Natural Corundum || Sri Lanka - Land of White Smiles and Cornflower Blue Sapphires

Travel Stories >> Sri Lanka - Land of White Smiles and Cornflower Blue Sapphires

The premise of the trip was simple enough, we had gotten engaged, we wanted an extra-ordinary gem for the ring, we wanted a ruby. If you’ve ever read about precious stones you’ll know that after diamonds, rubies and then sapphires are the next hardest, next valuable of the gems. We had friends who’d lived in Sri Lanka and we’d seen their gems. We could either go to Thailand where the rough Sri Lankan rubies are cut, polished, and passed off as Thai stones, or we could spend a couple of days exploring the wonders of this magical island. Was this even a choice!?

"Are you mental?" Dan exclaimed, "it’s not just some place you go for a weekend, and they have terrorists!" A comment I found somewhat humorous considering we lived in Sarajevo. So, Julie made the arrangements - Sarajevo to Munich via Vienna. We had a day in Munchen which we spent shivering in only our sweaters, in the drizzle around the Marienplatz, dutifully waiting for the Glockenschpiel at 11am, touring the Modern Art Museum, riding the subways to keep warm, and feasting on rich Bavarian mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and pork (ok, so my German heritage finally surfaces as my appetite!). I could do Munich again, next time with a coat and some gloves. The LTU (a German tourist airline much, I suspect, like Virgin Air in Britain) flight left promptly at 8:05pm carrying us with 250 loud, drunk, working class Germans off to the "Resplendant Land" (as the English translate "Sri Lanka"). It was somewhat amazing that we both managed to sleep some during that 9 hour haul.

The airport air was hot and languid, even at 10:30 in the morning, and Roger groaned softy, "whew, this feels a little too much like Nigeria." For our systems, now accustomed to the cold, gray European winter, this sudden tropical ozone, the giant palm trees, fuscia lotus flowers, and the crush of dark faces pleading, "Taxi? Taxi? Taxi?" was all so overwhelming. The driver from the hotel Renuka was there as Y.P. had promised, and we sat in stunned silence for most of the 45 minute drive into Colombo. We watched the roadsides move by us like a foreign movie set at fast forward – moving just a little too quickly to be absorbed. There were tiny roadside shacks selling large orange coconuts, racks of green bananas, or strings of lotus flowers, and advertisements for arrack (the local whiskey). All the signs were in Singhala, Tamil, and English, and there were churches, mosques, Hindi temples and Buddhist dagobas nested beside one and other in every little village we passed through. There were throngs of children, dogs, and cows in the road, people were EVERYWHERE and most of the pedestrians had no shoes on, many on simple bicycles, or perilously maneuvering their three-wheeled tuk-tuks in and out of traffic. Most startling was the left-sided driving, a hold-over from the British colonial days, which was hard to get used to, especially in the traffic circles. Left turns were particularly nerve-wracking – and we weren’t even doing the driving!

I was amused and bemused to enter the Renuka Hotel (a young man holding open each door) and find no fewer than eight young men crowded behind the counter – for what purpose is still a mystery to me. I was suddenly back in Morocco or Guatemala where the labor is cheap, and oh, so available. The next morning, Sunday, we asked the front desk to arrange for a driver. Lionel was our man, a driver for the Galadari Hotel (which had been inadvertantly destroyed by a Tamil bomb blast in November – they were aiming for the Trade Center) and in need of a couple of tourists, he carefully carried us on our first adventure.

The Southwestern coast of Sri Lanka is the one most often described by the guidebooks, and the one most frequented by tourists, primarily German (who growl at the locals, are rude to each other, and turn a fat, nasty pink in the sun, but they bring in the rupees so who’s going to complain?). Everything the books says is true and then some, the pristine beaches lined with majestic, sweeping coconut palms, warm ocean water, and the tiny fishermen’s shacks squeezed between the shore line and Galle Road. Roger is the consumate photographer and Lionel quickly understands that we are not in a hurry, that we aren’t interested in, "quantity seen" but rather, "quality experienced". The road to Galle crosses over lagoons, and through little villages along the train tracks or along the coast. We both take pictures of the lagoon fishermen (four lines in at a time), the schoolchildren in the roads, the vendors, the women in the brightly colored saris, and the young Buddhist monks wrapped in orange togas that hang over one shoulder – all of whom smile at us demurely with the whitest teeth.

Although normally following our usually "sudden" directions on when and where to stop, Lionel makes his own decision once we reach Panadura. This little village is home to one of Sri Lanka’s batik masters, an artist named Fernando Bandula (or is it Bandula Fernando). Unlike the high-volume, low quality tourist batiks (and we saw a billion shops) these batiks are designed and produced by an accomplished artist, whose achievements include a Fulbright to the USA, and many international awards and shows. A self-effacing, gentle man in his sixties, Mr. Fernando patiently walked and talked us through his workshop and described the process of batik-ing – from design, through material preparation, numerous color dyings, to the final "setting" boil. Although it was Sunday, there were a few women in the workshop dropping and drawing the melted wax gingerly onto the semi-dyed material. They had come to work on Sunday, "for a little overtime", we were told. Lionel told us later in the car that Bandula’s patterns and designs were quite famous, and we would likely see rip-offs in the tourist shops. They were indeed breathtaking – tropical fish in teal waters, waterbuffalo and cranes in cobalt blue fields, elephants decorated in the scarlet and gold finery of the Perahera (parades), and many religious themes – buddhist stories unknown to this westerner. After accepting a cool lemonade from Mr. Fernando, that he himself brought out to us on a tray, we were on our way once again.

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