Coffee With ChrissyTravel
The Complete And Utter Unpredictability Of It All by Anna North
I'm not a good traveller. Travelling makes me anxious, it makes me feel like I'm lost and I'll never get found and like I'm always on the brink of losing control. I don’t like packing, luggage is too heavy, I'm afraid of flying, ... and airports ... don't get me started! It's the transitory thing, it's all that waiting, the anything could happen, and would anybody care thing. It’s the complete and utter unpredictability of it all, that's what I find so hard.
But this February I went to Sri Lanka to stay at the resort where my boyfriend was working. Our relationship had just been through something of a crisis and I have to say that the irony of revisiting it against the backdrop of a whole country in conflict was not lost on me. In fact, I was deeply suspicious of my motives for going anywhere near either, but I was equally determined to give us another chance. So bomb blasts aside, I set off to find out if a shaky romance could get stronger if it was taken on a tropical holiday.
For someone who doesn't like airports Kuala Lumpur's takes the cake for alienating architecture, but by the time I’d got that far, I had acquired the calm of someone who knows there’s no turning back. As I floated along the moving footpath, headed for my connecting flight, a sweet ditty kept running through my head, and it went: I'm going to Sri Lanka. Sadly, that bubble didn't last long. Eight hours later, two long flights, sleep deprivation and my fevered anticipation at the very idea of seeing him had all combined, and I was ready to jump out of my skin. As I struggled with my luggage towards Colombo airport's narrow exit turnstiles, I was anxious, cranky and wondering what the hell I was thinking putting myself through this hideous ordeal.
And that's when I saw him - wrists sitting lightly on parted knees, head bowed and tilted left. His bearing was so familiar it was as though I could feel the very warmth of him at five metres. And all the anguish, the space, and all the time between us was no more.
Heading for the Colonial wonderland which is the Galle Face Hotel he watched me witness first hand the chaos of Colombo's cows, tuk tuks, pot holed roads, the dust, the tiny motorbike children, the dirt and those endless great bunches of bananas hanging absolutely everywhere.
Booking and payment complete and alone in our room, we jumped up and down and yelled yay and hallelujah and my elation was so vivid it seemed wrong for someone my age. But here is the honest deal: it’s this playful, almost indecent enthusiasm my partner in crime and I show each other that is the only thing that has been able to persuade me out of my world and into this one. And what a world it is.
Next morning, there's a group of white clad Tamil women keening their protest outside Galle Fort Train Station, I see a boy being arrested, handcuffed and taken away by two young soldiers and an hour into our journey, the train stops. Bomb scare. We stay in our seats and watch young soldiers with guns running through our carriage and ten minutes later, I'm surprised at how quickly this potentially unthinkable event becomes normalised as I sit, more annoyed by the delay than I am afraid for my safety.
"Hawkers wander up and down the train selling king coconuts, seafood snacks, cold drinks and lottery tickets and this living, breathing tableau plays for the whole five hour journey."
An hour of so later, we set off again, and from the window we see the tiny fishing village houses, the tsunami skeleton huts and bright fishing boats perched on the beach. Fishermen fix their nets, children play cricket, and barely visible women inside dark interiors bounce silhouette babies on their laps. Further down the track, a small island with a single mansion surrounded by picture book palms springs out of the sea just a few meters from the shore. Hawkers wander up and down the train selling king coconuts, seafood snacks, cold drinks and lottery tickets and this living, breathing tableau plays for the whole five hour journey.
The last leg of our trip is in a tuk tuk that shares the road with more cows, heaving hurtling buses that don't follow road rules, trucks that chase the buses, families on motorcycles that weave in and out of the surrounding buzz of yet more tuk tuks, sleepy roadside dogs, scampering squirrels and have I mentioned Buddhist shrines and temples?
Buddja is a huge force in Sri Lanka, both spiritually and literally. Temples house statues the size of twenty storey buildings. He is carved into the sides of massive mountains and there are special artists here whose life work is devoted to painting those Buddha eyes.
It's under that gaze that I try to hide my tears for those sick, sleepy roadside dogs, that I swim in the turquoise water of the sea and the cool aqua of the resort pool, that I negotiate resort life, and the swings between loving everything about it, and feeling like a dazed contestant on Survivor. Buddha eyes gaze upon my shift from eager, open minded tourist to tired, exasperated traveller and back again. And all with compassion, I hope.
Towards the end of my stay, we visit a massive stone temple and monastery and now it's my turn to gaze on him. The temple is a series of terraces dug into the rock of a massive boulder. At its base, monkeys chatter and make busy in the trees. Down a path, apprentice monks wander through their monastery and go about their quiet business while those monkeys scamper, busier still, over the red and orange robes drying on the cloisters' baking hot roof.
We buy flowers, pay the entry fee and start our climb. On our way up we meet a boy monk who has eyes only for the digital camera I'm carrying. After taking his photo we move on to explore these terraced caves and landings inside which lie impeccable renditions of Buddha and his face. Buddha sitting, Buddha reclining. Buddha gazing.
As we get higher, and it gets hotter, the flowers begin to wilt, and I am ever more determined to take them to the very top. We climb and climb until finally we confront steep, shallow stairs, up what seems to be an almost sheer wall. This is hard going, especially, if like me, you're already thinking about how you’re going to get back down again. We arrive at the peak and I get to place my flower offering on the highest altar. Light headed now, I walk tentatively around the summit, where the silence thrums and vibrates its way into the very depths of my skull.
At the sight of my partner in crime, and in spiritual quest taking a reckless leap over the barbed wire barrier, to sit cross legged right on the edge of that huge, high rock, my buzzing, reeling head lurches into a centrifugal spin and I am brought to my knees in a blinding, dizzying spell of vertigo.
I had no choice but to stay there and wait it out, and then descend those treacherous stairs, like a child would, backwards, using my hands, step by step, to steady and to guide my feet.
Later, he assures me that this kind of giddy spell is a well documented symptom of spiritual experience. Well, I don't know. Maybe it was, or maybe it was caused by many things - the heat, the height, the holiday itself.
I had spent four weeks that were truly my own. No alarm clocks, no work, no cooking, no dishes, no TV and all the time in the world. I had time to think, to swim, to read long books, practice yoga, walk and explore, do nothing at all, and yes, we even made time to argue, make up and argue and make up again. Time spent on the beach, in trains to Colombo, in the big city shopping centres and the bustling town markets. Time to look and look again at a place where everything I saw was new to me, and where I was new to everyone who saw me there. And I had plenty of time with my boyfriend. When finally it was time to go, we retraced our steps, backwards, but now my feet were steady. It was dark and late when our car took us back to the airport, and yet driving out of Colombo I could see the markets were still open, the bananas were still hanging in those big old bunches, and the tuk tuks, the pot holes and the cows were, like in a dream I'd had before, all there, all vaguely familiar.
And I was different. The holiday had changed me. As we waved each other goodbye through the sound (and probably bullet proof) panes of Colombo International Airport, instead of thinking about how long the flight was going to be or, how much I was going to miss him, how I might get along without him, I found the space and the time to thank God for the utter unpredictability of all things, for Sri Lanka, for second chances and to thank you, Buddha, for the vertigo, and for being so very, very big, in every sense of the word.
By Anna North
Photographs by Zach McKay
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