Colombo on the Night of the New Moon and Sri Lanka's National Day
02-Feb-2015
Colombo: Arrival and Orientation
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| Sri Lanka |
We reached Colombo from Galle in mid-afternoon, checked into our hotel and went out to orientate ourselves and scout for likely restaurants.
Our hotel, the boutique branch of one Colombo's best hotels, was modern and comfortable, occupying the seventh floor and upwards of a
tower block. Our walk quickly revealed that it was in Colombo’s jewellery
quarter where finding sapphires and rubies was easy, but not so rice and curry.
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Colombo from our hotel window
Towards the top left are the cylindrical Bank of Ceylon Tower and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, (see later)
and that is not an inappropriate attempt at humour, that is really what they are called. |
We shared the lift back up with two large, athletic east European young men and their tennis rackets. Their body language was grumpy and
they muttered unintelligible swear words when the lift refused to move after
they swiped their room key. We used ours and headed upwards together. We had,
we learned in the lobby, hit Colombo at the same time as the Internation Tennis Futures Tournament,
the third level of professional tennis where wannabe superstars travel the
world in search of ranking points to get themselves into the Challenger
Tournaments. Clearly we had shared the lift with a couple of the day’s unhappy losers.
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| Colombo is two thrids of the way down Sri Lanka's west coast |
Resorting to Google we found that had we walked the other way, just round the corner next to the Iranian Embassy we would have found an
Indian restaurant called the Mango Tree.
It seemed eccentric going to an Indian restaurant in Sri Lanka, but it was good if a little expensive and we were reminded how different
the Indian approach to spicing is. After poppadums and chutneys (more English Indian
restaurant style than Indian Indian) I had mutton with chillies in a tomato
gravy while Lynne chose a vegetarian dish of cashews and peas. We shared one
nan, though it was big enough for a family.
The Rehearsal for the National Day Parade
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| Masked Dancers, Parade rehearsal, Colombo |
The following day, our last in Sri Lanka, would be poya – the day of the new moon. Poya is a holiday and also Sri Lanka’s monthly day of
abstinence when no alcohol is sold. The day after would be National Day, another
holiday, and there would be a big parade but as we were flying out we would
miss it. Leaving the restaurant we observed that a dress rehearsal was in
progress just down the road. After dinner Lynne was tired and retreated to the hotel to
watch from a distance while I went for a closer look.
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| Dancers, Parade rehearsal, Colombo |
Groups of dancers, each with their own musicians and drummers,.....
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| Drummers, Parade rehearsal, Colombo |
alternated with richly caparisoned elephants. I took many photographs, but in the dark with a hand held camera so not all shots were usable.
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| Elephant, Parade rehearsal, Colombo |
Each elephant was attended by a man with a shovel - no doubt the roses of Colombo will look beautiful this year.
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| The man with a shovel, Parade rehearsal, Colombo |
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| Lynne's view of the parade rehearsal, Colombo |
03-Feb-2015
In the morning Lynne had fried eggs and a banana while I went for the fusion option, scrambled eggs, herby potatoes and a coconut roti,
followed by curd and treacle.
Poya not only meant that we had drunk our last Lion lager, but that our tour of Colombo would be curtailed as nothing much would be open.
Gangaramaya Temple
Temples, though, are always open and we started at the nearby Gangaramaya Temple down the road to the right of the elephant in the picture above. A
Buddhist religious and intellectual centre, the 19th century temple has an
eclectic mixture of architectural styles and includes a shrine designed by
Geoffrey Bawa (see the Heritance Hotel, Polonnaruwa), but its cramped position on a city street means the architecture was hard to
appreciate. Somewhat strangely we entered past a collection of vintage motor vehicles.
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| Vintage cars, Gangaramaya temple, Colombo |
A stupa dominates the main courtyard…
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| Stupa, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
… while near it is a bhodi tree, a cutting from the venerable tree in Anuradhapura. Many visitors were making clockwise circuits of the tree, reverently touching
the large horizontal bough on each circuit,…..
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| Bhodi Tree, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
….while some placed offerings of oil, incense, fruit or flowers at its base.
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| Offerings by the Bhodi tree, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
I liked the row of dwarves holding up one of the buildings around the central courtyard.
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| Dwarves, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
There was also an image house, where several of the decorative elephant covers had been rather thrown down after the parade rehearsal.
Upstairs was a gallery of posters depicting the fates that await sinners. I will never covet anyone else's wife now I know what will happen.
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| Warning poster, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
Beyond there is much building and restoration work so we retreated to the entrance and a museum of sorts; a random collection of
artefacts - Buddha images, Egyptian gods, oil lamps, old watches, china, wood
carvings - resembling a large junk shop.
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| Collection of stuff, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
Outside, an impressive series of panels describes the early life of the Buddha. I particularly liked the one of the Buddha fasting. His road to
enlightenment had many twists and turns, and a prolonged fast was one of those
twists; moderation in all things is the Buddhist way, avoiding over-eating (yes,
I know!) and over-aggressive fasting.
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| The Buddha after fasting, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo |
Little Beira Lake
A park containing the small Beira Lake (there is a much larger lake of the same name – they are linked by canals – a little to the north) is the other
side the parade road.
Beside it I saw the advertisement below. There are some foods that do not cross national boundaries. Tibetan tsampa (barley pounded with yak butter) and Icelandic Hakarl (fermented shark) to name but to. I have tried both but would not say I enjoyed either. I do like Marmite though, which is arguably in the same category. Clearly it has travelled to Sri Lanka but, fan as I might be, I find it difficult to believe it has anything to offer a chicken curry.
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| Marmite advertisement, Beira Lake, Colombo |
We walked through the park and over the bridge to a small island. Pedalos in the shape of geese made their stately way round and round.
We had seen boating lakes all over Sri Lanka, they all have pedalos, but apparently
the goose is the only design available.
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| Another goose pedalo, Beira Lake, Colombo |
Galle Face Green and Around
A little to the north is Galle Face Green a five hectare space between the city and the Indian Ocean. Perhaps we did not realise the significance
of Colombo's most important open space, but it looked like a large patch of worn
grass and we did not even stop the car for a photograph.
The Fort is a promontory beside the docks where the Portuguese, Sri Lanka's first European visitors, built their fort, though
nothing remains of it except the name.
We entered the area past the old parliament building, now the President’s Office. Behind it are the circular Bank of Ceylon tower and a pair
of twin towers known as the World Trade Centre, smaller than, though still eerily
reminiscent of their New York namesake (see photo at start of post). They were
built as part of a new modern city centre but the area has never fully
recovered from the massive bomb left outside the bank tower by the Tamil Tigers in 1996.
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| President's Office (the old parliament building), Colombo |
At the centre of the fort is a clock tower lighthouse. The clock tower was constructed in 1857 allegedly because the governor’s wife was
exasperated by oriental time keeping. The light was added ten years later and
signalled to approaching shipping for a century until the surrounding buildings
grew too high and a new lighthouse was built in a more appropriate location.
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| Clock tower-Lighthouse, Colombo Fort |
Behind the lighthouse - and a blanket of security - is the Presidential Palace.
Nearby is Cargill's department store. In 1844 William Miller and David Sime Cargill started a general warehouse and import business.
Cargills became a public limited company in 1946 but owned little beyond the
moribund department store until an aggressive expansion in the 1980s. Cargill's
Food City shops, Sri Lanka’s largest or perhaps only supermarket chain, are
ubiquitous but they are only the tip of the commercial iceberg. The old
department store is now the company headquarters.
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| Cargills, Colombo Fort |
Past the Docks to the Pettah District
We were able to have a look at the docks…
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| Colombo Dock |
… on our way to Pettah, Colombo’s most culturally mixed and colourful district. The street market is worth visit – at least when
it is open, which it was not today. Authorities always feel a need to ‘clean up’
districts like Pettah and the floating market, a collection of twee craft
stalls on a pontoon in a section of Beira Lake, was opened in 2014. Ravi was
determined we should have a look at it – probably because it is purpose built
tourist attraction and we were tourists.
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| Pettah Floating Market, Colombo |
We are resistant to such attractions but it did provide us with a pleasant coffee stop. Most of the stalls were closed, but even open I
would have found them less interesting than the pelican paddling around on the lake.
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| Pelican, Pettah Floating Market, Colombo |
The Captain's Garden Hindu Temple
Across the road from the floating market is an area where railways lines converge as they approach Colombo’s main station. Driving along empty and
rather desolate roads between high fences is a strange approach to the
delightful Sri Kailasanthar Swami Devashthanam Kovil. It is reputedly Colombo’s
oldest Hindu temple, but no source says how old it is, nor explains why it is
known in English as the Captain's Garden Temple.
There is a large gopura, at least by Sri Lankan standards, though it is not particularly brightly painted.
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| Gopura, Captain's Garden Temple (Sri Kailasanthar Swami Devashthanam Kovil), Colombo |
By contrast the main hall is full of colour….
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| Main hall, Captains' Garden Temple (Sri Kailasanthar Swami Devashthanam Kovil), Colombo |
….and has a pleasing version of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, one of our favourite Hindu myths. I have a whole post (2017 with later udpates) dedicated to (paintings, sculptures and models of this myth.
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| The Churning of the Ocean of Milk, Captain's Garden Temple (Sri Kailasanthar Swami Devashthanam Kovil), Colombo |
The Temple, dedicated to Shiva, has many smaller chapels….
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| Chapel, Captain's Garden Temple (Sri Kailasanthar Swami Devashthanam Kovil), Colombo |
…. and coconuts and flowers were on sale for those wishing to do Puja. Our attention was drawn to a father and his young son who were introducing
the son’s new born sibling to the temple. The baby looked to be only days old
and its mother sat on the floor nearby looking understandably exhausted.
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| Coconuts for Puja, Captain's Garden Temple, (Sri Kailasanthar Swami Devashthanam Kovil), Colombo |
The Independence Memorial
We progressed via a Dutch Church….
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| Dutch Church, Colombo |
…..to the Independence Memorial with its statute of Don Stephen Senanayake, the first prime minister of an independent Sri Lanka, then still called Ceylon.
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| Independence Memorial, Colombo |
There is an independence museum here, and Colombo also has a fine national museum, but both were closed and Ravi was running out of things
to do. We made a short detour to Victoria Park
- it was renamed Viharamhadevi Park on independence but the old name has
clung on - a large open green space much in favour with those who wish to play
cricket, picnic or canoodle. We took a stroll to fill in some time.
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| Don Stephen Senanayake, Independent Sri Lanka's first Prime Minister, Independence Memorial, Colombo |
Lunch at the Colombo City Hotel
We moved on, passing the town hall, to have lunch at the Colombo City Hotel, a rather old fashioned and fusty hotel with a rooftop
restaurant, though at midday it seemed wiser to stay in the covered air-conditioned
section. We knew there would be no beer, but the lack of lime soda was less
predictable; at least there is always ginger beer. I chose Nasi Goreng as the
Indonesian staple - Chicken, prawns and chillies in rice with Satay sauce - had been on so many menus and I had
previously ignored it. It was very good as was Lynne’s fried cuttlefish with rice and vegetables.
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| Colombo City Hall |
A Low Key End to an Excellent Holiday
After lunch we drove around a bit more, but Ravi had clearly run out of ideas and we soon returned to our hotel. At its best I think it is fair to
say that Colombo is not the world’s most interesting city, but with everything closed
for the holiday it was far from its best. We had enjoyed a wonderful Tour of
Sri Lanka, but it was now petering towards an anti-climax.
In the evening, with nowhere much available or open and only requiring something small, we visited the hotel’s snack bar. We were not
impressed by the menu, and our final dinner in Sri Lanka consisted of chicken
burgers washed down with ginger beer…. not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Next morning Ravi took us to the airport, and that brings us to the end of the 15th and last post of our Sri Lankan adventure.
