We first went in search of breakfast but drove through the 15th century Portuguese fort and up the hill to the Thirrukoneswaram Hindu Koval first. Jay and I had been in Tricomalee during the temporary peace agreement five years ago. At the time, we also made it to Jaffna, Batticaloa, and Aragam Bay that year. This time it was nice to bring along Jay’s sisters and Auntie. There’s a commanding view of the harbour from the hill as well as some impressive cliffs dropping many feet to the ocean.
Just as last time, we also visited Kanniyai Hot Springs. This time it was much more crowed after having been off limits because of the war in the last few years. We saw many Sri Lanka Moslems out on our trips as it’s now after the Ramadhan Eid and they have school break this week. We’ve not looked at the video yet; I hope it came out well.
After that we started to head back to Minuwangoda. In the past few years, I’d have a hard time counting the number of times I’d been through Habarana Junction. It seems like a lot of trips take us through that intersection of several important roads. The last thirty kilometers from Trinco to the junction are being upgraded. It will probably take years before the whole road is completed but the sooner the better. A strong connection to wealthy parts of the island are absolutely necessary for normalization. At the moment the massive deployment of government troops have kept things safe and secure. We did had to pull over at a checkpoint today. After we returned home, on the news, we learned that three Tamil ladies had been caught wearing suicide bombs at a checkpoint in a completely different part of the country. I hope things hold steady and that everybody gets to the task of rebuilding a country which lost more than a quarter of a century of development due to the pervious conflict!
It was so nice pulling into the quiet flora covered driveway of Jay’s home. We did so at 4:30 pm.