Off beaten track

�Let me call you back and let you know if I�m in� 10 seconds later� �I�m in.� I t really didn�t take much arm twisting for me to say yes to a three day camping trip to Gal Oya when S called to let me know a space had opened up on their trip. Gal Oya looms large in my family lore, my grandfather having been one of the lead engineers when the Senanayake Samudra was being built. All my life I�ve heard fascinating tales of elephants interrupting picnics, inspection tours and arguments with foreign engineers. Add this lore to the obsessive fascination I already have for the dry zone and Gal Oya was indeed my Lankan Shangri La . So it was that I found myself at C�s place at the ungodly hour of midnight helping pack the vehicle for the trip. A trusty old Toyota doublecab was our chariot to the jungles but before we could leave we had to set up the seats and canopy in the back. What looked quite simple was of course not quite so and a lot of grunting, lifting and cuts from the metal poles were

� The noble fish, weighing up to four hundred pounds apiece, swam around and around�We pondered how it would feel to be trapped with the other animals and have to live their tragedy. Dumas and I were the only ones in the creeping, constricting prison who knew the outcome, and we were destined to escape. Perhaps we were oversentimental but we were ashamed of the knowledge. I had an impulse to take my belt knife and cut a hole for a mass break to Freedom. The death chamber was reduced to a third of its size. The atmosphere grew excited, franctic. The herd swam restlessly faster, but still in formation. Their eyes passed us with almost human expressions of fright. �Never have I beheld a site lie the death cell in the last moments. The fish were out of control�With the seeming momentum of locomotives, the tuna drove at me, head-on, obliquely, crosswise. It was out of the question for me to dodge them. Frightened out of sense of time, I�.surfaced amidst the thrashing bodies. There was not a

As a word of explanation, I once spent two months living in a little village in Maragalakanda, close to Moneragala back in 2004. My purpose, living there without electricity or running water, was to study bird diversity in an agroforestry scheme for my MSc. This was when the photography bug first bit so there are some tales worth telling and some photos worth showing, though the latter were for the most part taken with a dinky Canon G3. For more of the Moneragala Chronicles click here . �A perfect picture, where the whole world holds its breath�   That line from the Match by Romesh Gunasekera has been one of my favourite quotes on photography, despite it being not from a real photographer. For me however it holds the line holds a looking-glass quality of an ideal that can never really be achieved in the real world. There is no perfect picture, all pictures have good and bad and there are too many subjects in the world and stories to be told with photography for there to be

Dive #41 and #42, diving off Mount Lavinia with Colombo Divers , Boatman Ravinda, Divemaster Jehan, and two American dive buddies whose names I cannot recall (as usual).   Parak Gala: Bottom time � 43 minutes; Depth � 22.1 meters Snap! I stared disconcerted at the severed strap of my dive mask. A number of profanities raced through my head as I realized I had left my spare strap on land, in my backpack. The conditions were extremely rocky with white flecked grey waves all around us and there was no chance of getting back to shore to get my strap. Thankfully there was an extra mask in the boat and despite the bad fit I pulled it on and got into the water. There I was made to wait for what seemed like an interminable time while the waves playfully slapped me in the face and smacked me up against the boat while my erstwhile dive buddies took their own cool time getting ready. Finally all geared and ready, we started to descend. Unfortunately the older of the American couple hadn�t dived

As a word of explanation, I once spent two months living in a little village in Maragalakanda, close to Moneragala back in 2004. My purpose, living there without electricity or running water, was to study bird diversity in an agroforestry scheme for my MSc. This was when the photography bug first bit so there are some tales worth telling and some photos worth showing, though the latter were for the most part taken with a dinky Canon G3. For more of the Moneragala Chronicles click here .     Calodactylodes illingworthorum , not exactly a name that rolls off the tongue is it? Luckily it also goes by the somewhat less tongue-twisting name the Golden Gecko. It was, courtesy of my herpetology crazy assistant, my first introduction to the fascinating array of Sri Lanka's Geckos. Rather astonishingly Sri Lanka enjoys a grand total of 42 species of Geckos of which a staggering 31 are endemic to the country , i.e. found nowhere else in the world except our sunny island. Certainly make

Dive #39 and #40, diving off Mount Lavinia with Colombo Divers , Boatman Ravinda , Divemaster Jehan, and instructor Shaf.   Cargo Wreck: Bottom time � 44 minutes; Depth � 31 meters This was a dive with a couple of old hands at the game, Shaf and Jehan, and the plan was to spend as much time underwater as possible without going into ridiculous deco times. As we hit the wreck , bait balls boiled out of the blue, Fusiliers exploding past us as they surged silvery in the water. There was more of a current than usual hence the activity of the Fusiliers. On the body of the wreck there were the usual suspects roaming around, a school of Blue-lined Snappers, a phalanx of blue and yellow swimming along. Shaf peeled away from us to go explore the innards of the wreck (please note that wreck exploration and solo diving requires very specialized training and as such should only be done by suitably qualified divers). I finned down to one of the lifeboats lying disconsolately on the bottom, ghostin

Dive #36 and #37, diving off Mount Lavinia with Colombo Divers , Boatman Ravinda, Divemaster Jehan and buddy Daniel. Trug: Bottom time � 36 minutes; Depth � 29.2 meters It was time for a bit of a change. The Trug was our poison of choice for our next dive, a barge in about 30m of water which due to its relatively small size is sometimes difficult to find in rougher seas. Today was however a flat calm day and Ravinda navigated and hooked onto the wreck without any issues. The water here wasn�t the deep blue that you usually see on the Cargo but had more of a greenish tinge, out of which the wreck appeared, like a spaceship rising out of the depths. The difference in scale was the first impression I received, almost a tinge of disappointment after being spoilt by the immensity of the Cargo Wreck looming over me on most of my previous dives. I was soon however intrigued by the different spatial look of the wreck, since the boat had sunk upside down the keel rose like an aquatic spaceship

Dive #34 and #35, diving off Mount Lavinia with Colombo Divers , Boatman Ravinda, Divemaster Jehan, Dive guide Nishan and buddies Daniel and Buddhi.   Cargo Wreck: Bottom time � 34 minutes; Depth � 30.6 meters Spear-fishermen are a constant bane for divers, primarily those who think that it is sporting to strap tanks onto themselves and spear large, charismatic fish like Groupers and Rays. Most of the big fish are now nowhere to be seen because of the indiscriminate fishing done by such gentlemen who have wiped out such slow reproducing fish. The Cargo Wreck had a claim to fame that it was the home of two spectacularly giant Rays, known rather brilliantly as Elvis and Priscilla. I hadn�t seen them on the wreck yet and in fact no one had seen them that season and it was feared that they had ended up, via a spear-fisherman, at a fish market and on someone�s plate. We started the dive at the bow of the ship and slowly moved to the stern, covering the 200m length while being constantly

Dive #29 and #30 (and #31), diving off Mount Lavinia with Colombo Divers , Boatman Ravinda, dive buddies Nishan and Anu. Cargo Wreck: Bottom time � 41 minutes; Depth � 29.1 meters Some anomaly of the wreck attracted a second glance from me. As I swam in closer I was slightly taken aback to see a bit of the wreck move quite sinuously. Looking at my dive computer to confirm I was nowhere near 30 meters and as such couldn�t be narced I looked at the writhing piece of the wreck with unabashed interest. I almost whooped into my regulator when I realized that I had been staring at what looked like an elongated seahorse on a diet. Beckoning Nishan over excitedly I pointed out the creature, which he later (once he didn�t have a regulator in his mouth) identified as a species of Pipefish , which for those of you who are scientifically inclined are in the Syngnathidae family, which includes the seahorses. After metaphorically patting myself on the back for making this exciting discovery I occ