Smiling Sri Lanka

If you ask my Dad the thing he'll likely remember the most from his recent tour around Sri Lanka my bet is he'll say the many disarming smiles he received along the way. I'm sure I have written about these smiles before, if not shame on me. Just as India is often touted as the place that perfected love, Sri Lanka is undoubtedly the land that has perfected the smile. To give an example you can be driving along one of the busy and heavily policed streets in Colombo and be roughly pulled over by the army, police or navy at any split second. The guards at the checkpoint are dressed in full military garb complete with large shotgun in hand. Once pulled over a group of officers will slowly make their way over to your vehicle. They'll stick their heads decisively inside the passenger window and bark out a few harsh words at the driver. And then as you sit there frozen in anticipation of the unknown- you're dismissed as quickly as you arrived, left with a flash of a beautiful, wide and white-toothed grin. And its a real smile, a real genuine smile from the officer who stands on the street all day in 40 degree weather in full army fatigues hoisting a rifle over his back. And the smiles don't stop there, they continue on to the very elderly woman sweeping away gravel with hopes of making a few rupees to feed herself, to the slight, young child walking barefoot along the hot tar road to make his way to school. The smiles are contagious, sincere and completely disarming. As my Dad put it we could all learn a lot from the extreme kindness the Sri Lankans offer one another, in the gesture as simple as a smile.

Very early this morning my Dad and little brother Chris left Sri Lanka after 11 planned days and 2 unexpected ones. The unexpected ones came as a great bonus for me but were the result of the complete cancellation of all night flights. Due to the rising conflict here, with the new bombings in Colombo last week every airline shut down its night flights wary of the heightened security risk after dark. So, after spending an additional day with them in Colombo I woke up this morning alone. As amazing as it was to have them here, the sudden loneliness that follows the goodbye is always really difficult. But I've also never really understood why they are called "goodbyes" - seeing as they rarely leave you feeling good. That said, while I'm hopeful that they both enjoyed their time here I'm guessing they were anxious to leave the tremendous heat, bugs and obvious poverty behind them. I, on the other hand, enjoyed one last breakfast buffet at the Hilton, grabbed by bag and ventured off to the Fort Train Station. Today, was my first experience taking the train all the way from Colombo to Matara and one that while interesting enough, I'm hoping not to have to do too often. I arrvied at the station, picked up my ticket to Matara for a hefty 195rupees (around $2 CAD) and joined a hundred other weary passengers at aisle 5. After waiting a good 45 minutes and anxious to jump on the train and win myself a coveted forward facing window seat, I was grabbed by a man and pushed towards aisle 6. He motioned for me to get on this train as it was the one to Matara-

I have learnt to be somewhat skeptical of random helpful strangers, but after asking a few others sadly discovered that this was indeed my train.I say sadly because the train was jam packed without me and my two rather large and heavy bags. Hmmm. Well, my dreams of having a front facing window seat quickly vanished and I silently surrendered to the reality of sitting on one bag with the other one in between my knees. I sat cramped into a small crevace next to the open train galley door along with 10 other unfortunate people. And so continued the next 5 hours. So, the trip home was a bit of a struggle but the past two weeks with Chris and Dad definitely soften the impact. I met them in Colombo, where they rested and relaxed at a nice 5 star metropolitan hotel to fight off the jetlag and get them ready for a busy couple of weeks. You'll have to ask each of them what the highlights were, but for me I really enjoyed staying at Kandalama Hotel in Dambulla and hiking up Sigiriya the Eight Wonder of the World. The hotel was built into the side of a large rock and sat adjacent to a beautiful lake filled with Mangroves and surrounded by rainforest. An equally beaufitul place was the little town of Ella which just received electricity in 1984. We stayed at this amazing guesthouse right at the top of this large hill and had a direct view of Ella Gap which is 1000m deep. Waterfalls and forest were all around and the sense of tranquility and peace at this place made it impossible to remember the war-torn streets of Colombo and the North. Definitely a place I'll go back to. It would take me ages to write of every experience we had and as usual it is difficult to capture the true beauty of Sri Lanka in just a few words. All in all, it was an icredible visit that showed me a different side of this diverse little island. It's easy to fall in love with Sri Lanka but when you have your family and friends here to fall in love also, it makes all the difference.