We are back in Colombo after being gone for a week. And what a week it was! We spent the first night in Habarana then moved on to a resort called Amaya Lake that was about twenty minutes into the jungle from the main road. Ron was attending a full staff retreat with the TALG program of the Asia Foundation. There were about 25 in attendance plus two facilitators from Canada. The sessions started Sunday night and on Tuesday there was a horrid incident where a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of government soldiers who had stopped for a break. I think we mentioned this in our previous blog. A day or two later, Navy vessels in the harbor in Galle on the SW coast were attached. We had difficulty learning much about the damage there as we didn’t have TV in the resort and newspapers came some days and not others. I know some of you worry about us but I need to once again say that these attacks are always targeted to military or politicians. It is possible to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So while Ron was working I once again took the role of tourist. I was put off by the price the resort quoted for a car and driver so we resorted to networking. Ron called a young man who is a driver for the Asia Foundation. Samon grew up in the Dambulla area. Ron asked if Samon knew anyone in the area who was a driver with a car for hire. Within five minutes I had my man. Suranga drove me to sights for two full days. On day one I visited Aukana where there is a magnificent 12-meter high statue of Buddha, carved from a single rock. Photos will be posted soon. It has been ascribed to King Dhatusena (459-77). The carving is so perfectly symmetrical that when it rains the water drops from Buddha’s nose down to the center of the 10 cm. lotus blossom upon which he is standing.

We went back to Dambulla where I found some cool batik blouses for $3.50 each. I had lunch back at the hotel with Ron and the gang and Suranga picked me up around 2:30 and took me to a Jeep safari where I hired a guide and we took off for the Minneriya National Park. Suranga joined us. Here I saw wonderful birds like 100’s of painted storks, an adjutant stork that is the only stork that flies with its neck retracted, a beautiful gray headed fish eagle, bee eaters, pelicans, cormorants and lapwings. In addition I saw a jackal, two rabbits, a turtle and a huge herd (around 80-100) of elephants. What a thrill. There was a big grassy plain near the tank (reservoir). Because it is the end of the dry season, many elephants make their way to this region because there is always water and green vegetation here. It was much more lush than Yala National Park. While we were in this region it rained several times.

We got back to the resort after dark and agreed to meet again the next morning at 8:30. Suranga is 25, single and supports his parents and younger sister who is 16. He has seven more payments on the used 1990 van he bought and when he isn’t driving he does wood carvings. On Thursday morning he gave me a gift of one of his carvings, a lovely modern carving of a woman in a thinking pose. I was quite touched. On Thursday I first went to see an ancient temple in Nalanda about 19 km south of Dambulla. This was a small-reconstructed ‘gedige’ (Buddha image house) and shares some features in common with Hindu temples in southern India. Some tantric carvings have been found in the structure that combines Hindu and Buddhists features. I noticed one such carving that looked erotic in nature and very much like carvings I had seen in India. This structure dates from the seventh century. The setting was lovely. We were the only people there and the approach to the structure is along a raised pathway with a canopy of trees overhead. The structure sits on the edge of a tank.

From here we drove to Aluwihare where I visited another temple that dates from the first and second century. I visited here because you can see how monks wrote the scriptures on palm leaves. The leaves are prepared by first drying, boiling and drying again, and then flattened and coated with shell. A stylus was used for inscribing, held stationary while the leaf was moved to produce the lettering (the rounded shape of some Asian scripts was the result of this technology). The inscribed grooves were then rubbed with powdered charcoal and rubbed clean using a little oil. Due to the size/shape of the palm leaf, the scriptures are about two inches wide and 12 inches long. The leaves would be stacked, sometimes strung together and sometimes bound together between decorative wooden covers.

What I hadn’t realized was that this temple has depictions of a chamber of horrors illustrating punishments doled out to sinners by eager demons, including spearing of the body and pouring boiling oil into the mouth. The demons were painted black and reminded me of racist’s art. Photo will be posted. Next came the Matale Heritage Center that is known for its quality crafts: needlework, batiks and metalwork. I saw women working on batik designs on a custom order for a hotel. I watched as they dyed batiks in huge vats outside and heated the boiling dyes with wood. I watched women create beautiful cushion covers with intricate needlework. It takes seven days to make one cover and they sell of $15. I have two that I had bought in Colombo where there was a mark and they sold for $20. For seven days work! I didn’t buy anything but enjoyed watching the various processes. This is a privately owned organization that has been around since the sixties. The women are trained for six months and then earn their living by working for the Heritage Center. If I understood correctly, they are paid while learning but not as much as when they are finished with the training. Next I stopped at a government facility where they make hand loomed cotton items. I have purchased quite a few articles of clothing for family members, friends and us and wanted to see the process. It is quite labor intensive, as you would imagine. I took photos but unfortunately our camera malfunctions sporadically and this was one of those times. I came back to the hotel for a quick lunch with Ron and the gang and asked Suranga to take me to the craft center where he has his woodcarvings. There I visited a metal smith and bought a tea caddy for Veena and bought an elephant carving for Geetha that Suranga had made.

We were to take a bus provided by the resort back to Colombo but learned that it stopped to drop off staff that lived along the way. It took six hours for the bus to get to the resort and since there would be five extra passengers (those of us who had taken a van up there) we decided it would take forever to get home. We called Suranga and hired him to bring us back to Colombo. We left on 8:30 this morning (Friday) and we were stopped twice at security checkpoints. Both of these were staffed by national police. The driver always has to get out of the car and take his papers to the police who are standing by the road. At the first stop one of the policemen told Suranga he wanted 200 rupees since he was ‘driving tourists and had a lot of money’. Suranga talked him out of it. However at the second stop, the policeman said Suranga had ‘crossed over the pavement marking’ and fined him 1000 rupees. This is an enormous amount of money in SL. Suranga begged him to not fine him. You should know that everyone who drives in SL, crosses over the lines all the time. It was obvious that this was nothing other than graft because when you are fined, they take your license, you go to the post office, pay your fine and return to pick up your license. Suranga was not sent to pay the fine but requested to pay the officer directly. There was no receipt given for the fine so we know the policeman pocketed the money. He also said, ‘you are driving rich tourists so you have plenty of money’. I was furious so when Ron paid Suranga he threw in an extra 1000 rupees. I suggested that Suranga hide his cash in the car next time so when asked to ‘pay money’ he can open his wallet and only have one or two hundred rupees so the officer will leave him alone. As it was, Suranga had all the money I had paid him for two days work and the money from the carving I bought so he had almost 14,000 rupees on him.

So that's how it goes in paradise, five degrees above the equator.