national character; who else would go on holiday to suffer?
Most Hill stations have a British theme and look like Surrey villages that have found themselves on the wrong continent. Not Nuwara Eilya: instead of being Ersatz English, it is sham Scottish. To be fair, the Scots did a pretty good job of approximating home. There are pine trees everywhere; Scottish houses sit all over the place (although mercifully no tenenement blocks.Õ Oh and it p-sses with rain about half the time. On the afternoon I arrived, the place looked very charicature of Glen Misery on an October afternoon. It required no effort whatsoever to imagine a Scottish tea planter sitting by his fire, murmuring contentedly, ŌOch, just like home.Õ
