Sunday Afternoon in Okanda, Part One: The Town.

Just to warn you, this post was going to be too long for a single post, so it has become three separate posts.

Read on at your leisure for part one…

We took a Sunday afternoon drive the other day.

We set out to check the surf at a spot about an hour South of our house, with the added incentive of seeing a Hindu temple on a granite dome and a Buddhist temple on a different granite dome about a mile further on. All of this sightseeing is centered around the town (teeny tiny village) of Okanda, in the Ampara district of Southeast Sri Lanka. This is all situated on the very border of Kumana National Park, which is only accessed by safari jeep tours, so we could only explore the boundaries outside of the park. It was pretty spectacular, though.

It is strange, but we just keep finding more and more amazing things on this little island: Things that make us love it here more and more all the time.

This place feeds something in you, something ineffable, something you didn’t know you needed until it was found.

We found it again.

This is the village of Okanda, and the entrance gate to the town. Stark, but stunning at the same time. The village is a stop-off for Hindu pilgrims moving through the area. In fact, the name Okanda comes loosely from a word meaning “to sit”, and is apparently the very spot a Hindu god named Murugan rested on his travels.

Tam seems happy!

We did find the surf spot. It looks good, but remote. We haven’t surfed it yet, because we neglected to bring the boards on our sightseeing trip. Next time…

This beach was completely deserted. After the tourist hordes of Arugam Bay, this was a welcome change. We had the entire place to ourselves.

After the gate, the road sneaks between these two immense boulders (more like small granite domes), and past this tree. I can’t find the words to accurately describe the tree (Majestic? No. Magical? No, that makes me sound like a hippie. Grandiose? No, too pretentious). Sadly, these pictures just do not seem to capture it in its entirety.

They also do not provide scale, so we added the tuk tuk to give some idea of the size (majesticness?) of it.

It really is huge!

A second picture, because I wish I could convey the grandeur (bigness?) of the whole thing.

We went on to find the Hindu temple ruins, through the village from here, and found a place to park where the monkeys would possibly leave the tuk tuk alone (the little shits have raided our tuk tuk previously, stole everything they could carry, and chewed up everything else).

We found this parking place. Hopefully far enough from the monkeys, but who knows?

Stay tuned for part Two…