Sri Lanka, intense southwest,
Hikkaduwa and its surroundings
After a journey from Paris in two stages via Doha airport in Qatar (the airline was Qatar Airways), here in the night our arrival in the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, then our long transfer to the large town of Hikkaduwa south-east of the big island.
The hotel we have chosen there will be the sole accommodation point for our ten-day stay, almost perfectly located on the shores of the Indian Ocean. We will be a good hundred kilometers from the capital, and therefore quite far from the center and the former capital Kandy, and a fortiori from the North where we will not go.
This choice is assumed.
And if the elegant indolence of the coconut palms on the swimming pool makes you dream in the early morning, we prefer to the swimming pool the sea against and the nearby sandy beach almost red.
In this still deserted period of the day, old fishing boats with outriggers await tourists to visit the coral beds, 200 meters offshore.
The first Sri Lankan dog encountered is ethical like all its congeners, but peaceful and respected as are the animals here.
Beautiful season before the Monsoon. In this latitude, closer to the Equator than to the Tropic of Cancer, daytime temperatures rise briskly to 35 ° C and hover around 23 ° C minimum during the night. Hat and sunscreen required. It is no accident that, with a touch of natural elegance, many Sri Lankan women, and even men themselves, protect themselves from the heat of the sun by means of a umbrella. Who will soon be able to play the umbrella in the next hot shower.
Immersion in this semi-equatorial atmosphere is immediate.
We must accept to wet the shirt, without any effort being made. The slightest shade, the cooling effect of air conditioning wherever it comes from are welcome.
Sri Lanka,
hectic traffic, tense fluidity
In the main street which winds along the coast, we immediately have the feeling of traffic that begins as soon as the early morning comes by the untimely horns of the fast buses.
Then which increases then, between the very modern cars, the trucks of transport and works, the very many buses, the famous and innumerable tuk tuks, mobile like mosquitoes, bicycles, small motorcycles and sometimes even a kind of big tiller pulling a trailer, instead of the buffaloes of before.
Between the blasts of the horn, the intensity of the traffic at certain times and driving necessarily on the left, a legacy of the English presence, we have the impression of traffic hectic, panting, with hazardous and risky overtaking, like a permanent struggle for passage.
But all this in a kind of fluidity, a tense harmony responding to rules accepted by all, and which are certainly not those of local highway code.
After a few days of being here, it all seems almost natural, except a hollow in the stomach at the intersection of the overtaking buses.
The very many private bus companies are all equipped with robust vehicles, of the same size, which differ only in color and apparent degree of dilapidation.
Their golden rule seems to be to reach their stops as quickly as possible, which they only respect for a few seconds.
They "fill up" at poverty rates for a few rupees (barely 50 rupees, or 30 euro cents, for 15 km for example). They therefore do not hesitate to pass cars and tuk tuks without scruple, harassing them from the rear with furious horns and calls from the headlights intended as well for those they want to pass. to those they meet, opposite, and which must be tidied up quickly.
In this usual choreography, the crossed cars slip away on the far left for to avoid. It is assumed that accidents are not uncommon with such "killer buses".
In the photo opposite, a double bus in the right lane while visibility in the curve is scaled down. Apart from the highway, this practice is frequent in these roads still very winding.
Even the cars smoothly double the space-saving tuk tuks, and erase them in a masterly fish tail that elicits no reaction. The habit...
In other words, driving here seems like a real risky sport, made worse by our right-hand driving habits.
Crossing on foot also requires us to review our reflexes: looking to the right first then to the left afterwards is not natural to us. On several occasions we have to run for having broken this principle.
So, as all the guides recommend, no car rental, although as we have seen some very reckless and rare tourists venture there. But the beauty of long beaches on a sea de rêve brings back its dose of serenity.
Sri Lanka,
a bit of buddhism
While walking along the road while looking for shade, or from the car with driver-guide with which we start the tour of the region, we meet the first small altars of offering of the Buddhist ritual, very numerous everywhere.
Modest compared to the many temples, of which we will see some wonders.
The image opposite brings together at a glance the humble altar with meager offerings and its small meditating Buddha, the large banner in the colors of Buddhism. And an iconic tuk tuk (the Indian rickshaw); these tricycles meet in the thousands, even tens of thousands, even in the depths of the countryside, and only exist in version motorized. Thanks for the progress!
The Buddhist flag
It is curiously at the initiative of an American Freemason and founder with others in the USA of the Theosophical Society (old principle according to which all religions and philosophies have an aspect of truth more universal), Henry Steel Olcott, who created the Buddhist flag in Sri Lanka . Anecdotally, this American, of course Anglophobic in the air of his time, was responsible among other things for the investigation into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, in the still young USA.
Passionate about the Buddhist philosophy that he adopted in 1880, it was on his initiative that the Buddhist flag was designed in 1884-85 by the Colombo Comitee.
The banner becomes a sign of recognition of the Sinhalese nationalist current under British rule, during the celebration of Vesak (full moon day on which the Buddha was born, had his enlightenment and died) during the year 1885.
But it was not until 1950 that the flag became, in Colombo, the official emblem of all the Buddhist communities of the world.
Its symbolism is as follows:
- five colors represent the five sources of improvement essential to Buddhist practice, blue, symbol of meditation, yellow for " right thought ", the Red for spiritual energy, the White for the " serene faith " and the Red orange for intelligence. This last color is a synthesis of the previous four, because intelligence is considered to be the synthesis of the qualities that these colors symbolize. It is recalled in the color saffron monks' robes.
The sixth vertical stripe, made up of a combination of rectangular stripes of the other five stacked colors, represents a compound of these same five colors of the aura spectrum of the Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) , mixture of colors referred to as "the essence of light" and related to "great joy" or "bliss".
Opposite, during a full moon party during our visit to the great temple of Kandy.
South Sri Lanka,
Balapitiya, river-lagoon
By the coast road, a few kilometers north of Hikkaduwa, here a bridge crosses a river of modest width which sinks and flares without sinking into inland upstream.
There, we take a boat up the river, called Balapitiya , to vast expanses of water that effectively form a kind of large lagoon, where huge areas of mangrove trees thrive, along the banks and islands.
Before reaching the vast waters of the lagoon, watch your head as you pass under two low metal bridges : it must be lowered to the level of the boat so as not to be beheaded ...
Along the way, picturesque houses on the shore with pontoons of which colorful boats are moored.
On the way, and for a few rupees more, a young inhabitant in a dugout canoe comes to present a very clean little monkey with silky hair, which naturally we take in the hands for the photo.
The benefit does not go to the old primate adipose with a cap that holds him in his arms, it must be admitted !!
But much to his little brother of common origins, even not scared; yet there would be something.
In fact, the latter is totally indifferent, except for the discreet reward of his master.
Further on, there are a few local birds drying their feathers or lighting up some branches with their colors.
The pilot also takes us through Mangrove tunnels, perfectly free of mosquitoes in this season, whose palisades of roots that rise and stretch out like gaunt arms evoke ... a boat washing ramp.
On the shore, in the middle of lush vegetation, a few modest but well-maintained fishermen's huts, other more elaborate residences, with floors, perhaps tourist residences.
Perched on stilts, fishing posts above the water. From a seat of lianas or of wood fixed on a rudimentary platform whose roof is covered of dried banana leaves plaited in openwork, the fisherman patiently awaits the fish. But there, no fisherman.
Then here is, isolated, a very small islet whose rock is capped with a tiny and ancient Buddhist temple, which seems disused perhaps, but still preserved.
Further on, a very long footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists connects the central island of Madhuwa to the shore. Delicate profile, on the water barely curled by a light breeze, where two women slowly wander.
It would only take a couple, a hat or an umbrella to believe in a romantic illustration inserted into a frame tropical.
Sri Lanka,
... and on Buddhist temples
By a wooden pontoon, we dock at a small hill on this island. Here is the first large temple of our stay, that of Madhuwa, even if it is rarely mentioned by the guides.
On arrival, to visit a temple, you have to take off your shoes, and ensure that the female legs are decently covered.
Apart from those, among the most considerable, that we will see in the capital and in Kandy, most of the others have been built on calm, secluded heights, and inspiring serenity. This one on his island is a perfect example, since it can only be reached by boat or on foot.
With the eye of the ignorant, we find there at least one monumental statue of the meditating Buddha, here in the "lotus position", a sort of bell tower, in any case a more or less ornate vertical structure supporting a bell, a " stupa " and the representation in the form of statues of the disciples of the Buddha.
The bell, one of the driver guides we met, will tell us, is there to inform the population of such and such a ceremony.
During our passage, the stupa is surrounded by banners in the colors of the Buddhist flag.
The Buddhist temple
The Buddhist temple is a place of worship, which contains a sanctuary where there is at least one representation of the meditating Buddha. In the Buddhist sense, "meditation" means "mental development" to attain "nirvana", enlightenment, which is " the extinction of ignorance ", and not who knows what bliss in the West.
So people come there to meditate and do offerings. They are also places of celebration and gathering during certain ceremonies or religious festivals (eg the feast of the full moon).
Here, just like in India, the sacred relics of Buddhist saints are believed to be housed in some sort of large, elegant domed structure. surmounted by a vertical point, which roughly evokes a bell with a worked and elegant profile. For purists, it is shaped like an inverted alms bowl. But to others it can also remind the European subconscious of a peaked helmet from the Prussian era, but of a virginal white.
It is the stupa , always in fact painted white, sometimes surrounded by a large strip of fabric in rich colors. It is also called dagoba here in Sri Lanka. But our local interlocutors spoke only of the first.
Asian pagodas are precisely another form.
Every temple is held by one or more monks (the bonzes). We can recite the common prayer in front of the statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Offerings of fruits, flowers and incense are also made there.
Often, in the buildings which house a larger Buddha, the major scenes of the history of the Buddha are represented, either in the form of representations drawn with more or less style on the outer walls of the buildings, or in the form of real scenes. realistic and colorful sets of statues this time indoors.
This site also hosts what appears to be a small Hindu temple, from the decorations apparently repeating the god Ganesh, carried by a pink lotus flower, and exhibiting plump forms. quite feminine.
In this predominantly Buddhist country, statues of Buddha and stupas are innumerable, a bit our church towers in Europe.
The temple we are visiting also has an impressive fasting Buddha statue.
On the way back, the guide draws our attention, by the river, to an amphibious animal with rough skin, whose name he does not remember in English, but which is not, he is sure, a crocodile.
The monster of the abyss !!
All the more monstrous as the photo is missed, which leaves all license to overflowing imaginations ...
Certainly a beautiful monitor lizard which takes its morning bath. The generic English term is "monitor lizard"; that some French speakers have awkwardly translated into "water monitor lizard" !!
In Sinhala, the name is "kabaragoya".
We will see others elsewhere more modest copies.
Before leaving the site, and to free the spirit of the sea nightmare glimpsed, a soothing view of the sea from the river. Which should rather be called here "river" since it flows directly into the ocean.
Are there criteria, maximum flows from which a watercourse flowing into the sea is called a river and not a river?
We will have to consult, at the risk of paying taxes, our technocratic oracles in the EU.
??
Sri Lanka,
moon stones
Of course, the points of interest shown to us here are usual.
Halfway between Balapitiya and Hikkaduwa, a little further east of the road, here is that of the "Moonstone Mines N ° 1" of Meetiyagoda , among other mines of the same nature in this small region quite delimited for its production; as we would do with AOC wine elsewhere, for example.
Moon stones
These are semi-transparent stones with beautiful reflections "silver to bluish shimmering ... which seem to float on the surface of the stone".
The language of specialists is not stingy with nouns to characterize the effects of light:
- "chatoyance" (the most banal: reflections changing according to the light),
- "opalescence" (still fairly well known: milky tint, iridescent reflections, reminiscent of those of opal),
but also
- "asterism" (appearance according to the incidence of light, shining and changing crosses),
Where
- "the adventure" (much more original, but above all an English word to describe tiny mineral inclusions with a strong reflective effect, making shiny dots appear when turning the stone).
All this is based on the Schiller effect also called "adularescence" which describes "this shimmer under the surface of the stone when the light interferes at the interfaces with the thin and alternating internal layers of the feldspar".
Because these stones belong to the category of minerals of the large family of silicates, called feldspars (aluminosilicate of K, Ca and Na).
The fact remains that moonstones, the trade name of Sri Lanaka, are famous around the world. We know of such purity and such beautiful water that their value is expressed in carats, and can reach several tens to hundreds of carats.
Do the workers still know where, in the process, the activity of the Local "pearl twists", as they are pictured in this late 19th century image, opposite?
Finally comes the inevitable moment of crossing the beautiful and imposing sales shop, too well air-conditioned that we browse out of curiosity, the one where we sell various stones embedded, crimped, ... and their price range.
Perhaps there, on the spot, was there business to do?
Let's leave that to more experts than us.
We are not stones.
The interest here is therefore to see which was, or still is, the way to extract gems, then to process them.
Certain operations such as polishing seem made in the back room with more modern devices than those shown or on display, old or even archaic.
For a handful of rupees, and in a well supported and consolidated in a rudimentary way with the means of the country (beams and wooden planks and dried leaves) and sheltered under a light roof, a skinny Sri Lankan ageless (or is it a Tamil of the 2nd wave?), dilated pupil and dark and cloudy iris à la Omar Sharif, like those of a junkie that he is probably not, shows his extraordinary agility by descending a ladder to pose halfway up the well.
Quickly reassembled, here it is, according to a well-run script showing, in the manner of the artisanal miners, how to wash and sort in a basket braided the extracted stones, in a basin of still clear water.
Then, pleasant workers equipped with very fine-grained electric grinders, present their know-how to polish and cut the stones. The few surrounding objects and tools seem very handcrafted.
Under a neighboring gallery are exposed the hand tools used in the past, elsewhere, a sort of forge with mechanical crank bellows, and in a corner an enormous stock of drying cinnamon leaves, the destination of which is not known.
South Sri Lanka,
baby turtles, cuddly turtle
On the way back to Hikkaduwa, here is Peraliya , a seaside village where you can visit a turtle hatchery which is also a dispensary for this astonishing order. of shelled reptiles .
In modest premises, under evergreen roofs, a dozen large pools and a sand nursery.
Created in 2004, the founder died of a heart attack then several members of his family died in Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami . One of the members, absent that day, then takes over to courageously relaunch the business; the nursery reopened in 2006.
This organization's mission is to develop, in hot sand and sheltered from birds and other predators, turtle eggs that have just been recovered. Once hatched, we square baby turtles in a large pool for one day, to finally bring them to the nearby beach the next night and leave them move away in the waves towards their immense destiny.
He is also entrusted with injured turtles, amputated, which are sheltered in other basins. Neat and maintained, they cover if possible their means of survival, before being eventually released into their natural environment.
Finally, it is also in the diversity of the basins welcoming turtles of different species at successive ages, a school of education and pedagogy for Sri Lankan children and information for tourists passing there.
This very laudable initiative, which seems private in nature and calls for voluntary service, and how does it join other similar and neighboring initiatives such as Ambalangoda and Kosgoda further north?
In any case here is one in its beautiful presence of adolescence, in possession of all its means, surely retained here for a purpose. pedagogic.
Even on the beach of our hotel, two enormous turtles are there permanently, for the pleasure of the tourists.
The latter feed them with algae provided by the supervisors. Impressive animals, in this case well tamed.
No, under this protective and enveloping net, it is not a small cemetery but precisely the opposite, the nursery.
Every tiny sign indicates the location of an egg and the variety of turtle (here most commonly the "Olive Ridley" or "green turtle").
The association identifies five varieties supported: the "green turtle", the olive ridley turtle (in French "olive ridley turtle"), the Hawksbill turtle ("tortue à écailles" or "hawksbill turtle" in French), the Loggerhead turtle ("loggerhead turtle" or "tortue carette" in French), finally the Leatherback turtle (leather back, which in French would be the extraordinary "leatherback turtle", measure 2.5 meters long and weigh 900 kg).
Hatched, here they are taking a formidable force in another basin, wriggling with uninterrupted movements. At sea, experts call it "frenzied swimming". Here is their size, between two fingers of a healer, opposite. He tells us that her navel secretes, in the energy she puts to move towards the sea, a substance left on the sand which would indelibly mark her memory, and which would explain why she would return here later without error, if indeed it escapes predators at sea. Assumption well brittle ; alone the observation of their return is certain.
From their birthplace, for example here, they go to sea, can travel several thousand kilometers in a few weeks to reach a place of food then well protected from predators.
Then the females come back after two to six years, fertilized at sea, to the exact site (200 meters) of their birth , to lay their eggs in turn.
What experts call "philopatry" or "very strong fidelity to the birth or spawning site" and its counterpart to "very high fidelity to the feeding site".
Instinct, that is to say the "genetic memory", innate, guides these displacements, and not the current memory, acquired, instantaneous, which could not explain on its own why from mother to daughter the female turtles return indefinitely to the SAME nesting site. .
See the thesis entitled " Diversity and genetic differentiation populations of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in nesting and feeding sites in the southwest Indian Ocean: Application to conservation strategies for the species "by Coralie Taquet presented in 2010.
The overall diagram summarizing the life cycle of the green turtle presented opposite is extracted from it. The so-called "neritic" zone extends between the shore at low tide and the edge of the continental shelf, to a depth not exceeding 200 meters.
The author underlines in passing "the isolation of maternal lines" which results from philopatry, and which "their very strong genetic differentiation" proves.
Only one in a thousand returns to lay their eggs at their place of birth. The 999 others did not lose their way but quite simply their lives (predators, fishing nets, suffocation after absorption of plastic waste ...).
Among the injured turtles that are welcomed, in here is one whose left front leg is missing ... and a little affection
Under the hand of a visitor who chance rubs her shell, she indeed comes to bow under the hand (perhaps the imbalance of his handicap facilitates the tilting), to approach it, obviously looking for the caress, a cuddly turtle; as we see the dog or the cat leaning on its back and waiting for the caress of the master. You could almost hear him purring.
Marlène can't believe her eyes !!
Sri Lanka,
2004 devastation: the tsunami
A short distance away, a single-storey building, intentionally very modest and rustic, distributed on several rooms between which we wander, present the quantified balance sheet and illustrated of deadly tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004 .
Terribly uplifting, but so poignant that the very act of taking a picture other photos showing the damage and the piles of corpses would be indecent.
the earthquake occurred off the island Indonesian of Sumatra with a magnitude from 9.1 to 9.3.
The epicenter is on the border of tectonic plates Eurasian and Indo-Australian. It's the 4th most powerful ever in the world, which doesn't mean there hasn't been a more powerful one before.
He raised up 6 meters high a strip of ocean floor 1 long 600 kilometers.
Within minutes and hours of the onset of the earthquake, a tsunami , reaching in some places up to more than 30 meters tall, hits Indonesia , the coasts of Sri Lanka and southern India , and the west of the Thailand .
It is one of the ten deadliest earthquakes and the worst tsunami in history . It has claimed victims all over the Indian Ocean.
Sri Lanka has a coastline of almost 1 340 kilometers. Its density coastal population is over 310 inhabitants / km².
The tsunami wave will take 2:17 to reach the island from the east, but it will cover it to climb up to the west coast, which one would have thought protected by the rest of the island as a screen.
He devastate near 800 kilometers of the coast. When the wave recedes, the flooded area expands for more than a kilometer inland.
It makes Sri Lanka 35 082 dead, 4 469 missing and around 250 000 victims.
For Sri Lanka alone, if a tsunami warning system had existed, given the time taken by the wave to reach here (more than 2 hours after the terrible earthquake), it would at least have saved a majority of lives. .
The station Gall after the tsunami at the end of 2004
... and in March 2017
So for example, all of Peraliya is swept away, deleted from the map. A train passing there is thrown several tens of meters away.
Let's also see, more than 20 km to the south-east in what indescribable disorder are the buses from the bus station in the beautiful city of Galle .
Along the coast towards Peraliya, rather modest works of raising the bank along the road are supposed to constitute a kind of dike against the tsunamis. Who can believe in their effectiveness?
On the other hand, it seems that the tsunami warning system is now functioning correctly, even if we testify here and there, for more localized natural events of deficiencies in the information of the population.
Still, it will take more than 4 other years, in 2009, so that it really comes to an end.
The tragedy of nature left more than 40,000 dead, that of the confrontation of men 80,000 dead and 140,000 missing.
The the first will therefore not have been the culmination of the second, which spread out out of 26 years, that is to say over a little over a quarter of a century.
For some observers in any case, the tsunami occurs 32 months after a fragile ceasefire between Tamils and Sinhalese.
News tensions between the two ethnic groups then threaten to explode and break the truce.
The tsunami and its aftermath, and the resulting international support effort, are said to have helped calm the conflict.