A leaf in my eye...Kodamthuruth

I never know what to expect.  A leaf just blew in my eye as I sat on the commode.  It's an indoor toilet with a 3/4 wall and roof open to the palms and plantains, so a breeze, an ant, or a butterfly drifts in. It's ideal.

Kodamthuruth Is about 40 km south of Fort Kochi, the big city. We had some concerns as to how to reach this place since it's not on a bus route and most folks travel by canoe or motorcycle on rutted roads.  But our next best friend, Rajeem said, "Susan and Charles, I will drive you. No problem. Good for me. Good for you."  Rajeem  wears a crisply ironed shirt and his autorickshaw mirrors his style. For an hour, we travel through villages too small to be on a map, down roads that have been paved and repaved to accommodate monsoons, and when we cross a bridge or canal, he points out our island far in the distance.  And our island is far into the back country.  

Manu, the young owner along with his family, understand the comforts needed by travelors and have built 4 individual cottages along a lake overlooking egrets, ducks, herons, etc.  Each day Sugu, the boatman, gives 2-4 hour tours on a shaded houseboat to the deeper parts of the backwaters to see how families live.  Antoney, Manu's 90+ father, is the gardner attending to coconut based orchids tied onto trees, and his aunt and cousin provide rice and a variety of curries for lunch (fish from the lake, peppers marinated in a curry base, dal, crungy fried papardom).  His business is doing so well by advertizing on airbnb, tripadvisor, expediu, that he has hired and is training two cousins in hoteliering.  

Us?  Well our part is to take walks in the neighborhood, row a small canoe across the lake, sit on the porch and read books and type in our journals, watch birds, count butterflies, and smile.  We can do this!

A Pen Please, outside of Thurvoor

You know how you get when it's so hot you just don't want to leave the house?  I mean you have a fan that whirls at 4 or 5. You even have air conditioning when the electricity doesn't go off. You still have a good book, in this case a Tarquin Hall Indian mystery, and there's always a sudoku to do, a fisherman to watch, and then there's lunch and dinner. These are activities to be savored. 

But leaving the house is an activity, an exercise, and exercise is a must. But where to go when all the paths lead to a large lake, a canal, an inundated rice field, a tiger prawn pond?

The one road out of the jungle crosses the railroad tracks, passes a candy/hardware store and 5 km later you are in Thurvoor. Thurvoor is a Hindu temple with six rows of oil lamps on the outside of the temple.  It must be magnificant in the evening or on festival days when the thousands of oil lamps are all lit. But today the devoted are lounging or reciting devotions in the shade.  It's too hot for the locals.

Thurvoor is a city proper but it's a transit town to Fort Kochi to the north and Allupazhai to the south.  There are lots of small busines:  an internet store when there is electricity, a bakery which we sample of course, a tire shop, a grocery store. It's a good size town and has the essential traffic and school children. But it's a pit stop of 30 minutes tops for us.

But it is an outing and we get out of the cabin. We walk home with our umbrella open to protect us from the intense sunrays. We wave at the passengers on the train. We cross the tracks and hear "pen."  Turning around are two ginghamed dressed young girls with two pony tails apiece tied up with matching ribbons.  Each has her own bike. "Pen please," says Anu. 

"Why yes, I do believe I have one."  As we give her a pen, Anu says, "for her too?"
Gobiley is not as certain about her English but her smiles has us scrambling for another pen. Anu and Gobiley live in our neighborhood. As our cabins have been rented for years to foreigners, the local kids have been asking for pens and trying out their English. Anu is 12, Gobiley 13. Each of our answers are met with polite comments and then they roll backwards and giggle as they prepare the next question.  

And we thought we were going to stay in our cool cabin today and miss out on this activity?  No chance.

1000 years of gestures of love and jealousy at the Keralan Cultural Center

Wathing the performers put on makeup and dress for the performance is as exciting as the watching the thousand year old dances.  

Eating our way through a Colombo Garden

 
                                                                                    The fruit grows on the trunk, not on the branches

Whether we are leaving our home or returning, we can't help but notice the mix of fragrances from the fruit trees and plants along the walkway. So I do what any curious gardener does, I knock on the door of Mr. Senevirantne, our next door neighbor and father of our airbnb host, Surekah, here in Colombo.

I have been admiring the back garden through the mosquito netting, but Mr. Senevirantne says, "the garden starts in the front."  He is 78 years young and squats easily to share the leaves of low lying plants and raises on tip-toes to reach the tiniest red fruit he is hiding from the squirrels.  The Sinhalese plant names escape me for there are one syllable too many each time. We taste sweet basil cinnamon leaves, bitter arrowroot, taste leaves used to prevent cancer, leaves good for digestion, others used for diabetes, and we flip over giant fern-like leaves looking for the spores. I only recognize the papaya, the mango, and the plantain.  None of the other 30 plants are recognizable. 

  

  He says the Sinhalese prefer leaves to vegetables.  Yes, they have the chilis and pumpkins (the squat dark green pumpkins as opposed to our bright round orange pumpkins). They also have spinach, but the spinach leaves are dark green with maroon edging and the plant grows on vines.  There are dozens of plant leaves used in salads or sauteed in curry.   

Mr. Seneviratne is an agricultural engineer and has spent all his life gathering and introducing ideas, whether it was building solar stoves in Tanzania, to working near dams in the Congo and Zaire, to being part of the Indian coalition opposing Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds, or agricultural development in Malaysia. His work now is giving lectures to "the poor who do not know what they have" and reintroducing them to organic farming.  In his backyard, he recreates innovative ideas such as the Peruvian farmer who uses woodchips mixed with pulverized leaves (to allow air and space in the mixture) in French beds, so the roots from nearby trees can provide the nutrients to land worn down from over-planting or chemicals.  

                                                             Fern

He builds small tanks (ponds) and creates a backwall with vined plants for birds. He stocks the ponds with fish so the 3 foot tank self cleans.  Tonight I see a stork and a brown heron visiting his backyard and feeding from the pond. A kingfisher sits on a nearby branch from a mango tree to grab a fish dinner. He says mosquitos are not a problem as this is a favorite spot for dragonflies and damselflies. He tears up and crushes leaves from the betel plant to deter mosquitoes just in case.

Termites are always an issue. So he built an 8 inch wide strip around the backwall of his house and filled it with sand, but the neighborhood cats thanked him by using it as a litter box, so he solved the problem by planting aloe vera. He is a problem solver.

Each evening from my window I see his herd of land tortoises marching around the garden eating what they can.  The first tortoise was a whooping 14 inch animal hit by a car. He and his wife brought the tortoise home years ago and there have been eggs and tortoises ever since. At dawn a flock of green parrots nestle into his garden to eat the top half of berries to start their day. In order to eat some of the berries and fruits himself, he has devised a system of plastic water bottle traps over the fruits and berries so squirrels, parrots, mongoose, and other birds only "get the top half and I get the berries and fruits on the bottom half of the trees."

An hour after my garden tour, he brings me into his house and shares his musical instrument collection from around the world, his collection of paintings,  and his collection of masks.  If I would have met this gentleman at the start of our travels a month ago, I don't think we would have seen the rest of the country.  He's fascinating.

Environmental changes in SL

It's been less than 10 years since the civil war was over, and Sri Lanka is looking at all aspects of life in order to catch up with the rest of the world.  The environment is a huge issue, but for SL it is a direct economic hit and encompasses tourism, farming, encroaching on wild life habitation, on educating the public.  The list goes on and on.

We're staying with Surekha this week. She is an environmental educator in an all boys school.  Just a few years ago, dropping a piece of paper on the ground, throwing a coconut out a train window, leaving trash out for animals was the norm. Surekha works from top down; it's the teachers who need to set an example, it's the high schoolers who need to get involved.  The children are fine. Give them a task, tell them the consequences for litter and they adapt.  But it's the adults and high schoolers who have been so busy with life that they forgot that their surroundings are their life.

Same thing is happening with the wild animal population.  While SL has numerous national parks, there are minimal to no rules as to how to treat it.  We have been lucky to view the best as well as to to experience the issues that are now part of the Minister for Environment's daily issues in the newspapers.

Udawalae Park in the south is a savanah type environment with trails created by elephants foraging but also by jeeps.  This is one of those parks that truly works. It's large enough that you can have 20 jeeps of 2-6 people navigating  their way through the naked roads looking for elephants, deer, crocs, storks, water buffalloe, eagles and not see any other jeep (that is unless there is a herd of elephants and the word gets out).  It's a wild, fun ride because there are so many animals in this park. There is enough space for 600 elephants, local folks recognize that the park brings in cash, and rice farmers are using traditional methods of building huts on stilts so as to protect their rice paddies from hungry elephants.  They tried fencing the park, but learned a fence can't really stop an elephant nor stop poachers from poaching.  So traditional methods of survelance and educating the public is saving animal lives, providing $$$ for all the communities nearby, and expanding job opportunities.  It's a win-win situation.

We are safari junkies. And while the wild and crazy rides tearing through the bush of Hubile Eco Park outside of Habarana is fun, fun, fun, it is destroying the environment.  Drivers crash through the bush giving their particular passengers the best possible view, but simultaneolsy knocking down trees and bushes to get to these animals.  Because the drivers in this park are so aggressive, it effects the elephants and the herds prefer to leave, which creates problems for the farmers and small villages nearby.

Yala National Park, the biggest in the country is going to close down for half a year just to get some sort of control back.  Gamini Jayawickrama Perera, the Minister for Sustainable Development and Wildlife recognizes tourism is increasing along with complaints about trash, smells of urine, and animals are going deeper into the bush making it more difficult for the tourist to see, and thus cutting down on economic growth for the locals.  Without regulations, campers have been setting up tent camps and RV's leaving tin cans, papers, rubbish.  Eco-friendly hotels have increased.  Sometimes they are actually eco-friendly, but some are in name only. So they are closing the park, setting up dirt roadways that can change with the rains, monitoring the camps, and hopefully educating the public.

Animals and parks are a big draw for SL. They are experimenting.  Horowpathana is a good size, 3500 hectare park with 15 elephants living here. In order to keep these elephants here and establish this as a national park, the park is going to allow folks to feed the elephants.  While this is a definite no-no everywhere else, they are hoping that by feeding the elephants, the elephants will stay resulting in a robust economy for the locals by creating a park.  We'll know more in a year or two.

A marine park is even in the news with a focus on rules and regulations for viewing 90 foot blue whales, leatherback turtles, and spinning dolphins who love the warm waters of Mirissa and stay local in the area year-round.

Sri Lanka is changing quickly.  There are so many avenues to take. We'll read of course of the changes, but hopefully we will be able to return and witness what works and what needs adapting.

The joy of time

The joy of observing

Tracking the elusive bee-eater by focusing on elephants

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 Leal enters Udawalale National Park like all the other safari drivers, but when they all turn left to follow 3 elephants, he  turns right and stops. What's he looking at? The elephants are back there.  But Leal is a birder as well as a driver and safari guide. He spots a blue-green bee-eater. "Haven't seen one in weeks."  

OK, it's a bird. A pretty bird. But it's a bird. Leal doesn't move but points to the right rustling bush.  It's a 2 ton male elephant munching away.  He takes the brake off and lets the jeep roll forward about 20 feet.  A herd of sambar deer are grazing.  Even the car's tread on the gravel alarms them and they leap into action across the savanah leaving the 4 of us, we now think of ourselves as Leal's trekkers, clicking away on our cameras.
We see juvenile white eagles months before they will turn brown, painted storks with their concentric yellow and pink banned eyes, spoonbills dredging through the lake's silt, turtles sunning themselves, herds of water buffalo lounging in the water, even a croc before we see what we thought we came here for..... elephants.

We see very few jeeps, for Leal senses where the elephants will be, where the hawk-eagle will fly, where the herds and elephant loaners hang out and at what time.  It's 6pm? They must be near the log for the grass came in last week and it's time for them to dig up the grass and munch down. Besides there are 3 baby elephants and they need to learn how to dig up the grass and encircle it with a trunk, letting the dirt fall away before putting it in their mouth.  4pm?  It's still warm, so the mamas are taking the little ones to play in the water.  7pm and he drives us to a bank and says "Get out of the jeep for 5 minutes. You'll be safe."  He doesn't want us to miss the orange sunset, the maquecas coming to the river, the owl waking up, the branded and wild and newly wild water buffaloes heading to their evening spot.  This is what a safari should be...more than 70 elephants, in groups from 1-10,  seen in a 5 hour period.  But better yet, we get to experience a true naturalist loving what he does and sharing it with folks every day of the week. 

Elephants have their mammary glands up front like humans. Isn't it glorious to see the babies tilt their heads back when nursing, says Leal half to himself.

First generation of newly wild water buffalo sired by branded and domesticated mother and wild father