Beth and I are planning this trip as we go. When we land in a place with a good internet connection we sort out the next leg, bouncing ideas off one another, scrutinizing maps and web sites. Most often we end up renting private apartments which becomes our base camp from where we conduct excursions exploring the area. This has worked out really well. We meet our local host who almost always helps us unravel the mystery of a place much faster than if we relied on biased or indifferent hotel clerks.
Arriving at a foreign place, be it an apartment or a country, is usually intimidating. Us humans come preprogrammed with a negativity bias. During the course of our evolution, this bias has helped keep us out of harm but also confounds modern man with anxiety based upon threats that are not real. Injecting yourself into an unknown culture in an unfamiliar place heightens this protective but paranoic mechanism. This is why hotels worldwide have a comfortable uniformity of experience. Little islands of familiarity in a dark sea of menacing mystery.
We realized that we would have to book the weeks around the holidays well in advance. We choose Sri Lanka first because it is a mostly Buddhist country that largely ignores Christmas and, secondly, because we anticipated needing a vacation after our sojourn through India. We could kick back for a couple weeks with a more relaxed schedule, reading, napping and staring at the ocean. We booked an "Aruyvedic farm house" in a rural village about 5 kilometers from the Indian Ocean.
Our new host, Hetti, came to Columbo with a driver and we drove several hours south to our new digs. Hetti, about my age, spent many years traveling the world as a sailor. His English is good and he was brought up in the tiny village of Uruvitiya where the farmhouse is located. The house is substantial by local standards. It is a two story concrete building with lots of rooms and many decks and patios. However several things set off alarm bells when we arrived. The kitchen was primitive and filled with old bottles containing unknown liquids, pastes and herbs. There is an open fire pit with ancient looking cooking tools and many many clay pots. The house, situated in the jungle with interspersed rice paddies seemed like a mosquito's wet dream. There are no screens on the many windows and mosquito netting above the beds. And then there was Hetti, by all appearances a kind and gentle soul but it appeared he came with the house, something we had not anticipated and were anxious about. Finally it was hot and muggy, being just 5 degrees north of the equator and surrounded by water.
That first night we slept poorly worrying that our vacation retreat was instead an incarceration. The next morning I woke to the distant sound of Buddhist monks chanting. I stepped out onto the upper deck as the first tentative light appeared and looked out. Acres of green rice paddies fed by gently flowing streams, lush tropical foliage including coconut palms, mango and banana trees. Egrets and storks plying the paddies as small flocks of Ring Necked Parakeets flew from tree to tree quarreling. Then the loud squawk of a peacock roosting on top of the highest palm declaring his sovereignty. A tiny primitive road cut through the scene, and as the light grew the village around us awoke.
During the course of our stay, looking out over the village has become a favorite pastime. Old men feeding fish left over rice out of pure Buddhist charity. A young boy whose charge it was to keep the birds out of his family rice plot by waving his arms and shouting, throwing pebbles and the occasional firecracker. He took his work very seriously and with great joy leaping barefooted lithely along the dykes his toddler brother in his arms at times. And everywhere people stopping on the road to chat.
Whenever we walk down any of the myriad roads and paths that crisscross the jungle, we are always greeted with beaming excited smiles and salutations. We are the only white people here and most of the locals know only a few English phrases: hello hello, where you from, Ok Ok good. This does not in anyway limit the clear message that these are happy people who are sincerely glad to see us. Their eyes beam and they have this irresistible head-shoulder wiggle that is perhaps the most disarming and open gesture that I have ever experienced.
And then there is Hetti. He has taken us under-wing a great protector and guide in addition to being a warm loving man. His stories of sea travel include being captured by Somolian pirates and harrowing failed attempts to round the Horn of South Africa in raging storms. His success was hard earned, leaving home at a tender age, penniless and alone, traveling overland through Afghanistan and Iran to dubious prospects in Great Britain. There he worked the docks until his incredible work ethic was noticed by a Greek captain and his career was launched. Now Hetti and I cook for each other and sip Arrack in the evenings together.
And so what at first seemed unsettling is now completely comfortable. Our stay here is almost done and it will seem, once again, like leaving home when we depart. It's bittersweet but one of the best things about traveling is the way strangeness converts to comfort. If you take the effort to learn a place and its people, it lives in your heart forever- you own it and it owns a piece if you.
Arriving at a foreign place, be it an apartment or a country, is usually intimidating. Us humans come preprogrammed with a negativity bias. During the course of our evolution, this bias has helped keep us out of harm but also confounds modern man with anxiety based upon threats that are not real. Injecting yourself into an unknown culture in an unfamiliar place heightens this protective but paranoic mechanism. This is why hotels worldwide have a comfortable uniformity of experience. Little islands of familiarity in a dark sea of menacing mystery.
We realized that we would have to book the weeks around the holidays well in advance. We choose Sri Lanka first because it is a mostly Buddhist country that largely ignores Christmas and, secondly, because we anticipated needing a vacation after our sojourn through India. We could kick back for a couple weeks with a more relaxed schedule, reading, napping and staring at the ocean. We booked an "Aruyvedic farm house" in a rural village about 5 kilometers from the Indian Ocean.
Our new host, Hetti, came to Columbo with a driver and we drove several hours south to our new digs. Hetti, about my age, spent many years traveling the world as a sailor. His English is good and he was brought up in the tiny village of Uruvitiya where the farmhouse is located. The house is substantial by local standards. It is a two story concrete building with lots of rooms and many decks and patios. However several things set off alarm bells when we arrived. The kitchen was primitive and filled with old bottles containing unknown liquids, pastes and herbs. There is an open fire pit with ancient looking cooking tools and many many clay pots. The house, situated in the jungle with interspersed rice paddies seemed like a mosquito's wet dream. There are no screens on the many windows and mosquito netting above the beds. And then there was Hetti, by all appearances a kind and gentle soul but it appeared he came with the house, something we had not anticipated and were anxious about. Finally it was hot and muggy, being just 5 degrees north of the equator and surrounded by water.
That first night we slept poorly worrying that our vacation retreat was instead an incarceration. The next morning I woke to the distant sound of Buddhist monks chanting. I stepped out onto the upper deck as the first tentative light appeared and looked out. Acres of green rice paddies fed by gently flowing streams, lush tropical foliage including coconut palms, mango and banana trees. Egrets and storks plying the paddies as small flocks of Ring Necked Parakeets flew from tree to tree quarreling. Then the loud squawk of a peacock roosting on top of the highest palm declaring his sovereignty. A tiny primitive road cut through the scene, and as the light grew the village around us awoke.
During the course of our stay, looking out over the village has become a favorite pastime. Old men feeding fish left over rice out of pure Buddhist charity. A young boy whose charge it was to keep the birds out of his family rice plot by waving his arms and shouting, throwing pebbles and the occasional firecracker. He took his work very seriously and with great joy leaping barefooted lithely along the dykes his toddler brother in his arms at times. And everywhere people stopping on the road to chat.
Whenever we walk down any of the myriad roads and paths that crisscross the jungle, we are always greeted with beaming excited smiles and salutations. We are the only white people here and most of the locals know only a few English phrases: hello hello, where you from, Ok Ok good. This does not in anyway limit the clear message that these are happy people who are sincerely glad to see us. Their eyes beam and they have this irresistible head-shoulder wiggle that is perhaps the most disarming and open gesture that I have ever experienced.
And then there is Hetti. He has taken us under-wing a great protector and guide in addition to being a warm loving man. His stories of sea travel include being captured by Somolian pirates and harrowing failed attempts to round the Horn of South Africa in raging storms. His success was hard earned, leaving home at a tender age, penniless and alone, traveling overland through Afghanistan and Iran to dubious prospects in Great Britain. There he worked the docks until his incredible work ethic was noticed by a Greek captain and his career was launched. Now Hetti and I cook for each other and sip Arrack in the evenings together.
And so what at first seemed unsettling is now completely comfortable. Our stay here is almost done and it will seem, once again, like leaving home when we depart. It's bittersweet but one of the best things about traveling is the way strangeness converts to comfort. If you take the effort to learn a place and its people, it lives in your heart forever- you own it and it owns a piece if you.
Great post!
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