A Tuk Tuk Trip Around The North End

When we left Weligama we had just a few spots left to see on the island. The drive turned into a whirlwind of beautiful sights and crazy tuk tuk adventures (more on the adventure part soon). We wanted to see the Southern part of central Sri Lanka, in the mountains (more on this part soon also), and we still needed to see the far north part as well. This may be a little out of order, but this is all about the north part now. The north is crazy desolate and far less populated, and has a noticeable difference in the culture, food, and way of life for the Tamil people that inhabit this end of the island. It consists of salt flats, lagoons, and long spaces between populated areas. We saw one other tourist in three days of driving and exploring. Such a vast difference from the tourist-hell of the South. Tam was already missing the jungle (about an hour out of Weligama due to me taking the wrong route from town and driving around the jungly part), and it is flat scrub land up here. Very different. At least all of our moldy clothes and packs and our moldy selves will start to dry out now!

The North part of Sri Lanka has been pretty devastated by the civil war between the Sri Lankan Army and the Tamil Tigers from he mid eighties until 2009. Twenty five years of intense fighting has taken its toll, and left behind many reminders of the sheer violence. This is a Catholic Church that was destroyed in the fighting, and, due to the remote location, never rebuilt. The dunes have taken over here.

These remote coastlines are so beautiful. It feels like it has a real Mediterranean or Caribbean feel to it at times. The Tamil architecture and way of life is different enough to make one feel like you are in a different county. It seems the entirety of the North-facing coast is all coral reef and crows.

We found a boat!

The day before Christmas we were driving around in the rain to see the casuarina forest in Point Pedro, and we found them. They are a type of evergreen tree, and they were planted out here in the middle of nowhere to prevent soil movement and erosion, particularly after the tsunami in 2004 (the South and East coasts of Sri Lanka took a massive beating from that tsunami, but it never really made the world news). When we got out here, we found everyone cutting them down for Christmas trees so we found a leftover branch for our Christmas tree.

And how do you get your Sri Lankan Christmas tree home? Why you put it on top of your tuk tuk, of course!

And we made it to Point Pedro! This means that we have stood at the furthest point in all four cardinal directions on Sri Lanka now. It was a strange goal, but kind of fun to set out on. Point Pedro was the only one with a marker, so the rest of them we just used Google Earth.

We found the biggest Baobab tree in all of South Asia (the biggest around, anyway). This thing is huge! The circumference is almost twenty meters, and it is believed to be eight hundred years old. It is pretty short though. The strange part about it is that it is right in the middle of the town of Mannar. Luckily it is quite popular with tourists, and so very well protected and cared for. For some reason I think it looks like a grumpy old tree.

On Christmas Day we ended up at our goal of seeing Adam’s Bridge (more appropriately Rama’s Bridge), and we were even able to get there at sunset. from here, you can watch the sun setting over India, just forty eight kilometers away. This was another strange goal we had, but it was beautiful. It was so remote, and standing at the edge of Sri Lanka, on the vast tidal flats was humbling. Such a wild environment.

In Hindu mythology, the bridge is believed to have been built by the monkey army of the god Hanuman to cross from India to aid Rama in his war with Ravana, who had kidnapped Rama’s wife Sita.

The bridge, which is a series of limestone shoals and sandbars, was fully exposed and the Tamil people were able to cross from India to Sri Lanka as recently as 1480 AD. The bridge was destroyed by a cyclone at that time, and now remains a series of separated exposed islands and sandbars separated by depths from one to ten meters. There was a push in 2001 to dredge a channel through it for shipping purposes, but luckily it was shut down due to resistance from Indian Hindus. It is a very sacred natural feature.

As a side note, there is a great story about Hanuman and a mountain called Rumasalla that we visited in Unawatuna on the South coast: It is Hindu mythology that Sugriva had asked Hanuman to fly to the Himalayas to procure medicinal plants to help heal the injured and unconscious Rama and Lakshma, injured by arrows during the war with Ravana (yes, Hanuman could fly). Hanuman did, but when he arrived in the Himalaya, he was unable to figure out which of the hundreds of varieties of plants he needed, so in true monkey god fashion, he just picked up the whole mountain and flew back with it. Along the way, it is said that he dropped five pieces of the mountain across Sri Lanka, and we were lucky enough to visit one of these. Strangely, to add more mystery to the story, it is true that these five mountains have hundreds of medicinal plants found nowhere else in Sri Lanka.

Kind of cool, right?

Sometimes you just have a great idea.

Watching the sun go down over India from the Sri Lankan side of Rama’s Bridge (Adam’s Bridge).