Sri Lanka

Christmas-New Years 2000

i've arranged the pictures into 4 categories. remember to check out the descriptions and titles of the pictures. if you haven't clicked on a description link it will pop a new browser window. if you already have a description window open, it will just refresh the screen with the related description (you may have to switch to the other browser window, it won't bring it to the foreground)

animals | objekts | places| faces


 map of Sri Lanka and my traversing
IndiaColomboKandyAnuradhapuraSigiriyaHikkaduwaGalleAdams PeakNuwara EliyaYala

Highlights:

  1. Sigirya
  2. Hoppers (string and regular) - a pastry/pasta eaten in the morning or night with curry
  3. Snorkeling for the first time, seeing corals and fish
  4. Adams Peak (even though there was no view)
  5. Tea - one of the things Sri Lanka is known for
Lowlights:
  1. German tourists - i don't use these pages as a political forum expressing my views and i promised myself that i wasn't going to mention how rude and unfriendly all the german tourists i met were. i have german blood running through my veins and i've worked with a lot of germans - love them all, they're great people. But every single tourist i met on this trip (and they were *everywhere* in the beach towns) were extremely rude. -- what's up with that?
  2. Rice - the rice was as bad as uncle ben's minute rice. it was awful - thank goodness for hoppers.
  3. Split weather patterns - wet season in one part of the country, dry season in another

Disclaimer:
These pages may or may not include: 5th Century Pornography,  and explicit pictures of chairs, view at your own risk.

animals | objekts | places| faces

Obervances - Notes
  1. first time i've been to a country in the midst of a civil war. very different from what i expected. i knew that there was terrorist activity, but i thought i wouldn't see much evidence if i stayed in the south which is 'cleared' of rebel forces -- nope.

    whole areas of colombo (the capitol city) were off limits. tanks rolled through the streets, on almost every corner downtown there were bunkers, watch towers, and 5-10 military personnel, with AK-47s, M-16s, or Uzi type guns. there were anti-aircraft guns, and large ground-mounted large-calibre machine guns. i really really really wanted to take pictures of all this stuff, but alas. i was stopped by the military on more than one occasion for taking pictures of buildings -- non-military public use buildings, so i decided not to press my luck. (maybe i'm growing smarter in my old age). Driving around the country side at every major town, and many places in between were military checkpoints. heavily fortified with deviations in the road to keep trucks from proceeding unchecked. for the most part as soon as the sri lankan military saw this americano sitting in the van the waved us through, but sometimes they would search the cars and vans.

    on the way up to kandy, it was a bit nerve racking at times. i was trying to sleep in the back of the van, and we would stop, several flashlights would start probing the interior of the van, sinhalese voices shouting commands. at one point our van was requisitioned by two soldiers as transport for them to the next check point up the rode. both of them got in with their AK-47s and away we went. I offered a friendly hello but they didn't seem to be in the talking mood
  2. on the bus from nuwara eliya to matara they played a song by mr. mister
  3. one morning at breakfast i discovered the meaning of life...well, that's a bit exaggerated, what i really figured out how to do was remove dead ants from the sugar i was using for my coffee. it's frustrating when you see an ant in the sugar bowl, but then can't fish it out - losing it deeper in the sugar. the solution is easy, add milk to your coffee, then add the sugar. the ants will float to the top and the milk lightens the color of the coffee enabling you to pick the ants out :-)
  4. lots of people, especially military personnel liked talking politics. their usual sentiment was condemning the war and that the sri lankan government could solve the problems, but wants to keep the war going. i never once heard them say anything bad about the tamils or the LTTE (a tamil guerilla force)
  5. one local guy on a kandy bus asked if the US had finally picked the president
  6. people who could speak english, almost always asked these questions, and usually in this order
    1. your country?
    2. married or single?
    3. how long you stay in sri lanka
    4. what do you think of sri lanka
    5. how much does that cost (pointing to the camera)

animals | objekts | places| faces
the following is not a poem (don't really know what the heck it is)

I do know it's entitled: "another awakening"
(AKA "some words scribbled on the back of a receipt from the paradise beach club, marissa")

as i meander home in the first hours of the new year, feeling the salty sting deep in the coral cuts on my hands and the cool indian ocean surging around my trudging feet, i feel also a tear in my soul over the seducement / repulsion of my growing artistic inclinations. i had, during my formative years, sub-consciously been taught to value the logical - the analytical way of thinking. now, reflecting on the previous hour, evening, day, 2 weeks and year i find myself seeing more than empty water bottles and ant covered chocolate bar, the tangible reminders of my latest sojourn. observe i, a question, a query - the start of a new journey - the transition of one life to the next.

where will the quest-ion end?

it is written a coward dies a thousand times, a hero, but once -- how many awakenings must a soul endure before it transcends its daily pseudo-realistically contrived requirements?