Off beaten track

Continued from (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) Did I mention it was raining? Well it was and showed no signs of letting up. As we huddled under the tarp, making some feeble attempts at sopping up the tents, one of the more astute members of the group noted the river. Where there had previously been a somewhat small rapid shooting frothy white through the rocks, there was now what looked like the Limpopo in full blast. Brown water with vestiges of white foam shot through the rocks with frightening energy as the water swirled up the tree trunks that had previously stood high and dry. The sand bank on the opposite bank, which, with its rock face backing had seemed such an ideal camp site was now washed away. Given the impending prospect of being washed into the Senanayake Samudra, kitchen table and all, we discussed our options, namely : a)    get the hell out of there and go crash at the park office b)    batten down and stay, hope the rain stops and the riv...

Continued from (Part 1) After a handful of hours of sleep and the long, arduous drive , we celebrated by carrying a mountain of camping gear down a small path to our campsite on the banks of the Gal Oya. In the spirit of trying out this Web 2.0 business, I did a small videolog of our approach to the campsite. Note that most of the time I'm talking utter nonsense due to equal measures of exhaustion, concentrating on not trying to fall down the path and my general ability to talk nonsense. David Attenborough I most certainly am not. Also please note there might be a small amount of swearing in the clip so close your ears if you're sensitive to that kind of thing. Videos aside, we carried everything but the kitchen table (oh wait...we did carry the kitchen table down) to the site and set up. Thankfully the tents (rather brilliant knock offs of $500 REI tents) were easy to install and put up and in the space of an hour we were sorted. All there was to do was jump in the river...

�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...

It was a random conversation over coffee at Commons for a requisite December meet up with the expatriates where the question of water in Batticaloa came up. My mention of our work in rainwater harvesting systems and P�s work in Batticaloa resulted in us taking a trip on the fly to Batticaloa to see what we could do to alleviate some water issues his projects were having in Batticaloa. We left Colombo at a bleary eyed 3am to arrive in Maha Oya at a sprightly 9am, where transporthad been arranged for us to visit the project sites that P and his team were working on. Gunathilake and Jayasuriya were our ebullient and ever so nice escorts on the ride; the guns however did make me a bit nervous as we bounced over the A5. Our transport Driving from Maha Oya to the Batticaloa area was an eye opening experience. We drove through what had been the last checkpoint that separated government land from LTTE control in the bad old days and entered a landscape of lush green and destroyed buildings. (L...

As a word of explaination, 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. The first of the Moneragala Chronicles is a slightly edited version of a post I wrote for a blog I used to maintain a long, long time ago. Everybody has those rare moments in life where it all comes together, everything is, for a breathless moment, perfect. One of those moments occurred for me in the backwoods of Sri Lanka in Moneragala where I spent two months in a village doing research for my MSc. After a 5am start which due to unfamiliarity of locations turned into an 8am start, my assistant Nuwan and I took a bone-mashing eight hour bus ride in w...

Welcome to 2010 and in many ways a fresh start for myself. This blog is something I�ve been meaning to start for awhile, chronicling my travelling travails in Sri Lanka along with showcasing some attempts at photogrpahy along the way. Of course until recently this has been a bit tough since I lived on another continent. However having returned home for the next few years watch this space for tales of my wandering around the island and other trips I have taken/will take in other lands. Madiha seashore at sunrise