Diabolic Digest
Part II
Where
Buddha meets Adam
Giving up the noxious diesel fumes of Colombo, Khaled Diab and Katleen Maes head for the hills to follow in the footsteps of Adam, Buddha and Shiva, and discover not only the beauty and magnificence of where the world reputedly begins but also of where it apparently ends.
Raja Gomez was to be our companion for the next three days on our trek – pilgrimage, if you will – through Sri Lanka’s hill country. In his Toyota microbus (actually, it turned out to be the shrewd Mr Lindon’s), he slid in behind the steering wheel and we got into a friendly chat about his background, life in the Gulf, and Sri Lanka.
He had placed his cigarettes, lighter and mobile phone on the rest next to his seat. The screen of his Nokia was emblazoned with a cross and ‘Jesus’. This gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘display icon’. I’ve heard that some people – including certain world leaders – believe they have a direct line to heaven, but Raja didn’t strike me as being the deluded type.
Gags aside, it was a small sign of how deeply religious this man was. Raja belonged to Sri Lanka’s small Christian minority – all of whom seem to be named Gomez, Da Silva, or Perreira. Although he had the dark complexion and facial features of a Tamil, he referred to himself as a Burgher. Our understanding was that the label indicated a group of people descended – at least partly – from the Europeans who had ruled the island for nearly five centuries. According to Raja, the label could also be applied to all Sri Lankan Christians.
A foretaste of Kandy
Raja suggested that we ease into our trip with a visit to Kandy’s botanical gardens. Unlike in Colombo, the botanical gardens here were the real thing: pristine landscaping, rare trees and flowers everywhere. In Paradise, legend has it that Adam was taught the names of all the animals and plants, but down here, in the urbanised world, we had to satisfy ourselves with pointing and making admiring noises when we saw a plant we liked, such as one tree with bright yellow blossom that caught Katleen’s attention. Luckily, many of the more interesting specimens were helpfully labelled.
Being a lifelong city dweller, I was surprised
to find that cinnamon was actually just a very ordinary-looking tree. It
startled me to think that Europeans had sailed round the horn of Africa and
stumbled over the so-called New World in search of this modest-seeming, if
valuable, tree and the other precious spices of the fabled East.
Kandy’s botanical gardens are home to some rare
coconut trees that belong to the biggest species in the world. The coconuts
grow to the incredible weight of 20kg, making them the largest seed of any
plant in the world. We also saw thousands of squawking fruit bats and beautiful
orchids. We watched, from a creaking suspension bridge, groups of local women
(and some men) doing their laundry in the river, way down in the valley below
the gardens.
A stroll down the evolutionary path
On our stroll round the gardens, we came
face-to-face with our first monkeys: eating sap, grooming each other, picking
fleas, play fighting, swinging on branches, looking at us, first with
suspicion, then with fear and, finally, with mutual curiosity. I extended a
hand the short distance – both in spatial and evolutionary terms – to a cub ape
perched on a nearby branch. First, he looked at it in fascination, then he
squealed in horror, and scurried back up into thicker cover.
After our botanical experience, Raja proposed, we go for lunch “at a very good restaurant for tourists where we could also get a massage”. This got us thinking about the shape of things to come – and we did not want it to be in the form of the pale, burnt flesh of rich tourists. I know the adage tells us that, in Rome, one should behave as the Romans do, but we were not in that ancient city. We did not want to act as if we were modern-day Roman nobles in Sri Lanka, reclining on sofas while poor servants pummeled their flabby carcasses.
This made us wonder what kind of tourists
Raja was used to guiding around and we were struck with something of a sinking
feeling as we wondered what other kitsch delights he might still have in store
for us. “We’d rather eat at a good restaurant for locals,” I explained to him,
giving him better co-ordinates of where exactly we were coming from.
Currying favour
Following our revelation, he drove in silent
contemplation, as if he was disappointed or confused. It struck me that he may
have had a special arrangement with the proprietor of the massage restaurant
and he was brooding over his loss. Then again, he may simply have needed a dose
of peace and quiet.
After a couple of hours of swinging through
meandering mountain roads, he pulled up outside a non-descript building. He led
us into a grotty, dim hotel – what they call small restaurants in Sri Lanka. He
stood at the foot of a rotting wooden staircase with a broken banister. When I
stopped to let Katleen pass, he just cut in past her and rushed up the stairs.
Although he was willing to defer to the foreign male, he was damned if he was
going to let any woman go first. With a dismayed shake of the head, we followed
him, Katleen first, up the groaning stairs.
An overworked-looking woman laid a tray covered
in transparent plastic in front of each of us. She returned with a big pot of
sticky rice and deposited a generous dollop of it on each of our trays. The
pots of curry sauce came next. We also ordered some chicken curry but what we
got looked more like a sparrow. Next, the waitress brought around a tray of
fish which, following Raja’s lead, I took a couple of pieces off.
The quantity of food was prodigious and
Katleen, looking a little apprehensively at it, wasn’t sure she could handle so
much for lunch. Raja entertained no such concerns and we watched in fascination
as he laid into the food. All through our ordering and eating, Raja yelled
impatient orders at the harassed woman: to bring water to wash our hands, to
hurry up with the food, to get a move on with the drinks, etc.
Although we thought he was a nice guy and found
him pleasant enough company throughout our journey, his bossing around of staff
and his apparent disregard for women was one aspect of his behaviour which
would prove to be less palatable for us.
Spiritual footing
We finally came to a halt in a one-road village
at the foot of Sri Pada, or Holy Footprint, and we could see the sacred
mountain towering portentously over our heads. In fact, the sacred peak was
this village’s raison d’être. Now the difficult phase of our ‘pilgrimage’ was
about to get into full swing – the actual climbing of the approx 2,500m-high
edifice.
Also known in English as Adam’s Peak, it has an
assortment of legends to suit all religious tastes attached to the apparent
imprint of a foot at the summit. Although religious dogma is often set in
stone, this rocky peak’s significance is fluid.
Local Muslims and Christians believe it is
where Adam took his first step on Earth after his ejection from Paradise.
Buddhists believe it is the footprint of Buddha, left there during his third
visit to the island. Hindus, for their part, believe it belongs to Shiva, the
deity of death and destruction, the god of change.
Some also claim the peak for the apostle
Thomas, who is reputed to have stayed there while spreading Jesus’ word in
India, and some local Muslims believe that Mohamed, during his famous el-Israa
wil Meeraj spiritual journey, didn’t just go to Jerusalem but stopped off at
this hallowed mountain too, on his ascent through the heavens.
Central attraction
Sri Pada is a centuries-old pilgrimage spot.
Even Sindbad, the legendary merchant sailor of the 1,001 Arabian nights, who
landed on the island of Serendib (Sri Lanka) during his penultimate Sixth
Voyage, visited the holy mountain.
He described the hardship the pilgrims suffered to climb to the top of what, he claimed, was the highest peak in the world. But, today, with an illuminated stairway rising all the way to the top, the ascent is considerably easier.
Located at the centre of the island, it is not
only a physical middle ground, but also a symbolic one. This all-embracing
mountain is kind of like a spiritual lynchpin, keeping this divided island from
drifting further apart. It is an area of common ground on which Buddhist or
Hindu, Sinhala or Tamil can gather peacefully even at times of tension and war.
Aqua spa
The management had made a valiant, if comical,
jab at installing some international comforts in this guesthouse in the middle
of nowhere, but there was no stopping the rawness of our surroundings from
poking right through their efforts.
The bathroom was semi-aquatic – a veritable
nautical disaster. Plumbing was obviously not a local speciality. Most of the
pipes were leaking or dripping; the washbasin had no discharge pipe and the water
just splashed around on the floor; and the flush cleaned the tiles as well as
the toilet bowl.
A rather dangerous-looking contraption – which
we were to encounter frequently on our trip – attached to the showerhead and
plugged into a mains slot strategically placed within easy reach of the flowing
water was designed to give hot water (and, we feared, fried bather). We called
one of the friendly staff members to alert him to the water feature and our
bathroom and to see if there was any possibility that river gushing out of the
washbasin could be channelled elsewhere.
Road ahead
The rest of the room was comfortable enough
and, Spartan as our interior surroundings might have been, out of our window
was one of the most magnificent views I have ever encountered: there, rising
majestically into the clouds, was Sri Pada.
Although it was an intriguing and beautiful
presence, it was also an intimidating and constant reminder of the long road
ahead.
Beneath our window, the view was somewhat less
breathtaking. A shanty-like complex of rickety shacks functioned as the hotel’s
‘back office’ area, and we could see a pall of dark smoke rising from what we
assumed was the kitchen. We did feel it was worth confirming.
Exotic flavour
The rudimentary nature of the kitchen showed
through in the cuisine on our plates. The management had again tried to
sprinkle a taste of the international onto the menu. The curries and rice that
we expected and would have happily settled for were nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the carte promised us such
exotic delights as chicken and chips, spaghetti bolognaise, and vegetarian
salads. The village being a sacred site, alcohol was forbidden. My chicken
arrived a little overdone on the outside and a little underdone on the inside.
As we chatted to the Australian couple on the
next table, the pile of noodles on Katleen’s plate and the mountain of fries on
mine hardly seemed to shrink. In the end, we were still left with quite a bit
of food on the table – we’d left one large salad completely untouched, not to
mention the leftovers on our plates.
This small banquet in such a dirt-poor place
made us feel a little awkward, particularly with the somewhat hungry
expressions that we thought we could read in some of the skinny waiters’ eyes.
We made a point of checking with the friendly
waiter/receptionist/porter/handyman whom we’d chatted to earlier that the food
wouldn’t be thrown out. But, so that we wouldn’t offend anyone, we told him to
make sure the food reached someone who needed it.
Early risers
After dinner, we went for a stroll along the
single road that constitutes the village. We watched some brightly coloured
revellers play music, sing and dance. Devotional music wafted out of the shops
selling brightly coloured icecaps, sweaters, soft drinks and snacks.
Being there in the middle of March, it was
coming to the end of the pilgrimage season but there were still plenty of
end-of-term pilgrims milling about the place. The most dedicated of them – i.e.
most of the Sri Lankans there – were preparing to climb the mountain and spend
the entire night at the freezing cold summit.
We had a restive few hours of sleep, excited by
the prospect of the climb ahead and concerned that the patter of rain against
our windows would continue during our climb. At 2am, our little digital alarm
started pinging.
Moments later, a knock travelled down the
corridor, passing by our door, and hesitating for several knocks next door, as
it did. Our hotel being where it was meant that the tourists staying there were
there with one purpose in mind – taking the thousands of individual steps to
the summit of Sri Pada for the sake of the one enchanted footstep waiting at
the top.
Soulful souq
Twenty minutes later, we were outside, taking in the cool, damp night air and the smell of sodden earth. Dominating the horizon was the enormous dark bulk of the mountain. Weaving around it, like a giant luminous snake, was the illuminated staircase which rose on and on – further than our eyes could see. The light became blurrier, mistier, as the stairway passed through a cloud near the top of the mountain.
We started our trek at a brisk and measured
pace. The funny thing about Adam’s Peak is that it is replete with weird contrasts
and juxtapositions. There we were, bleary-eyed and surprised that we’d actually
got up in the middle of the night to put ourselves through the ordeal of
climbing a mountain. After such an effort, it would only be fair to start our
journey on a deeply mystical and spiritual footing.
But before we could enter the domain of the
sublime, we first had to endure a string of messages from Sri Pada’s sponsors.
At the foot of the mountain, there were banners proclaiming the support of big
Sri Lankan companies, dozens of sponsored shower booths lay along the roadside
to enable returning pilgrims to wash away the grime of the climb, and stands
dispensing thousands of paracetamol pills promising to soothe the shakes and
aches of the return journey stood shadily awaiting the return stream. The lower
reaches of the mountain were also packed with food and drink stands, as well as
souvenir shops.
The narrow footpath gradually became a
staircase as we climbed higher up the mountain. The snake of light, although larger,
still weaved without apparent end into the mouth of the dark night sky. It was
easy to spot who were the seasoned pilgrims and who the tourists – and I’m not
talking simply about physical appearance and dress. Although we managed to
overtake several tourists, the locals left us biting dust. We found it
particularly humbling when a frail old woman would come racing past us as we
took a break to massage our sore calves.
Guardian angel
After a while, we noticed that one friendly looking
middle-aged man was keeping the proverbial two steps ahead of us: when we
stopped, he stopped; when we speeded up, he speeded up. When he realised we’d
noticed, he smiled at us sheepishly.
The man – slight with buckteeth and dressed in
a simple gown – had obviously decided to take the young and inexperienced
foreigners under his wing. Despite the inconvenience of not speaking one
another’s tongues, we managed to build up a solid camaraderie on the way up:
exchanging smiles, nods, and other gestures; him waiting for us, we waiting for
him, etc.
At times, the pass we were walking along was
narrow and sheltered, at others, it stood close to the edge of darkness! As we
reached higher, the air became damper and colder. Walking through a cloud is a
truly mistyical experience. Visibility drops and everything suddenly becomes
moist, including skin, clothes, and the railing.
Once we emerged from the cloud, we could
finally see the light at the end of the tunnel (or should I say the darkness at
the end of the stairway) which would mark the end of our laborious climb. But
we soon realised that there were yet more steps shielded round the corner.
Summit of the faithful
At the summit, muscles sore, we encountered the
pilgrims who had set off the previous evening to spend the night at the top of
the mountain. Many sat shivering quietly in the chill air, huddled closely
together, waiting for dawn to break. Some were wrapped in blankets; others were
wearing the brightly coloured icecaps we’d seen on sale before our climb.
The centre of the plateau was cordoned off
because it was the sacred location of the famous footprint of uncertain
paternity (was it abandoned on the mountaintop by Adam, Buddha or Shiva?).
After removing our shoes, we walked around the busy shrine area. We walked into
the temple section to view the sacred footprint.
After queuing and making a donation, the keeper
of the shrine, pushed our heads down to kiss the exposed area of the sacred
rock. It was all over so fast that we couldn’t be sure that we’d actually seen
the impression left by the ancient foot.
Clouds of conflict
Having made good time on the climb up, we were
left with an hour and a half to cool our heels before sunrise. In that time, we
didn’t just cool them, we very nearly froze them off as we sat with the other
pilgrims and our friend who threw us the occasional goofy-toothed smile.
Katleen and I kept close to each other for
warmth. As my teeth started chattering to themselves, I began wishing that I’d
brought along more heavy clothes from Belgium or bought one of the fluorescent
icecaps that I’d ridiculed a couple of thousand metres earlier.
However, Mother Nature had decided to lay on
some entertainment to take our minds off the temperature. An enormous cloud
which (erm…) clouded the summit of a neighbouring mountain was like a
sorcerers’ battlefield – an electric storm raging within flashed bright blue
and orange, and we watched in wonder.
Virgin dawn
But the real showstopper was yet to come. When
the silver line of dawn started to emerge, we made our way further up the
platform surrounding the footprint to try to catch the course of the rising
sun.
Unfortunately, the authorities had deemed it necessary to erect a huge donation ticket kiosk in such a way as to blot out a large chunk of the eastern valley where the sun was coming up. But nothing, not even the plastic chicken/rooster sitting atop a pole, could detract from the breathtaking beauty and majesty of the unfolding scene as the valley below was bathed in the day’s first rays of virgin light.
The texture of the light flooding the mountain
range, the emerging detail of the surrounding landscape, the sun rising to meet
and obliterate the moon, the shadow cast by the mountain across the western
valley – all were components of one of the most beautiful sights I had ever
beheld.
That sinking feeling
If you thought that down was easier than up, then think again. Gravity may be on your side, but that only means you have to brake more constantly. Of course, part of the pain is that the descent comes after the strain of the ascent. By the time we were half way down again, our legs were shaking and Katleen’s bad knee – due to an old volleyball accident – started playing up.
Our mentor joined us again during the climb
down and signalled food and drink. Thinking that he, like us, was hungry and
thirsty, we decided that we should treat him to a good breakfast. However, at
the bottom, his meaning was revealed to us. He led us to an area where a group
of friendly monks were dishing out sustenance to the tired pilgrims.
The monks and their assistants greeted him
warmly and we were offered coffee from out of a bucket by one of the monks
which we declined. We were also invited to join them for rice and curry but we
explained to another monk who spoke English that we had breakfast waiting for
us at the hotel and we thought it was best to save the food they had for those
who really needed it. We learnt from the monk that our friend was a novice
training to become a monk and it was his function to guide pilgrims up and down
the mountain.
Clerical duties
We were pleased to see how these monks were
serving the pilgrims in such a friendly and selfless fashion, but our journey
through Sri Lanka was providing us with an interesting insight into the
island’s Buddhist clergy – and it wasn’t all flower power and ‘peace, man’.
Buddhist monks have an interesting status in
Sri Lankan society. Buddhists and Buddhism may have an image in the West as
being other worldly and concerned only with the spiritual and metaphysical, but
the reality is quite different. Monks generally have a high standing in society
– people, no matter what their age or frailty, have to give up their seats for
them on trains and in buses. They eat and dress very well – in fact, we came to
refer to their bright coloured habit and matching umbrella and shoulder bags as
monk chic.
They are also, as we were to discover, active
in politics. Harmless and friendly as most of them seem, monks, as a group, are
the most ultra-nationalist – they have even assassinated politicians they
thought were soft on Tamils and taken up arms. In the election that was running
while we were in Sri Lanka, a group of monks had even launched their own party
– which did not, luckily for peace, do well – on a Sihalese nationalist ticket.
Little Britain
After making our donation, we headed back to
the hotel for breakfast and the next leg of our trek through the hill country.
Our next stop was to be Nuweriliya, the playground for Sri Lanka’s rich and
famous.
The small mountain retreat, where
the island’s moneyed elite spend their weekends and holidays, was a throwback
to the times of the British – it looked like a transplanted version of a bygone
England. Private schools with smartly turned out pupils in school ties, cricket
and country clubs, young men in cricket jerseys, grand vintage cars, picture
postcard county post offices, and more.
But even the poorer part of Nuweriliya looks a
cut above the Sri Lankan norm: the houses were generally in good condition,
there was a wide variety of produce on the shelves of shops, and the ordinary
people were more smartly dressed.
Imperial seeds
This is one of the many ways in which it
appears that imperialism never really left these shores. In fact, it has
affected not only the culture but the agriculture, too. The Dutch introduced
most of the vegetable currently available on the island, while the British
brought tea and now most of the surrounding Hill Country is given over to
cultivating that famous beverage, mostly for export, while ordinary Sri Lankans
get to drink the dust. The poor women who pluck around 20kg per day for a daily
wage of about €2 see the fruits of their labour go to the rich landowners, now
no longer British.
We stayed at the Grosvenor, which would turn
out to be the fanciest hotel we would stay at in Sri Lanka. As its name
suggests, it is full of old-world quaintness. The spacious room – with a large
living area, a terrace and a large bathroom – bore a resemblance to what the
travellers of yore referred to as their ‘apartments’. Beyond the charm, there
was the discomfort of association with a bygone era that may have passed but
has not necessarily died.
Nevertheless, after a delicious dinner at a
South Indian restaurant in town, we ‘retired’ to our hotel room, where the
chill mountain air encouraged us to take the hotel’s invitation to build us a
fire. Sitting by the warm rays of the crackling fire, we sipped on a couple of
Lion beers that we’d smuggled in from the supermarket.
The end of the world is nigh
Armed with a packed lunch, we set off early the next day to Horton’s plains, before World’s End became obscured by clouds. So soon after having scaled Adam’s Peak, we weren’t the steadiest on our feet, but once we got into our stride, we made steady progress, despite the stiffness in our legs.
I found the solitude of the natural park
soothing and Katleen thought the nature there was striking. About half a dozen
leopards live in the park, but we did not have the privilege of encountering
the big cats.
World’s End is a precipice atop a mountain with
an 800m sheer drop. Sneaking a peek over the edge, one is made well aware of
the meaning of ‘dizzying heights’. We sit around for a while admiring the view
before we move on to Baker’s Falls.
Dropping to the falls
We feel like intrepid explorers as we follow
the deteriorating path through the forest, grabbing on to branches to assist
our ascent or slow our descent. In the middle of this jungle adventure, we run
into a group of workmen constructing something obscure in the woods and they
point us in the direction of the falls.
The slope down suddenly gets much steeper.
However, I do the final few metre along the rock face by myself to get a closer
view of the waterfall. I run into more workmen doing more weird construction
work – perhaps we are actually in some kind of amusement park?! The workmen ask
me to take a photo of them and I promise to send it to them as I slip them some
‘tea money’.
As we headed out of the plains, we noticed
troops of umbrella-bearing schoolchildren heading noisily towards us, wishing
us “Hello” and “Good Morning”. This marked the end of our trip through the Hill
Country – where we had gone from the beginning to the end of the world. Raja
drove us towards Kandy where we were to part ways.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.