Roger and Eileen conclude their voyage through Sri Lanka visiting Negombo, Yala National Park and Colombo. To read the first half of their adventures, click here.
We reluctantly left Uga Ulagalla behind and headed three hours or so southwest to our next destination, the Portuguese-influenced coastal town of Negombo. On the way we passed through the sprawling town of Dambulla, famous for its cave temples but now also the home of Sri Lanka’s latest international cricket venue. There was even a shop here which had the sign ‘Cricket Net’ over the entrance!
However, as Chamila pointed out, despite the heroics of the national team over the past 20 years, with a World Cup (1996) and the finest spin bowler of all time – no not Shane Warne of Australia, but Muttiah Muralitharan with 800 Test wickets – cricket is not, officially, the national sport. That accolade, strange to our eyes, goes to volleyball.
Uga Riva, Negombo
Monsoon-like weather had hit Negombo so plans to head out in a tuk tuk to its famous fort and fishing market had to be abandoned. Instead, it allowed us to spend more time in our second hotel, Uga Riva, which has been open for just a year. This was once a treasured family home, an elegant 180-year-old mansion house of graceful arches and grand pillared verandas nestled on the site of a former coconut estate. The central area is enhanced by interesting works of modern art and sculpture, and the courtyard features a pond at its centre.
The house has obviously been beautifully restored. Our superior room with terracotta floors and traditional dark-wood furniture was spacious and comfortable, the four-poster bed a delight and the walk-in shower invigorating. A swim in the large outdoor pool was enjoyable, even as the rain started to fall even harder.
There is a nice, relaxed atmosphere here. As we gazed out onto the lush, rain-soaked garden, a similar tropical scene from the film ‘The Painted Veil’ (from the novel by Somerset Maugham) came to mind. Uga Riva’s romantic setting can inspire such flights of fancy.
The hotel doesn’t have a formal restaurant, but it has an ample all-day menu and we enjoyed excellent curries for our evening meal. The staff here are very friendly, and on the morning we left escorted us over the road to the famous landmark of this historic property – Mahatma Gandhi’s tree.
The great Indian nationalist came to Ceylon (as it was then) in 1927 for his one and only visit, staying in the Riva house. To commemorate his stay he planted a tree opposite – a splendid specimen, but one that no-one seems to be able to put a name to. We placed our normally reliable plant and tree app next to the leaves but to no avail – and the staff, who of course get asked about it, have been unable to fathom it out.
Uga Chena Huts, Yala
Just one night at Uga Riva and we were on the road once more, this time a five-hour drive across country to the far south east for a safari experience. Here we would stay on the coast at Uga Chena Huts, just a few miles from Yala National Park, Sri Lanka’s premier wildlife haven.
Our luxurious cabin (one of eighteen) was just a short walk from reception on a raised walkway through the jungle. Outside it appeared like a rustic, thatched dwelling – but inside the door, like the Tardis in Dr Who, it opened up into a quite splendid living space, with another wondrous king-sized bed, standalone bath, dual wash basins and comfortable chairs and sofa.
Outside, on the shaded outdoor deck, we had our own plunge pool. We were only a matter of a hundred yards or so across the sand to the Indian Ocean, although we were warned not to walk to the sea at certain times because of the danger of visiting elephants. Instead we settled down on the deck with our books, occasionally distracted and enlivened by the little Green Forest lizards whose home we were obviously intruding on.
We had a delicious dinner in the Basses restaurant on our first night – an ‘Ambula’, which means sour in the Sinhalese language, and historically the nutritious meal served in the fields for the workers to give energy for the day ahead. For us it was a tasty vegetable curry with rice, mango chutney, sambals and poppadum.
Yala National Park Safari
So to safari, with both morning and evening game drives.
Yala National Park is home to 44 varieties of mammal and 215 bird species, and our assiduous ranger, Nuwan, did his utmost to help us spot a great many of them. It is famous for its leopards, and – if you are extremely lucky – you might catch a glimpse of the curious looking sloth bear.
Our highlight was the sight of a lone female elephant, who emerged dramatically in front of us to flick her trunk into a pond, after a spell out of view munching at some nearby trees. Nuwan reckoned she was around 15-20 years old, and that having been disturbed by a couple of jeeps, was merely sizing us up, not seriously drinking.
On this occasion we saw no leopard, although it was clear one was close by when we heard the distressed call of deer. But we did spot a lone jackal by the water’s edge, sniffing excitedly, clearly on the scent of something. As for the bird life, that was excellent, with scores of peacocks and peahens, the ubiquitous jungle fowl (the national bird), the lesser adjutant (great name for this wading bird), black Indian robin, black-hooded oriole, white bellied sea eagle and – best of all – the beautiful Painted stork, who we stopped to watch as it patiently stood for several minutes before finally plunging its long beak into the water to extract its prey.
Uga’s Residence Colombo
Uga Chena Huts, with its setting of jungle and the majestic Indian Ocean, is a special, remote spot. But it was time for a brief taste of city life before we departed Sri Lanka, so Chamila drove us back to Colombo for our final stay, this time at Uga’s Residence on Park Street, situated in the heart of the capital.
This grand mansion was built around 200 years ago by a wealthy barrister, Sheikh Salehboy Moosajee, and it was the meeting place for Ceylon’s colonial society, hosting Indian maharajahs, European nobility and British governors. Later it was the childhood home of Junius R Jayawardene, Sri Lanka’s second president.
The grand lobby pays homage to those days with a selection of interesting old photos. Inside the design is a mixture of the colonial and the contemporary; there is an attractive sunken courtyard and long swimming pool, around which are situated ten suites. Ours was very spacious and well-equipped, with our fourth successive, amazingly comfortable bed.
Colombo City Tour
There was no time for a swim as our hotel had fixed us up with a night time tuk tuk drive round Colombo, courtesy of Pepper Life, who provide excellent tours of the capital and beyond of all description – on the subjects of culture and history, food, wildlife and much more. Our host for an unforgettable evening would be one of the most charismatic tour guides we had encountered – ESK Senanayake.
ESK took us on a rollicking, stimulating historical tour of Colombo. We started at the capital’s most famous hotel, Galle Face, the ‘Raffles of Sri Lanka’, a glorious remnant of the colonial past with its prime position on the sea front. We were in time to witness a strangely moving and somewhat bizarre ceremony which takes place daily at sunset – the lowering of the Sri Lankan flag to the accompaniment of a lone bagpiper (playing Mull of Kintyre on this day). Homage to the hotel’s colonial past – but maybe not to the taste of younger generation of Sri Lankans?
Inside there is a fascinating mini museum celebrating Galle Face’s stellar past. Anyone who was anyone has stayed here since it opened in 1864 and their photographs and stories are on the walls – politicians, sportsmen, film stars, musicians. There is a bust of a grinning Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and a plaque commemorating the writer Anton Chekhov. A larger exhibit is the first ever car bought by Prince Philip when he was a 19-year-old midshipman on wartime duty here – a 1935 Standard Nine, bought for just twelve pounds.
It is said that two famous guests, a most unlikely duo, stayed here at the same time in 1958 – Richard Nixon (then vice-president of the USA) and Che Guevara, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary on the cusp of the Cuban Revolution. It stirs the imagination to think what these two, later sworn enemies, might have said to each other as they passed in the corridor or even sat down to tea. There’s a riveting fictional short story to be written, for sure.
After Galle Face we drove to Colombo’s famous Pettah Market, a hub of economic activity, sadly closed for the day. ESK reminded us of the saying, ‘If the stock market crashes, we’ll survive. But if the Pettah market closes down, we’re screwed!’ What we could visit here was the ornate Old Town Hall, the first civic building to be opened in Colombo in 1873, although it stopped functioning as a municipal HQ in 1924.
There’s a fascinating museum on the ground floor with old council artefacts, including street signs, steam engines, an old van which served as a mobile library, a sewage transportation cart, and a sinister little wooden ‘witness cage’ presumably used in trials here. Equally macabre, when you go upstairs to the first floor, is the old council chamber, recreated as it would have been in 1906 – with fifteen very lifelike dummies sat round a green baize table, about to conduct business!
Elsewhere in the city we admired the 1857 clocktower-lighthouse built at the behest of the governor’s wife who was frustrated by oriental timekeeping, we stopped by the Presidential Palace, and we stumbled into a colourful procession of Catholic schoolchildren on Kumaran Ratnam Mawatha. ESK also gave us a glimpse of Sri Lanka’s bright future with a tour round Hatch, a start-up centre where many of the brightest and best of the country’s entrepreneurs gather to exchange and develop ideas.
But we made our final stop at the chic Hotel Nippon, another colonial landmark where scenes from the film ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’, with Alec Guinness, were shot in 1957. In the bar we sampled the hotel’s famous mutton rolls and enjoyed a shot of arrack, Sri Lanka’s best-loved liquor. According to ESK, it was here in the 70s and 80s, in these dark corners, that members of the Marxist JVP – the new President’s old party – used to meet and plot.
Our time was up. The following morning we headed back to Bandaranaike airport for the gruelling flight home – a flight made much more bearable by the excellent service we received on our first ever trip on Sri Lankan Airlines. It was no surprise to learn that the airline had just won the IFSA Best Inflight Food/Beverage award, and a rewatching of The Shawshank Redemption wiled away the time admirably!
For more information on Uga go to : https://www.ugaescapes.com/