In a Skype video call with Mum, Dad and brother Stu on Mothering Sunday, I noticed something move on the curtain. A tiny Gecko lizard who scampered around the curtain for the evening but hasn\’t been since. Rather friendlier than the cockroach that Misa found in the children\’s shower room last week; the first one we have seen in the apartment since moving here last August.
Steve
This morning we awoke in our city centre apartment to… Silence. Pure silence, broken only by the twittering of birds and a very occasional motor vehicle driving by on official business. None of the usual clattering of engines in queuing traffic, incessant blowing of horns or clanking and banging from the countless construction sites. Just lovely peace draped over the city like a blanket.
Once up and about, Rennie suggested that we sit outside on our balcony in the warm sunshine where for the first time we could hear lovely piano music coming from a practice session or lesson in another apartment. We also noticed something that we have never seen before in Colombo; a complete absence of haze. Compare the two photos above and you\’ll see what I mean (click each to open full size in a new tab). The difference of a week with hardly any traffic is profound – and this is just one city of our world. In our case it was cause to just sit, enjoy this rare moment in a normally noisy and dirty city, sip our coffees and exercise some mindfulness.
The backdrop to this is that on Saturday night last week, the Sri Lankan government announced that Monday would be an extra mercantile holiday with intention to reduce intermingling of the population. As expected, one day became three, and even afterwards on Thursday and Friday the city was very quiet. We took a decision to operate the business from employees\’ homes all week and will do so again in the week ahead. The business continuity plan has been almost faultless in execution and the employee morale and can-do spirit, fantastic; I am enormously proud of everyone. We are under no illusions though; the real test, and tough times, lie ahead.
On Friday morning, the government announced there would be a curfew from 6pm until 6am on Monday. This has since been extended to 6am on Tuesday. Whilst there have been nothing like the selfish behavioural scenes from the UK that sadden me as a fellow Brit, it is fair to say that there was some stocking up going on with bread, flour and rice gone by the time I went for a quick shop for weekend fayre in the late afternoon. For some reason milk has been completely unavailable for over a week now. Everything else though is normally in plentiful supply, including lovely fresh fruit and vegetables.
It feels like the calm before the storm, Sri Lanka so far having been a very low risk place to be but with early signs of a surge of cases starting to come. All we can be is be calm and sensible ourselves, cutting each other slack when confined to barracks – so that\’s how we are. We\’re lucky to have a couple of nice swimming pools just an elevator ride away, but the gym is closed, so during the curfew our other exercise is confined to taking many flights of stairs instead of using the elevator each time we come up. Oh – and Rennie joined her zumba class via Zoom video call yesterday!
Steve
There were many reasons why we chose the children\’s school, but one of them was the way that technology is actively embraced and used to educational advantage. When the children first started, the school was implementing Bring Your Own Device, and before long the children\’s year group was included. They use Microsoft Teams on their own laptops, both in the school and at home. The latter is normally for homework and additional study, but on Friday last week when the school closed until after Easter at the earliest, it took on a whole additional role; the classroom came home with the children participating in their normal lessons, to their normal schedule with their normal classmates and teachers.
Absolutely great, and the effectiveness has impressed me. I hope that Misa and Emilka keep at it as they have another couple of weeks to go before the holiday starts. The apartment tower where we live has a business centre where I\’ve been working this week, and it has been lovely to have my children with me at the same cluster of desks and to see them studying hard and clearly enjoying what they are doing. Ok, I\’ve caught them each a couple of times on Roblox when they weren\’t quite quick enough flicking back to Teams, but the truth is that they have studied well and had results to prove it. In the image, Emi\’s cheering her grade A result in a music test.
Steve
One of the many beauties we found of Bera in India’s Rajasthan was its relative inaccessibility. You have to make a real effort to get there, there is a cost involved, and once there, there is a restriction on the number of vehicles allowed in the vicinity at any one time; from memory it is around a dozen, and the area is vast. The vehicles used are quiet, too.
Wilpattu National Park in Sri Lanka is also vast so it is possible to find solitude and just enjoy beautiful nature, but it is also highly accessible and there is no meaningful limit on the number of vehicles allowed entry. Indeed, you can bring your own vehicle so long as it is four wheel drive with locking differentials and has sand tyres fitted, the only caveat being you have to take a guide in the front passenger seat for safety and to ensure park rules are followed. Much has been written in the local press – and even made the international press – about queues of vehicles hounding one poor animal, usually the sought-after leopard. I saw an article about Yala National Park that showed seventy vehicles all jostling for position around a leopard and her cub. A few years back, the authorities did limit the number of vehicles to both parks and even switched off the cellular towers in the few areas that a signal was available, but under tourism industry pressure it has regressed to how it was; there is a patchy signal around the edges of Wilpattu though thankfully none when properly in the park, but far too many vehicles. I’d much rather have had to book and wait for my turn.
From what we saw, most folk go with the sole purpose of seeing a leopard, and the result is a cacophony of diesel-engined vehicles hauling themselves noisily along sandy tracks, drivers eagerly looking for another vehicle that looks like it is on to something and then racing in to position to join it. In no time flat, you can go from total silence bar birdsong to being surrounded by a dozen vehicles, each tunelessly idling so they’d be ready to move if they needed to, jockeying for position to give their punter the best view and filling the air with diesel fumes. It is unfair on those like Ranil and me who wish to simply appreciate nature – and much more importantly, it is the unfair on the wildlife, too. Soon after the other drivers realise that in fact you are patiently waiting to photograph a bird or something else, they’ll be off unless also carrying wildlife photographers – and in several cases squeeeeeeezing between our vehicle and the subject we were shooting.
The weekend was a privilege, we saw some amazing things, had the chance to put technical and artistic photography skills to the test and enjoyed periods of blissful isolation in a stunning landscape – but all too often it would be spoiled before its time. Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter. Contrast that with the birdsong in this smartphone video that I shot when we found a peaceful place to be.
Steve
Whilst in Wilpattu National Park and in complete tranquillity apart from beautiful omnipresent birdsong, we happened across a peafowl courtship ritual from beginning to end. Absolutely magnificent – and that was just the stagecraft of the female playing disinterested in the first and second images and the submissive end of the male’s display as caught in the final one!
Steve
Since arriving to live in Sri Lanka, my photographer friend Ranil has been suggesting that we go on a weekend wildlife photography trip together. I have been politely declining though because on one hand it didn’t feel right to be going away leaving Rennie and our children holed up in a city apartment, but on the other the children would be bored crazy with the silence and long periods of waiting required if we took them. The perfect opportunity arose last weekend though because not only was there a Poya (full moon) public holiday on Monday to make it a long weekend, but Rennie took visiting Czech friends and our children to the South coast so I needn’t feel guilty!
Of the two main national parks, Wilpattu and Yala, Ranil and I chose the former. Unexpected rain (the first we have seen since December) reduced the amount of wildlife seen on Saturday’s evening safari, but on Sunday’s all-day safari from before sunrise right up to sunset, we were in for a treat. On Monday morning, a naturalist took us on a guided tour of the lake outside our guesthouse; his knowledge of the birds was astounding as was his ability to mimic their calls and be called back in return!
The weekend was a wonderful experience to which I’ll let the photographs do the rest of the talking, both of the natural environment and the beautiful wildlife that inhabits it. I’ll post separately on two specific aspects.
Steve
Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th Feb 2020
All too soon, it was time to leave the absolute tranquillity of Jawai with its abundant bird life on and around the extensive reservoir that reaches out to the dam, its leopard and much other wildlife that inhabit the incredible landscape, the simple but welcoming comfort of the Amritara Jawai Sagar hideaway with its wonderful absence of external communication, and the calmness and gentle pace of life in the small village of Bera.
The reverse of arrival, departure was via the deminutive Maruti Suzuki 4x4s that had scampered around on our safaris; tiny 1.3 litre engines, light weight and abundant traction helped by semi-deflated tyres making mincemeat of what was often demanding terrain. They are quiet when not working hard, too – a real asset when searching for wildlife – and clearly the suspension and drive train can soak up an immense amount of punishment without failure. These vehicles are no spring chickens and are worked hard in a hostile environment. To corrupt an advertising slogan from a certain British product owned by India’s Tata, “the best 4×4 by far” is the one best suited to the terrain – and here it was the amazing Marutis, simple locally built versions of a Suzuki product line that stretches back to the early Eighties.
You can see a video clip of departure here, and one that Grandma took of an ascent here (each opens in a new tab) but as is often the case with video, its impossible to get a true feeling for the severity of gradient.
Our night stop was at the Palace Hotel, Bikaner House, Mount Abu about three hours’ drive away. Debarshi and Chandrima’s rental car from Ahmedabad airport had a wheel issue that rendered it unsafe to drive but the upside was the great pleasure of their company in our minibus. Unfortunately, I had fallen ill with a stomach bug the day before and was absolutely exhausted and dozing for most of the drive. Misa had become similarly ill soon afterwards, and then it was Rennie and Emilka’s turns on arrival at Mount Abu; an early night for everyone and not quite the birthday eve dinner that had been planned!
Never mind; it had still be an incredible adventure that we’d never have had if we hadn’t moved to Sri Lanka, and after the three hour drive back to Udaipur on 25th, the impressive IndiGo airline made our journey home via Bengaluru to Colombo as easy, on time and efficient as the journey out. Add customer service of the highest order right through the experience chain and that on every flight the passengers left the aeroplane as tidy as when they’d boarded it – not a single sweet wrapper on the carpet – and it is true to say that some preconceived stereotypes have been completely overturned.
On a light note, Emi was thrilled that on the bus from the gate to the aeroplane at Bengaluru she found that she’s now tall enough to strap hang with the adults! On arrival we also found that according to the cab company’s greeting board, I was “Miss Steve”. 🙂
Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for letting us take you and for wholeheartedly joining in with everything. As a child and teenager you gave Stu and myself so many wonderful experiences and it was a pleasure to give something back. What a lovely, lovely trip, less than perfect only being by Stu sadly being unable to join us in person if frequently with us in thought and conversation. Thank you too for letting me nab a few of your photos throughout the India trip story, Grandma (all those with G5X at the end of the image name).
Steve
Friday brought the fun of another Independence Night and with it, four weeks passed in a heartbeat since the last one when we had the great pleasure of my father joining-in.
This time we went to the Barracuda Sea Food & Grill on the beach at the Colombo district of Dehiwala, and accessed with care from Marine Drive by crossing the railway tracks; with the tracks dividing the road from the beach along the entire stretch of 5 miles, there is no other way.
My friend Mehmet took a bottle of Ouzo and myself one of gin – but it was with hilarity that we realised that each of us had disguised them in carrier bags from Glitz, a fashion house frequented by our respective daughters!
Steve
Thank you for my lovely new handbag, Grandma and Grandpa (and again for my favourite dress, Holly!)
Emilka
