Colombo: 12.10.2008
Sitting in Taj Samudra writing the journal. I had visited this city maybe 5 years ago, but not much has changed.
In this tour of 15 days, I’ll be passing nights in 7 cities – Dubai (airport), Colombo, Bangkok, Rangoon, Kolkata, Dhaka and Chittagong.
I travelled to Dubai last night, landing at 9.30 pm, with a connecting flight at 2.30 am. Business class lounges are a relief. This time I am carrying my laptop, so I brought some movies as well (having bought a pair of Sony ear-phones to enhance the experience). So I watched “The Last Lear” to while away the time. Bachhan, Preity Zeinta, Arjun Rampal et al – a very nice film. A Rituporno Ghosh film, by the way.
This Emirates flight was very nice and the Business class seats were those types that become totally flat, giving the allure of a bed without its comfort. Vibration massage built in as well.
Today is a Sunday, so we can relax a bit, although there is a customer meeting at 5.00 pm. However, we learnt that day after is also a monthly holiday here, ‘poya’, the day of the full moon. That leaves practically one working day for us. And one more forced holiday on 14th, the night of which we are leaving for Bangkok.......
After a late Chinese lunch at the hotel restaurant, we slept for 90 minutes and were met at the hotel by a soft and humble customer who took us around some supermarkets. It is raining here (unseasonal, as the season is usually Nov, like Chennai) and the weather was fairly cool. There was tight security with gun-toting military lurking around corners, in view of the bomb-blasts continuing upcountry.
Colombo: 13.10.2008
During breakfast at the hotel, I had the typical Sri Lankan aapam called "hoppers" here. They are made in a bowl and shaped like it and in villages the accompanying curry is often served inside the hopper itself. Interesting.
Sitting in Taj Samudra writing the journal. I had visited this city maybe 5 years ago, but not much has changed.
In this tour of 15 days, I’ll be passing nights in 7 cities – Dubai (airport), Colombo, Bangkok, Rangoon, Kolkata, Dhaka and Chittagong.
I travelled to Dubai last night, landing at 9.30 pm, with a connecting flight at 2.30 am. Business class lounges are a relief. This time I am carrying my laptop, so I brought some movies as well (having bought a pair of Sony ear-phones to enhance the experience). So I watched “The Last Lear” to while away the time. Bachhan, Preity Zeinta, Arjun Rampal et al – a very nice film. A Rituporno Ghosh film, by the way.
This Emirates flight was very nice and the Business class seats were those types that become totally flat, giving the allure of a bed without its comfort. Vibration massage built in as well.
Today is a Sunday, so we can relax a bit, although there is a customer meeting at 5.00 pm. However, we learnt that day after is also a monthly holiday here, ‘poya’, the day of the full moon. That leaves practically one working day for us. And one more forced holiday on 14th, the night of which we are leaving for Bangkok.......
After a late Chinese lunch at the hotel restaurant, we slept for 90 minutes and were met at the hotel by a soft and humble customer who took us around some supermarkets. It is raining here (unseasonal, as the season is usually Nov, like Chennai) and the weather was fairly cool. There was tight security with gun-toting military lurking around corners, in view of the bomb-blasts continuing upcountry.
Colombo: 13.10.2008
During breakfast at the hotel, I had the typical Sri Lankan aapam called "hoppers" here. They are made in a bowl and shaped like it and in villages the accompanying curry is often served inside the hopper itself. Interesting.
Today was a fairly busy working day. The auto market is located in a street chock-a-block with auto shops, called Panchakawattah Road. Unlike Kirinyaga Road in Nairobi, where one has to do scared rabbit-hops from one safe shop to another, here we could go around with no tension, as if we were in Chennai.
Military police has set up lots of check-points and we were stopped a number of times and asked who we were. “This war”, wailed all our customers, "will drive away all the business. Upcountry buyers are not coming to Colombo any more. The world financial crisis is not depressing them as much as the continuing fighting with LTTE rebels. Surprisingly, the checkers would invariably ask “Indians?” with a big smile and wave us on, as if Indians were no source of trouble at all, but Iraqis beware! On top of that my friend Easwar was an Indian from Chennai.
Our customer Marlon took us for dinner at the Capri Club – “Very exclusive, only 600 members”. We had a very very light dinner. When Marlon was ordering main courses, we thought that were appetisers and went really easy, saving our appetite, only to find him ordering dessert next. That too papaya. I had another round of Pasta Carbonari in my room at 11.00 pm.
For once, both nights, I was having trouble going to sleep. Finally I would nod off after 1.00 am, with lights on. My kriya and meditation were being pushed back to the evening.
Colombo: 14.10.2008
Today is a holiday here, courtesy the rotundity of the moon that has achieved full figure this day of the month. ‘Poya’, as they call it, is a holiday every month and is a Buddhist thing, and duly observed since more than half the population here is Buddhist.
However, we had official work with a customer in the morning, in fact right till 1.00 pm. Our friend Ranjan had offered to take us to the Elephant Orphanage in the afternoon, with an early start at 12.30, so as to reach well before 4.00 pm, when the elephants were all led out to a nearby river for a daily bath and the cavorting herd was watched gleefully by bipeds strategically seated at a high gallery on the riverbank.
However, we could reach back to our hotel and push off immediately only by 2.00 pm. The orphanage is situated halfway to Kandy and 2 hours away by car. So some sharp turns by Ranjan, supported by lunch collected on the fly, enabled us to hit the gates by 4.15 pm.......
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The roads of Sri Lanka are very well-maintained, though single track in the hilly stretches we passed through. Today traffic was supposedly light but we would be invariably reduced to the lowest common denominator of the speed of a state bus in front of us. It was cloudy and dripping moisture and as soon as we alighted at the gates and prepared to dash in, rain came down in torrents, forcing us to take shelter at a curio shop in front and gaze interestedly at fat smiling buddhas. Finally Ranjan bought two small multicoloured umbrellas that the elephants had hopefully been conditioned to seeing suddenly on a rainy morning, being quite a contrast to the serene landscape befogged by the downpour.
Our second disappointment was that the bathing ceremony had been completed in the morning itself and we would have to see the elephants in the orphanage, in their small jungles and kraals. That was also a nice walk amongst green grass and red pathways, the soil flowing like anaemic blood. If you see an elephant through the drizzle inside dark foliage they seem somehow more sinister than nature intended. We saw one adult with an amputed foot. Maybe the authorities here collect abandoned and damaged elephants like this from the wild and take care of them here, hence the name Orphanage.......
The roads of Sri Lanka are very well-maintained, though single track in the hilly stretches we passed through. Today traffic was supposedly light but we would be invariably reduced to the lowest common denominator of the speed of a state bus in front of us. It was cloudy and dripping moisture and as soon as we alighted at the gates and prepared to dash in, rain came down in torrents, forcing us to take shelter at a curio shop in front and gaze interestedly at fat smiling buddhas. Finally Ranjan bought two small multicoloured umbrellas that the elephants had hopefully been conditioned to seeing suddenly on a rainy morning, being quite a contrast to the serene landscape befogged by the downpour.
Our second disappointment was that the bathing ceremony had been completed in the morning itself and we would have to see the elephants in the orphanage, in their small jungles and kraals. That was also a nice walk amongst green grass and red pathways, the soil flowing like anaemic blood. If you see an elephant through the drizzle inside dark foliage they seem somehow more sinister than nature intended. We saw one adult with an amputed foot. Maybe the authorities here collect abandoned and damaged elephants like this from the wild and take care of them here, hence the name Orphanage.......
.
We were quite drenched actually, Ranjan being the most, having been the subject of the hospitality of both us umbrella-wielders, and thus having caught two sets of marginal drippings. A warm tea in a café and cold AC in the car dried us out during the next 3 hours of stop-go driving. However, by the time we reached Colombo again by 8.00 pm we were quite chipper and a bit hungry and so paid a visit to the food-court at some place that sounded like “Chriss-cats”. But it cannot be. I had Thai food, Easwar had Sri Lankan food, and the Sri Lankan had Malayasian food. Nice.
We checked out by 10.00 pm and went to catch the Thai flight to Bangkok departing at 1.20 am. This entry is being made sitting in the Business Class lounge at Negambo airport.
We were quite drenched actually, Ranjan being the most, having been the subject of the hospitality of both us umbrella-wielders, and thus having caught two sets of marginal drippings. A warm tea in a café and cold AC in the car dried us out during the next 3 hours of stop-go driving. However, by the time we reached Colombo again by 8.00 pm we were quite chipper and a bit hungry and so paid a visit to the food-court at some place that sounded like “Chriss-cats”. But it cannot be. I had Thai food, Easwar had Sri Lankan food, and the Sri Lankan had Malayasian food. Nice.
We checked out by 10.00 pm and went to catch the Thai flight to Bangkok departing at 1.20 am. This entry is being made sitting in the Business Class lounge at Negambo airport.
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