Luxury in a war zone
Henry Sands ventures into post-tsunami Sri Lanka The problem with having siblings significantly younger than you is that there comes a horrible moment when you realise you’ve become too old to be on a family holiday. My siblings are seven and nine years younger than me. Despite my evil stepfather’s best efforts to convince me I was a ‘weird saddo with an unhealthy closeness to my mother’, I continued to join the family on holiday each year. My mother always chose destinations as isolated as she could through fear of actually having to meet anyone. Antisocial perhaps, but the Sands family has never enjoyed having to meet or talk to anyone while on holiday, including themselves.
This year I was finally evicted from their holiday and left to plan my own. Five minutes on the internet made it clear there was no way I was going to be able to afford to go anywhere like the places I had been taken with the family for at least 15 years. Then I saw a Sky News flash on the TV: ‘Sri Lankan government lifts ceasefire and declares civil war upon the Tamil Tigers.’ Perfect. Where could be more affordable than a country at war? The fear of being bombed would surely keep most people away. Six weeks later my girlfriend and I were on a Qatar airways flight to Colombo.
Our first hotel was located ten miles east of Galle, where four years ago the tsunami wiped out most of the coastline. Though much of it has now been rebuilt, with an extensive collection of hotels, guest houses and private villas, our driver pointed out haunting reminders of the catastrophe that — proportionately — took more lives here than in any other affected area. Reassuringly, our hotel was called the ‘Fortress’.
Built in 2006, the Fortress, with its immaculate courtyard and 40ft wooden entrance doors, is exactly what you would have expect ed from a large colonial fort — only with a 21st-century touch-up. The bedrooms had more gadgets than I would have expected to find in Q’s laboratory and even after the ten-minute explanation from the porter, I was unable to turn my side light on without the built-in iPod blasting Hindi music around the room. The strong currents prevented us from swimming in the sea, so Anna ignored the enraged stares of the other guests and adopted the gargantuan pool’s communal floating lily-pad for most of the day. The best thing about this hotel, which is a member of the exclusive Leading Hotels of the World club, is that it costs the same as the Milton Keynes Holiday Inn.
After three pleasant nights by the sea, we took a 15-minute tuk-tuk ride inland to our second location, Kahanda Kanda (or KK as it is referred to by the close-knit expat community). KK is a little retreat hidden up in the jungle, with just five individually styled bungalows tucked away in the trees. Our only neighbours were the howler monkeys fighting in the branches above us.
KK is owned and run by George Cooper, an Englishman who, after buying the plot with just one bungalow eight years ago as a holiday home, has developed it into the sanctuary it is now. Despite being in the Sri Lankan jungle, the rooms are designed in a quintessential English manner so that you sometimes felt you were looking after a private house rather than staying in a Condé Nast Traveller-recommended hotel. Even with my family I had never stayed at a place where I could ask a man for coconut and he would dart up a 30ft tree, assisted only with a leather belt, to fetch one.
It was not the most active holiday, but we did sign up for a bicycle tour that meandered down from KK through the jungle and paddy fields before finishing at a beachside bar on Unawatuna beach. A breakdown in communication with our Sri Lankan guide led to a couple of navigational errors, though we did eventually make it to the beach bar for lunch half an hour after the others had arrived.
We spent the afternoon on Unawatuna beach, famous for its hippie gatherings in the 1970s and now overrun with cheap hostels and handicraft salesmen. The only thing missing were the backpackers. That evening we were invited to dinner at a house in the paddy fields with a friend of a friend who rented it out as a holiday home. We ate on the veranda watching the sun go down and listening to gentle chanting from a nearby temple.
Sri Lanka may not possess as idyllic an image as some of the Indian Ocean islands or even the exoticness of other Asian countries, though if you are willing to ignore these preconceptions, you will be surprised. Despite the news reports of civil war and bombs, I feel more concerned walking through the streets of Shepherd’s Bush at night than I did in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka will become popular again, I am sure. Until it does, I plan to return — unless of course my family takes me back.
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