#13 Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Chennai, Bengaluru SRI LANKA: Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, Oh My! (and Tamils, too; they're Hindu) Maybe the nicest part of the Indian sub-continent is not India at all, but that southern neighbor composed of erstwhile immigrants, coming from both north and south, back in times erst, looking for liebensraum or maybe just a living room, or a kitchen, looking for turf or maybe just booty, and instead found bounty, like the latter-day Portuguese or maybe their nemeses doubly Dutch, twice removed, once by the Portuguese and then by the Brits, on one of their infamous booty-calls that turned out historic... A stepping stone placed by Ganesha, it is said, perched cock-eyed cattywampus off India's southern coast, like Taiwan to India's China, an afterthought to continents, and just a stone's throw across the old strait and narrow, lies the nation, Sri Lanka, by some accident of history and fate, geological and psychological, the migrations of peoples part of what it means to be human, part of what it means to be mortal part of what it means to be a creature of the dust on Planeta Tierra... They all came from India, both north and south, but I don't know but what I like it better than the mother country itself, a version of India that finally gets it right kinda sorta maybe more or less on a good day, without all the clutter and the cowsh*t, without all the badgering and the bullsh*t, a country with radio, sidewalks, grocery stores, ATM's that work, and power that doesn't go out, people eating with utensils (usually), and you can even drink the (tap) water, just like any civilized country in the world, and maybe more so than most... Southeast Asia starts here: a Buddhist country, where people smile for no special reason, are friendly for no special cause, a certain passivity nice for a change, passivity without the passion, passivity without even the prostitution, not much anyway, hell of a concept I figure: passivity as a way of life, the cradle of Buddhism, old-school Theravada, from which it spread to all of Southeast Asia—food religion script and canonical language conquering hearts where warriors rarely succeeded in claiming turf... Colombo is bigger, massive and sprawling, but Kandy is sweeter, perched up on one of the middle rungs of the highlands, centered around a lake of its own design, the better for good views, the better for the good news, that the civil war is long over, and the country is ripe for tourism, but the war never really ends here, between immigrant locals and southern Indian interlopers, bad for bizniz bad for bucks bad for banks... And then there's the accoms: I don't usually fall in love with my room, more likely to take a cheap dig at my cheap digs, but this one's the exception, ten dollars here worth a thousand to me elsewhere, for no other reason than esthetics, straight out of a Van Gogh painting, just waiting for a signature, straight out of the 1850's and the Dutch incursions, straight out of a woodworker's daydream, hardwood polished by decades and jackboots, walls of ship-lap clinker-built and whitewashed, anterooms from broad suites partitioned off for modern-day backpackers and flashpackers, characters wanted and welcomed at the Olde Empire... European women firmly but gently fellate slim-line Gauloises Blondes cigs on the upstairs balcony with pooched-out lips—no tongues—careful not to smear lipstick and hardly even a hand-job lest a rogue nicotine stain find its way on to pearly white digits (what are long fingernails for, anyway?), while their men chew on Marlboros and pose for tourist photos in cowboy boots and Stetson hats and bad-guy bad-ass looks straight out of Universal City halfway to north Hollywood on the metro red line, hundred-dollar ticket good for a year... Net-workers shoot up in the WiFi'd resto-bar down below, playing at FaceBook and drinking overpriced coffee, while men in skirts akin to kilts lungyis and sarongs do the bidding for not-so-rich foreign tourists in this enclave of accommodation, lost in space and time and the vicissitudes of trade-winds, old-fashioned backpackers with more books than bookings, maintaining the old ways, walk-in only, lost in this day and age of online everything and digital download dance moves just fill in the blanks and go... The old ways are dying but not here in Sri Lanka, even the English language is from another era likely Victorian where hotels are restaurants and hostels are dormitories and egg rolls even have egg, where gods reside in ancient ruins at Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura and Sigiriya, beckoning tourists in waves and droves, with cameras and sport-cams, waiting for the time to be right to make their return on to the main stage, saving up money from over-priced entry fees the ultimate revenge on latter-day cash-cows wearing Bermuda shorts and push-up brassieres, Russians and Chinese and other commies first in line... SRI LANKA, part 2: In Search of a City in Search of a Beach Sunday finally comes and I haven't been to church since February 2012, in Majuro FSM, back when I figured I might be dying pick a cancer any cancer must've worked 'cause I certainly don't feel like I'm dying now never felt more alive in fact, death now on back burner status indefinite hiatus waiting for a call-back and options on future rights plus a more prominent role in the sequel, agents negotiating furiously... So I figure now's a good time, put on my best Muslim shirt—white muslin—and go look for a Christian church, Baptist is too small don't wanna' be noticed, Methodist too hot there on the sunny side of the street, so today I'm Catholic with high arches and cool temps and the canonical language mostly in English, God knowing I'm glad to be Buddhist so that I can do whatever I want as long as it hurts nobody and even quaff a brew or mount racy steed if I have a thirst and a need and fertile soil begging seed, no matter what any guy with a book or a beard has to say about it... The pubs in Kandy are for locals, sounds like a missed opportunity to me, or maybe zoning strictures, putting all the pubs on the warehouse side of town shorter walk for the stevedores I suppose, but hardly known to the tourists, buck a brew and men lining walls in various stages of consciousness or lack thereof, sometimes you just want a drink, but try to tell that to the hash dealers up by the lake getting the tourists 'what they want' as if anybody really knows what tourists want I certainly don't... Cherry blossoms are fine, but the big draw for most tourists is the Beach, and lakes won't do for that, so you have to go southbound to Galle or thereabouts, Hikkaduwa or something such, purpose-built for foreign tastes and tours, I suppose, don't really know haven't been there, where beaches are for bikinis and cocktails not Muslim mocktails or Hindu coattails and the water is pure and pristine enough to swim in... I wouldn't recommend that in Colombo north or south, Negombo or Mt. Lavinia, the beaches too close to the city to trust the water, last time I did that had to get an expensive shot and take antibiotics for a week to keep my genitals from rotting and falling off, still a beach is a beach if you just want the sand and the scenery... There's Negombo with its cheap 50's motels and the smell of rotting fruit and drying fish, or Mt. Lavinia with its murky B&B's and the smell of musty old wealth, and strangest thing of all: a railroad runs through it, so every time you try to get romantic a train whistle blows, could be new grist for the Pavlovian mill, but no matter, I don't need to get all romantic I always get lucky alone... Colombo itself is a case unto itself, monster with tentacles spreading, cut from the same Madras cloth as Kolkata, washed and left to dry under hot blazing relentless Indian sun, people breeding like mice going forth and multiplying, the ghosts of previous foreign masters left to ponder the results of their handiwork, the English and their business instincts the Dutch and their government the Portuguese and their bastard offspring, all gathered together under the flag of Christianity, the cross and the sword, the book and the word... And then there's Puttalam, Jaffna, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, and Matara, on the coast; Matale, Kegalla, Ratnapura, Badulla, and Kurunegalla in the interior; names on the map, people of the four corners all awaiting further exploration: Buddhists, Christians, Muslim, Hindus, and others all sharing the same space, 20 million in all, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder... Sure it's congested, and the drivers are maniacs, but cool heads and cool hearts tend to prevail. A country inoculated with Buddhism will ultimately be vaccinated by Buddhism, regardless of who's on the morning loudspeaker. It's the people who make the place, mate, feels like home to me, so C U there. #Male' #Maldives: Caffeine in the Clubs, Muslims on the Beach The Maldives are a string of pearls posing as islands floating gracefully over the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, 1192 nuggets—1000 of them unpopulated—not simply strewn higgeldy-piggledy atoll, but arranged in a double helix and organized into garlands and necklaces and defined by water level as footprints over the ocean surface, any higher the water and they cease to exist as a landmass, demoted like Pluto by science, thereafter to live their life as a mere underwater ridge threatening ships and subs, number three on the international extinction list in fact highest point not much higher than an NBA starting center... The Maldives must sound like a dream to anyone in Central Asia: Muslims—or me—high up on the hills in the 'stans or the Kush on the steppes in the bush—cold barren steps to righteousness rewards guaranteed only in Heaven and I'd hedge my bets on that if I were you, where virgins must be bound and chained to maintain ritual purity and you need sheesha, shawarma and shish-kebabs to stay warm, curries lacking punch and pungency for lack of spices, so might as well forget them altogether, get your bellyful of gusto from a goat slowly roasting over charcoal and incense... The Maldives must have been the Islamic paradigm for paradise, pristine waters warm and wonderful, perfectly azure going to like them, gently throbbing surf and all the fish you can eat, French fries and hush-puppies optional, palms gently swaying coconuts bananas and mango for the picking, and a handsome gentle populace, smiles free and willing and a warm island welcome for the tired weary traveler, like Ibn Battutah, the Muslim Marco Polo, way back in the 1300's, he and his four local wives, not counting slaves, blogging it for the future and trying to civilize the natives, trying to get the women to wear clothes... That's no problem today boohoo many wearing full burqa head to toe, others toeing the line of holy writ with fashion scarves and pseudo-veils still others naked-faced and unafraid sucking face in parks with boyfriends just like back home, but some even wearing full burqa in the surf as custom permits if hubby requires it rules and regulations getting tougher all the time... No one would take a second glance but me and any lifeguard forced to rescue such dead textile weight from the surf, I wonder if they even remove the burqa to copulate and populate, got an eye slit up top should have a pink slit down under for those intimate moments when nothing else will do, most men in the world having never seen their wives naked in the first place, could easily fake it with silicone and lipstick who'd know the difference anyway... But the modern nation is a beachy sun-bleachy 'Muslim Lite' to be sure, for the most part, thinly veiled women allowed to ride motorbikes and move freely on road and beach, while thinly veiled Rasta-men, cigs dangling from tender lips sip caffeinated drinks in the pubs and clubs, Red Bull instead of Red Hook, the better to stay awake during prayers, yeah right, uh huh, fortunately the Rastas have other sacraments, too, I bet, the better to transmit the DNA of island culture from Caribbean to South Pacific all the way to here, God's little GMO people half-African half-Indian half-Arabian... Still though she may sell seashells in the Seychelles, he is more likely to be selling them here, managing the women by managing the money, too bad, hawking the same cheap 50's curio crap that used to be sold in a million souvenir shops, as they're still called here, from Daytona to Durban to Copacabana to Capetown to here, a guaranteed catch for lackadaisical beachcombers with fewer hairs to comb even than beaches, more tall tales to tell than true travels... Most tourists go to the fancy resorts, of course, couple hundred bucks a night and up, sipping the pricey drinks that are forbidden to locals, prices so high already no one knows the difference, but I don't do any of that, I content to be a vulcha in search of kulcha, settling for rice and noodles greased up in the same island way that passes for local in the Caribbean and Pacific, the better to weigh you down in the hot sun and steamy skies, tuna this tuna that fresh from the boat nothing Star-Kist on these starry starry nights, sorry Charlie, we want tuna that tastes good... You can circumnavigate the entire main island in an hour or so, walking at a moderate pace with time for sight-seeing, the pint-sized capital of Male' is that small, dodging motorbike maniacs, cafes and boutiques lining streets called 'magu' with a distinct nasal accent in my mind's ear, enterprises ranging from distinct downscale but trending up... One hour of walking and you're drenched must shower and start all over again, temps almost constant all day all year no more than 5c/10f variation from low to high, but the night is a different world come alive with heavy metal playing in the park, halogen and benzene, motorbikes backed out into the street like Ramadan at midnight waiting to fill and before the sun comes up... It almost reminds me of Montego or Bali planes surfing in low onto airstrip promontories, here the airstrip bigger than the big city itself and rickety ferries take you to fragile landmasses still it's all good fun and unique if not always cheap but that's all relative, isn't it? If we can't be family, then at least we can be friends, that's the island way, mon, but it's truly strange to think that some day not long from now this could all be gone, submerged, covered with water and left for future archeologists to pick up the pieces, try to make sense of it all... 2024 Fast forward a decade and I’m back in the region, but not as a tourist, or even a traveler or adventurer. I’m here as a writer, looking to get my book published in India, since it’s partially about India, as well as China and environs. It’s called ‘My Travels with Fa Hien (Fa Xian),’ and it’s for sale you-know-where. So when an Indian friend suggested that I do it there, I went for it. That meant meeting the publisher in Chennai, and then meeting my friend’s brother in Bangalore (Bangaluru), to do some map illustrations for the book. Thus began and ended my so-far only foray into the far southeast of India, so close to Sri Lanka, hence the reason for its inclusion here, as a possible trip comprising both regions. And it was a revelation, too, if only for the glimpse of India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ tech district, which is what Bangalore represents. So, if India once represented a dichotomy between the spirituality of its northern realms and the simultaneous slumminess of the same areas, then now I can add to it the lighter brighter tech feel of the far south. But Chennai is the more traditional of the two, formerly known as Madras and once famous for a certain style of plaid cloth which mad the name famous back in the nineteen sixties, right before paisley and bell bottoms gave it the old heave-ho. So, I played up that theme by staying in the venerable Broadlands guest house and dive in Trincomale before moving on to the central railway station a couple nights later. This is after I had to fight with my airport taxi at midnight because they wanted to drop me far from my guesthouse rather than navigate some narrow alleys due to road work, as if I could walk to my destination where I’d never been before—at midnight. Welcome to India. I refused to get out of the car. The area is not bad, though, and walkable to the beach, I think, if you’re so inclined. The train station is more central, though, so I tentatively made my deal with my publisher, and then moved on. But Bangalore is the brighter later envisaged by the tech industry and something of a true revelation for a country known for its Vedic roots up north and its Goa-inspired chill scene along the west coast. I stayed at Jayanagar to start, and then moved to Indiranagar for the long wait, of which both were quite nice, if Jayanagar the more techie and Indiranagar the more central. If nothing else, it’s nice to finally be somewhere in India where the WiFi always works and the temps are a tad bit cooler than the hot sweaty coast. Check it out. A flight from Chennai to Sri Lanka is only a little more than $100usd.