Two Temples

The east coast of this country was nearly lost to the terrorist group, the LTTE.  Money poured into their coffers by Tamil refugees granted immigration to many western countries.  Rather than helping relatives at home, much of the money went into bombs and implements of destruction.  Imagine a functioning army, navy and air force allowed to form and rule in an area nearly a third of the size of one’s country!  Granted the north and east had been left less developed by the Singhalese majority and there were huge political blunders made, but during 25 years of LTTE growth, the development of the north and east came to a complete stand still.  It’s going to take years for those areas to catch up to the rest of the country. 

The LTTE did not stand for a pluralistic society.  In many instances, Moslem Sri Lankans were expelled from their villages.  Normal business relations came to a stop.  The terrorist group controlled major highways in and set up import duties to fund parallel institutions of their own.   Of course in such a situation, tourism came to pretty much a complete halt.

There are two major Buddhist sites that have only recently been safe for pilgrims since the LTTE was defeated this spring.  We took this chance to first visit Somawathie Chaithya from the Polonnaruwa side.  It is deep in a rather isolated part of the island.  It was abandoned for a decade and a half.  Near the Mahaweil River, the is an ancient place of Buddhist worship.  It stems from an era when great reservoirs and monuments were built by great civilizations.  This one in particular is purported to have been built at the request of Queen Somawathie to house a tooth relic brought to Sri Lanka earlier and presented to King Giri Abha. The roads were rough and basic but quite passable.

We continue back out on another route to the road to Harbarana.  Yet, we soon took a very rough route as a shortcut through part of a sanctuary but saw no animals.  We, then, travelled quite a ways on the Tricomallee Road to Kantale.

On the map there’s a road Suruwawila.  It would’ve been even better to have taken a direct route but that is a road that is being constructed at present.  As it stands the road we took really wasn’t one.  From Kantale to our destination was 50 kilometers.  Even by bad road standards, we figure it to take about an hour.  It hour took over two.  That means we bounced up and down for an average of less than 25 kph.  It was very tiring.  Knowing that there was another two hours retracting the route was equally depressing.  The return journey didn’t seem that bad at all really.  I guess we’d gotten used to it.  Of course it was getting late by this time.  So, animals were out moving around.  The first occurrence of a peacock out in the wild was exciting early in the day.  After at least a hundred, it was pleasurable if a bit less striking.  Jay has good eyes when travelling.  He noted the elephants on both of the sightings.

Getting from Kantale into Trincomalee was only about 40 KM but it seemed like the better part of forever.  About 4 KM from the city, we stopped at the Oshin Hotel.  The rooms would have been sufficient if a little expensive for the quality, but the manager was rude and seemed uninterested in having us as guests.  We loaded the bags back into the van and continued.

I knew our driver was very tired and he had difficulties seeing in the dark.  Still, we went right into Trincomalee and first made a mistake but checking out the Welcome Hotel.  The name would suggest a rather modest place but it was way up on a hill with five star facilities.  We continued, and asked for advice from military guards.  They mentioned the Villas Hotel.  It took a while to find it, but it ended up being perfect.  The standard rooms ended up being full, but we were willing to pay $35 night for two rooms.  They were quite spectacular with a view of the harbour and were posh, new, and air conditioned.  By the time we got our bags to the room, it was 7:30 pm.  We ate in the hotel too.  We finally got into get at 10:20 pm after two temples and a lot of moving!