Sri Lanka portrayed as a tourist destination

Reviewed by U. S. Dharmabandu
A SRI LANKAN EXPERIENCE: Three weeks in a land like no other
By: Siri Ipalawatte and Kim Wells
Printed by: Gunaratna Offset Ltd., Sri Lanka
Published by: Nirmana, Canberra 2010

The vista of a partly hidden octagonal villa seen through a dense and rustic grove atop the tiny island in the bay of Weligama sea would naturally excite the imagination and attention of anybody passing on the Colombo- Matara road.

More so when the owner of the islet happened to be a French noble who after a personal misfortune there visited Ceylon,as Sri Lanka was then known,in the early 1900's and made it his second home.

Legend has it that when Count Maurice de Mauny – Talvande of France visited Ceylon for the first time in 1912 with the tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton he was much impressed by the serenity and beauty of the country.

He went back to France only to return after the First World War on a personal mission to find his Shangri La.To quote his own words to find "the one spot which by its sublime beauty would fulfill my dreams and hold me there for life".

I,(the reviewer) had seen this island from the road on a couple of occasions which captivated me by its serenity and the beauty. Since then whenever I read, thought or heard about this magnificient island, curiously enough, the blurred image of Count of Monte Cristo and NOT that of Count de Mauny sprang into life in technicolour at the back of my mind!

School days

Perhaps because the avenging Count created by the master story teller Alexandre Dumas in the novel of that name which regaled us immeasurably in our schooldays had more allure and mystique for me to identify him with the milieu at the Weligama Taprobane Island.

More so the Count of Monte Cristo had also bought a tiny island by which he identified his countship.

A SRI LANKAN EXPERIENCE: Three weeks in a land like no other By:Siri Ipalawatte and Kim Wells Printed by:Gunaratna Offset Ltd.,Sri Lanka Published by: Nirmana, Canberra 2010

Those somewhat parallel circumstances caught my imagination to regard Count de Mauny as a living representation of the fictitious Count of Monte Cristo and the concept was swirling at the back of my mind at a nascent level when I came across Siri Ipalawatte's book under review.

Ipalawatte's eloquent and colourful photograph of the Taprobane Island, that was how Count de Mauny christened his fond islet at the Weligama bay because of its similarity in shape to Ceylon, which the Greeks called Taprobane, set my mind working overtime.

I went to my ramshackle cmputer and typed in the words, Count de Mauny,never expecting to see,at best,more than a couple of lines given the scanty reference available locally in contemporary history, social science or tourist books about the man.

Imagine therefore my amazement when an avalanche of references,comments and quaint information on the Count began to roll out on the screen! Not to mention of the exotic pictures of the interior of the Count's octagonal villa to boot.

Though the Count's original visit to Ceylon was as far back as in 1912 it was in September 1927 that he for the first time and quite by chance had seen,to quote his own words "a red granite rock covered with palms and jungle shrub rising from the Indian Ocean - an emerald in a setting of pink coral."

Taprobane

That was the island he was to name Taprobane Island later.He chose to build and live his dream of peace and tranquility close to nature in that islet.

He was so entranced by the tiny island that he stepped onto the shore and waded across the churning waters and to quote his own words "sat for a long while on a boulder overlooking the sea wishing that this island lost in the Indian Ocean were mine; picturing and planning what I should do with it.

I felt my heart beating with the overwhelming desire to find in it peace, the nearest thing to happiness. Yes, it must be the home which I had dreamt of so many years past."

I turned the page eagerly to feast my eyes on the interior of the octagonal villa the Count built on the islet. Alas! There wasn't any.

At a time when Sri Lanka's tourism industry is booming a book like this could play a significant role in promoting Sri Lanka as a tourist destination. The book carries mostly pictures printed on quality art paper in full colours with appropriate captions and text inspiring the tourists and would be visitors to come to Sri Lanka.

Out of the two authors, Siri Ipalawatte is already known to the readers with his trail blazing publication, Sri Lanka in a nutshell ,a ready reference book about the country published by Sarasavi Publishers about a couple of years back.

Ipalawatte, a former lecturer at the University of Kelaniya and holder of Master of Science degree in Economics from the University of Wales, UK had worked in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra for 20 years. He travels to Sri Lanka from Australia on and off to attend to his prolific writing and publishing work.

Co-author

His co-author,Dr Kim Wells had visited Sri Lanka twice before as a tourist .Then in 2008 he had (to quote him) "jumped at the chance" to join Ipalawatte to tour Sri Lanka to gather photographs and material for a book (this one) to promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination.

As a forester used to the monotonous grey-green of Australian eucalypt forests Dr Wells openly concedes that he was enchanted by the colour and fertility of the Sri Lankan landscape and the diversity of its flora.

Like his previous publication Ipalawatte has brought out this book too in a pro bono publico spirit to give back something to his motherland where he was born and bred.

The duo seemed to have travelled the length and breadth of the country to compile this book to present to the reader a plethora of interesting tourist and cultural sites in the form of pictures and text.

For starters the authors have tried to present to the discerning readers the impressive 14-metre long reclining statue of Lord Buddha carved out of solid rock at the Dambulla Cave temple. Only the head and relatively a small portion of the Buddha's torso has come out in the picture due mainly to the narrow dimension of the page.

At the very beginning a map of Sri Lanka depicting major tourist and cultural attractions adorn the book followed by a brief and succinct outline about the country's history, geographical location ,culture etc that provides the reader with a comprehensive perspective at a glance.

The majestic Sigiriya, regarded as one of the world wonders without which any tourist literature or itinerary is not complete is given pride of place in the book and rightly so.

Diversity

As if to add an element of diversity a lush tea estate ,some rural scenes of the hill country,a cloud forest, a panoramic view of the World's End and a rustic scene of a patch of Hakgala Botanical Gardens depicting some Chincona trees once utilized for combating malaria are there to stimulate the reader's interest.

The authors have taken pains to add nuggets of quaint information for the benefit of the casual reader as well as the scholar which would otherwise go unnoticed in a world caught up in a frenzy of haste.

One such nugget in the form of a comment made by the famous German scientist and philosopher Ernst Heinrich Haeckel about the Royal Botanical Gardens of Peradeniya when he visited it in 1882 caught my eye.

This is what Haeckel had said on that occasion:

"If Ceylon is a paradise for every botanist and lover of flowers ,then Peradeniya deserves to be called the very heart of paradise".

That aside the writers have casually driven home another nugget of information by gently reminding the reader that the Royal Botanical Gardens of Peradeniya, the western scholars and administrators made much of, were really the royal gardens of the Sri Lankan monarchs for centuries from as far back as 1371!

Such asides apart a colourful close-up of the Kandy Dalada Maligawa or Temple of the Tooth though relevant and significant has missed the point because of the too closeness of the close-up.

A mid - range shot would have been more effective as it would have provided the reader with some interesting periphery detail on the Temple in a more appropriate perspective.

In any event, in tandem with the Temple a picture depicting the majestic Kandy Perahera or Pageant which has had the honour of being successively held for more than 1500 years would have added to the value of the book. Needless to say Kandy Perahera is a familiar icon most foreigners hold of Sri Lanka. But that lacuna is there regrettably.

Exposure

It is no secret that the puppet making and mask making at Ambalangoda has had exposure internationally and therefore an explicit picture of a craftsman engaged in chiselling a mask out of the lightwood Kaduru (Strychnos nux-vomica)has the effect of stimulating the readers.

The much used, abused and hyped coastal tourist town Hikkaduwa famous for its spectacular coral reefs and beaches is represented only with a stationary mechanised fisheries boat filled with a motley group of men. I was confused to see any relevancy of such a picture in a context like that.

At times the authors have tried to write into the captions a short list of successive tourist sites or attractions and the itinerary followed perhaps by the authors themselves apparently in their eagerness to squeeze in as much information into the book for the benefit of the readers. But at times it had proved counter productive in that the reader left confused.

A case in point is the picture at Page 57 where an impressive flight of steps across a garden is shown.

The reader is confused whether it is the Australian artist Donald Friend's private garden Brief or the house and gardens owned by Bevis Bawa, brother of the famous Sri Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa.

The picture of the Galle Fort at Page 62 with the foaming waters of the sea slapping at its granite foundation is impressive but the picture would have been more eloquent if it was supplemented with a couple of photographs depicting the Fort's interior.

After all the Galle Literature Festival which has now become a sort of an annual and international event is held inside the Fort and the foreigners particularly the Asians and Europeans would have really welcomed such revealing scenes. Anyway this is the authors' maiden work in this field and various constraints would have tied their hands.

But in the next edition they have the benefit of hindsight in vastly improving on the content and quality of the book.My humble opinion is that if the width and height of the pages are increased the readers would stand to gain.

Mansions

For the lovers of historic mansions or Walauwwas a picture of 100 years old Amaragiri Walauwwa at Weligama provides a nostalgic view of a glory long past.But evidently the poor light in which the picture would have been taken has made it a far cry from possibly being a breathtaking view otherwise.

The authors have managed to capture the beauty of the Koggala Lake and it really is a treat.Though reference is made to the closeby home of Sri Lanka's writer par excellence, the late Martin Wickremasinghe the reader is left wondering why a photograph of the place is not there.

Even the way the doyen of Sinhala Literature is described as "writer of many books, especially children's" is a misnomer for one who was at the back of a social transformation through his books in the post independent Ceylon.

Then comes the Count of Monte Cristo's oops Count de Mauny's island at the Weligama bay in all its splendour on which I dwelt at length in starting off this review as if flying off at a tangent but with good reason.

It is not everyday that we have had the good fortune to have had such altruistic personalities as Colonel Henry Steele Olcott, Marie Musaeus Higgins, Professor Evan Hardy, Arthur C. Clarke, Wilhelm Geiger, James Taylor, Tibetan monk S. Mahinda, Count de Mauny and a host of others coming to our midst inspiring us to greater heights and at the end of the day leaving not only our social milieu but quality of life as well improved.

But most of them have now been conveniently forgotten while some others have all along been unsung heroes. So it is but fitting that even as an aside a few lines are added even inside a review like this rather than waiting for a fully fledged forum to fall vacant to acknowledge their contributions.

And in the case of Count de Mauny nobody seemed to have known who he really was until thankfully the Internet has had some postings about the man lately. He who has turned a veritable snake dump at the Weligama bay into a world renown private luxurious island was an adept at furniture making and keeping gardens.

Unlike the Dumasian character Count Monte Cristo who also was not a bad sort Count de Mauny seemed to have been a good and straight forward man.

Naturally I was disappointed to find no pictures of the interior of the fabulous octagonal villa of the Count in Ipalawatte's book. I feasted my eyes on all that were available on the Internet instead.

Breathtaking

For history and archaelogy buffs the breathtaking view of the Dutch Star Fort in Matara built in the shape of a six-pointed star by the Dutch Governor in 1765 with the insignia at the top of the facade beside the drawbridge has cleverly been captured by Ipalawatte's camera. Only the Dutch Governor and his entourage of lackeys and sepoys are missing!

A rustic view of the interior of the Sinharaja Rainforest Reserve and the vast Uda Walawe national park where a bunch of wild elephants with a few cubs relaxing near a waterhole followed by a couple of raptors foraging in muddy water in a bird park there brings the saga to a close.

All in all the authors have done a commendable job amidst many restraints.In the next edition or in an entirely new book they might do well to capture the tourist attractions in the recently liberated North and East as well.

The country poised as it is in achieving a new paradigm of development needs more and more books of this genre to get across the message that Sri Lanka is truly a land like no other!