Sri Lanka Road Trip: A Journey Through Chaos, Beauty and Humanity
Exploring Sri Lanka by Road: 1,000 Miles of Magic
With diesel at 30 pence a litre you can afford to go a long way. And that is exactly what I’ve been doing since we last spoke. I have travelled well over 2000 kilometres on the roads of hot, humid, mad, bad, beautiful and totally magical Sri Lanka.
My view of Sri Lanka for over 2000 kilometres
Wildlife, Landscapes and the Wonders of Sri Lanka
There have been hills and mountains, forests and jungles, flat-lands and seascapes. There have been elephants, monkeys, tuktuks, buffalo, a million feral dogs, goats, lizards and a single, lonely, Sri Lankan black sloth bear.
Surviving the Roads of Sri Lanka: Traffic as Theatre
But above all there’s been humanity. Teeming humanity, writ large out on the long and winding roads, somehow avoiding one another in an endless perilous traffic dance. There was enough potential danger along any one of those 1000 miles to make an English driver faint with fear.
But somehow it all works and I’m not driving anyway. Instead I’ve been sitting in the front of a bus watching the whole spectacle ebb and flow through a giant windscreen.
How to Drive in Sri Lanka: Embracing Road Anarchy
If I had to, I could drive with relative safety on Sri Lanka’s roads, now that I’ve been studying the anarchy of it for days. The theory seems to go something like this… Don’t think of a road as something filled with rules and laws, instead regard it as a fluid river. You go with the flow - you avoid anything that’s stationary or solid and dangerous, just like a canoeist would avoid a rock in rapids. Bend, be adaptable. Above all, go with the flow.
Sri Lanka’s Legendary Buses and Their Drivers
Our driver from Blue Lanka Tours
And certainly avoid the massive hulking buses which plough through the luxuriant countryside like battleships on wheels. The huge old Ashok-Leyland buses, built in India, are the undisputed kings of these highways. Tarted up with enough bling and chrome to make a demented rapper happy, they roar through rainforests and across savannahs belching out great clouds of black smoke as they go - and always they are filled with calm and smiling folk who pay no notice whatsoever of the constant perils and dangers along the way.
Peacock struts its stuff in Trincomalee
If I was in charge of recruiting the astronauts who will one day go to Mars and beyond, I’d choose Sri Lankan bus drivers. They must be among the coolest, imperturbable, fearless, dudes alive.
The People of Sri Lanka: Humanity at Its Best
But it wasn’t them I wanted to talk about. It’s the passengers, and the people lining the myriad streets and country lanes of this vibrant and extraordinary island. I love them. I love their cheerfulness and politeness. I love their courtesy and calmness, their fortitude and their ability to, seemingly at least, be resigned to whatever fate may have in store.
Modern Sri Lanka: A Nation Still Rebuilding
There is real poverty here. The country went bankrupt a few years ago, to the extent that they ran out medicines, there were food shortages and no fuel at the pumps. Things have become a lot better, but life is still tough.
A man I was talking to an hour ago was telling me about just how tough. He has a reasonable job and he works hard, but is lucky to take home £125 a month. Not much for his family of four, even though life here is cheap.
Dambulla temple
Make-Do-and-Mend in the Sri Lankan Countryside
Make-do-and-mend. That’s the motto here and you see it everywhere. Vehicles that would long ago have gone to the scrapheap in Britain are still in use and if a great many of them seem way beyond decrepitude it doesn’t matter quite so much because you rarely see anyone doing over 40 mph.
The Peaceful Heart of North-Western Sri Lanka
Anyway, once you’ve had enough of the anarchy of the highway you can pull off and go down one of the tiny lanes which thread between the villages, passing through rainforests and past farms and the endless lakes which are a feature of central north western Sri Lanka.
In some ways this region reminds me of the Westcountry. By which I mean, it is highly rural and peaceful. The monster buses don’t belch much around here - very little seems to be in a hurry - indeed I’d say it is one of the most tranquil places I have ever visited.
Faces of the Sri Lankan Countryside
Although the place is agrarian in the extreme, there are people everywhere. Schoolchildren in sparkling white uniforms, old men looking after lazy cows that wander down the middle of the road, smartly dressed office girls on their way home from work, languid young blades who loll about on mopeds...
Villager sorting rice from husks
The 40 mile long lane we drove down in the gloaming yesterday evening was one of the most beautiful roads I’ve been on. I loved every mile of it. I loved the gentle scenery and most of all I loved the humanity and the handsome smiling faces.
Reflections on War and Peace in Sri Lanka
Bulldozer civil-war memorial at Elephant Pass
And I loved all this in the knowledge that only 20 years ago this was a killing ground. The Sri Lankan civil war was at its height and this was one of the worst-hit areas. You can still see bullet holes on the buildings and burned out ruins and you still pass through police checkpoints.
And therein, to me at least, lies the greatest mystery of them all. The great riddle of humanity. The question that asks: how can we be so damned cruel and nasty, and yet so kind and gentle and loving? Perhaps it’s a question that will never be answered, but we can only hope that, for all our sakes, someone will work out the riddle soon.
Bathers up north near Jaffna
