So Long Sri Lanka

We have been here for nine months.

It has started to feel like home.

And, as with any home, it comes with its goods and bads. Thankfully the list of goods is much, much longer than the little list of bads (and honestly, the bads ain’t all that bad).

I can’t possibly do this list in order because so many of the bad things lead to good things and vice versa

So, here goes:

I will miss the people.

The Sri Lankans are some of the friendliest people in all the world. I will miss the ever-present luminous smiles and the unembarrassed delight that they take in interacting with foreigners; the way the timidity at which they approach shifts immediately to ebullience when they see that you will interact with them. I will miss that there are almost no scams here. They are honest folks, and rather than scam you they will just walk up to you and ask you for money, or tell you that their grandmother died and they need money for alms (and if you think its a scam, they will even text you pictures of their dead grandmother laying there for proof. Honest!) I will miss their hardworking, industrious nature at the same time that I will not miss the steadfast stubbornness they maintain to their completely illogical problem solving (I have watched two tuk tuk drivers trying to pass each other in opposite directions, in a far too narrow space, while blocking two trucks coming from either side for ten minutes. Each driver pulls up as close as possible to the other, then sits and waits for someone to move, when not a one of them can actually move anymore). There is a real sense of “we have always done it this way and it has always worked, so why change now?” about the whole culture. Nothing is ever fixed completely, but just barely enough. Until it breaks again, then it is barely fixed again. I both respect it and am driven insane by it. The Sri Lankans are geniuses when it comes to reusing anything and everything, from home appliances to cast-off bits of cars and tuk tuks. They are resourceful to the end. I will miss the pride they take in their homes, workplaces, and family, and that they will always invite you to their home or workplace to meet the family and take a meal with them. It is just sweet. I may not miss the insistent nature of the requests to come visit and take a meal, though. They will text and find you at the beach ten times a day to insist that you come to their house, and a polite “no thank you” does not always seem to translate. Ultimately I will miss the generosity, caring, and happy nature of the Sri Lankans. They have festivals to celebrate festivals, and we were invited to, and welcomed at, every one, at every church, temple, mosque, and home that they took place.

They are devout Buddhists/Muslims/Hindus/Catholics without fail, and it makes the culture a beautiful hodgepodge of beliefs and values that elevates the entirety to a much greater level than I ever thought possible.

I will not miss the masses of tourists crowding and pushing for the space to which each feels so entitled, simply because they are tourists.

Which makes me realize that I will miss the indomitable sense of humor and lightheartedness that the Sri Lankans manage to maintain through the invasion of tourist hordes.

I will miss the animals. So many animals. So many really cool animals. I will miss the mischievous hijinks of the macaques and the dusky langurs, those preposterous primates. I will miss the silent menace of the huge crocodiles found sunning on the sand banks along the reservoirs, their mouths open wide to reveal gleaming chompers (and Tam’s complete terror of them every time we go in the water).

I will definitely miss the wild donkeys in the North, wandering around the roads and villages with casual complacency, and the picture frame goats with their little triangle of sticks around their necks to keep them out of the neighbor’s garden.

I will miss the crows that are everywhere here, and their intelligent, measured circumspection as they edge ever closer to your breakfast plate (and the speed at which they can remove a blob of jelly or a mango from your plate if you turn your back for a second). I will miss the flying things: the huge painted storks, so ungainly looking, but so casually graceful in flight; the hundreds of silent and elegant forms of giant fruit bats swooping over the water at every sunset surf session we had in the South (which was a lot).

I will miss and not miss the street dogs here. They are all approachable, very seldom aggressive, and always prepared to receive a snack or a scratch behind their mangy ears. I will miss the fact that their unbreakable love and trust can be bought with one chicken leg or a hot dog. They also break my heart with the suffering of their bent, broken bodies and parasitic skin, and this is why I will not miss them: because I cannot fix them all.

I will miss the unnaturally white cranes standing stock still in the brown lagoons for what seems hours until, almost too quickly to realize, they strike and come up with a wriggling fish far too big to swallow down that long skinny neck (it fits, though, and you can watch it wiggling all the way down). I will definitely miss the weasels (ruddy mongooses), especially when they have weasel fights in my kitchen. There was never a single time that we saw one on or near the road that Tam and I didn’t both yell out “weasel!!!” It never gets old. Really.

It is the elephants I will miss the most: their majestic tranquility is the first thing I feel at every encounter, and the aloof curiosity they have towards our little tuk tuk going by, turning around, and going back by again. They must think we are crazy. I could be here for a hundred years and would never tire of watching wild elephants in their natural surroundings.

I will miss the Dahl and roti, and the rice and curry here. It is delicious. I will, however, not miss the lack of variety. If you eat the same six items for breakfast, lunch, and dinner it becomes tiresome after enough days.

I will miss the colors of Sri Lanka: The five shades of blue of the sunlit ocean and the metallic silver of the moonlit lagoons.

I am an ocean person, but I will miss the variety of greens as you wander from jungle to tea plantation to forest. There are a thousand distinctive reflections of green from a thousand different angles of sunlight striking a thousand different varieties of plant life in every glance.

I love rock formations, so I will miss the strange white and orange granite rock formations all over the island. They are all along the beaches and in the mountains, and in the Sri Lankan way, so many of them have been taken up in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, have been carved into caves and places of worship, and have been used as foundations for lavish temples thousands of years old now.

I will miss the sky here. No matter where you may be on this island the sky is always a major player in the overall beauty. It is always presented in breathtaking brushstrokes of light and cloud, and it is consistently the biggest show happening in Sri Lanka if you remember to look up at it.

I will miss the continuous sensory overload everywhere here: the sights and sounds and smells of this magical place.

I will miss the desolation of the North, with the mirror-like lagoons and salt flats surrounded by nothingness, and the endless kilometers of sandbars stretching all the way to another country. And I will miss the giant glowing, boiling face of the sun as it sets over these dusty flats.

I will miss the waves: the easy, long, ridable faces of the Peanut Farm, and the quick drops at the Lighthouse. The crazy bumpy takeoff at Elephant Rock will not be missed. The perfect long shapely wall at Fisherman’s will forever be a favorite for me, as will the long drop to the bottom turn before starting down the line for three hundred meters of glass on a wave at Sticks. A favorite single day for me will be the bigger-than-comfortable storm swell day at Sion, and I will miss the thrill of paddling to catch those steep, fast heavy waves, just a bit outside my comfort zone, for one of the best surf sessions of my life.

Not to tarnish the sparkle of these experiences, but I will not miss the two hundred other people in the water trying to paddle onto those same waves; dropping in, kooking out, and being aggressive ass-hats in the lineup. I will miss those occasional (and utterly surprising) days when you show up to a break and realize you have it all to yourself for hours, and you paddle for every wave until your arms fall off and you can’t possibly paddle anymore (and those certain days when it may be just you and a couple others, and the same thing applies).

I will miss kiting here, a bit. I will definitely miss uncrowded sessions at Kappaladi Lagoon with just a few friends out riding mirror-flat water with thirty knot wind, and I will miss the camaraderie of friends kiting Dream Spot or Mini-Vela, pushing each other into being better and trying bigger, crazier tricks. I will not miss the main lagoon, though, with its crowds and its shifty, gusty, holey wind. It was never my favorite place to kite, but was the only optional spot on many days, because you can only pay for so many boat rides to good spots on a simple budget.

I will miss the new family we have found at Surfpoint Sri Lanka. They are a bunch of knuckleheads, but a really great group of guys. They all work hard for thirteen or fourteen hours every day, but have enough time for a laugh or a quick game of cricket in the yard. The owners are some great Hungarian guys, and we enjoyed hanging out with them and their families, kiting, drinking, and talking about music and life. We will not miss the hundreds of lacerations and punctures to our feet, or the ever-present ulcerating sand-flea bites up to our knees. We conducted regular emergency foot care clinics in the months we were here at Surfpoint, including removing fish bones from, and draining, gnarly abscesses, and constant treatment of infected sores and cuts on a variety of guests and locals.

I will miss our little tuk tuk and the adventures we have had driving him around this fantastic place. It has always been a dream of ours to have a tuk tuk some day, and we have had a richer and far more immersive experience for it. You see a lot more at forty kilometers an hour in a little open tuk tuk than you ever could in a train or private-hire car. Yes, it may take a lot longer to get where you are going, but it certainly affords you the time for adventure. And adventure we had: dodging danger buses on every blind curve, avoiding dogs, cows, goats, weasels, potholes, ditches, coconuts, two-foot deep puddles, pedestrians, and people on bicycles with no lights, all in the middle of the road at the same time, both day and night, rain or shine. I will miss our self-drive safaris and the excitement that never fades at seeing an elephant blocking your path in the road: an elephant twice as fast and twice the size of our trusty little tuk tuk. I will miss Enzo’s steadfast reliability after all the insane “roads” and steep mountain trails we dragged him over, with never one major breakdown. He ran perfectly the entire time and never once let us down, despite our unreasonable demands on him. Strangely I will miss but not miss the regular trip to the local mechanic every week or two to repair some small part that cost about two dollars to replace. I have had hours of conversations about life and politics in stilted English with the locals while waiting at the mechanic’s shop for our tuk tuk to be fixed.

Everything about having this tuk tuk, and the nine months of continuous adventure we had driving, fixing, and changing flat tires with him brought us closer to the Sri Lankan people and culture than we could have achieved in any other way. We were stopped by police at registration checks on the roadside almost every day (and once for speeding), but in every case they just kept us there for ten minutes to talk about life and ask the ever-important question “where are you from?” before letting us go on our way without ever asking to see our papers. I feel a sadness that we have sold him (I would have shipped him home if we were going to return to the US permanently), but a gratitude for everything that we gained from having this opportunity. We sold him to the owners of Surfpoint, and I am excited to see that he will be used and taken care of by friends (Shewon had already started driving Enzo in place of his own tuk tuk just a day before we had left). Silly, I know, but some funny-sounding, comical little tuk tuk came to symbolize our time here, and it became family.

Thank you Sri Lanka for an amazing, unforgettable nine months!