Ear-flapping youngsters playfully fought, fuzzy toddlers rolled in the dirt, gal-pals squirted each other with water, moms nursed newborns and a brawny frustrated guy sniffed up a potential mate’s behind. In the far-off island nation of Sri Lanka, I entrancingly embedded with “The Gathering,” the annual, largest and most phenomenal congregation of wild Asian elephants in the world.
Every year for centuries, during the dry season, herds gracefully emerge from the forest to vast plains, where they munch marshy grass, goof around, and drink water from man-made lakes in two adjoining national parks, Minneriya and Kaudulla. The matriarch-led brigades shift between parks so depending on timing, safari-goers can spot anywhere from zero to possibly 300 pachyderms at this party; in September, as the lone passenger in a jeep, I quietly observed 146 elephants in Kaudulla.
Amazingly, several multi-ton titans came so close to my parked open-sided 4X4, I could almost tickle their trunks (if I had a death wish). One gentle giant stood right alongside me for a wondrous eternity repeatedly circling her hefty padded foot to loosen grass for her gray snorkel, which then put the food in her mouth. The serene swishing sound hypnotized.
“Adults eat over 300 pounds a day,” my guide Suranga said, noting it’s rare for this Sri Lankan subspecies to have tusks. “They are highly sociable and emotional — every grandmother, aunt, and sister helps care for a mother’s calf.”
Members of a local family pray during a ceremony at a Hindu temple in Valaichchenai, Sri Lanka. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Besides cherishing these jumbo marvels, I wallowed in other adventures — from tuk-tuk village visits to mass monkey encounters — on my journey in culture-rich Sri Lanka. I’d also explore three stunning UNESCO World Heritage Sites, starring a patricidal king, 2,000-year-old granite-hewn Buddhas, and Lord Buddha’s tooth.
Toque macaque monkeys, such as this mother and baby, are endemic to Sri Lanka. They’re distinguished by the funny whirl of hair on their heads. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
After excursions, I retired to my Sun Siyam Pasikudah seaside hotel, which can arrange all these terrific day trips for guests and is a laid-back, upscale haven with 34 pavilion suites and the genuinely nicest staff from the local village. While I was gadding about, most vacationers seemed content to just sun themselves at both the 98-foot-long infinity pool and the idyllic coconut palm-fringed beach along the calm Indian Ocean bay. Interestingly, the guest roster encompassed 13 nationalities, mainly Russians followed by Germans and Poles. I was the sole American.
The 98-foot-long infinity pool at Sun Siyam Pasikudah is a main attraction for guests. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
When I first arrived at the hotel, a garland of white frangipani and red ixora flowers was draped over my neck and an employee performed a lovely Hindu ceremony, during which she rang a brass bell, gently waved a fiery receptacle by my face, and applied a red “bindi” dot to my forehead, all to promote well-being and prosperity. I then lit an oil lamp on a tree-shaped sculpture to whip up positive energy.
A Hindu priest performs the aarti ceremony at a temple in Valaichchenai in east Sri Lanka. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Later, the congenial general manager, Arshed Refai, gave insight into this tropical pear-shaped island, just south of India. “A lot of people don’t know where or what Sri Lanka is,” he said.
What they may not know is the plethora of tragedies Sri Lanka has experienced in modern times. From 1983 to 2009, the country was embroiled in a brutal, atrocity-filled ethnic civil war between the Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the marginalized Tamil minority who are mainly Hindu. Up to 100,000 people died in the conflict. In 2004, a massive tsunami from an Indonesian earthquake killed at least 36,000 Sri Lankans and decimated the fishing industry. On Easter Sunday 2019, nine ISIS-related suicide bombers separately attacked Christian churches and luxury hotels, resulting in over 260 fatalities.
Sun Siyam’s beach sits along an extensive shallow bay of the Indian Ocean; you can walk way out and the water will still be at your waist. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
The contemporary Sun Siyam is located on Sri Lanka’s less-visited east coast, which had been a war zone, hit by the tsunami and in 2019 suffered a terrorist church bombing about 20 miles from my resort. Today both Sinhalese, who speak Sinhala, and Tamils, whose native tongue is Tamil, work together at the hotel; the country’s tourism is rebounding.
At Sun Siyam Pasikudah, a mini catamaran takes guests out to the hotel’s Aqua Lounge, a floating wood raft available for private cocktails or dinner. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
“We are resilient, we keep picking ourself up,” Arshed said. And he continues creating on-site novelties, such as the Aqua Lounge. One evening from Sun Siyam’s beach, I boarded a dinghy catamaran that sailed me a short distance to a bobbing wood raft mid-bay for a private wine-accompanied moonlit dinner. Below in the shallow waters, fan-like lionfish swam alongside my buoyant rustic cafe, and I could see mullet fish through the raft’s partial glass floor. The hotel also offers private candlelight beach dinners in sunken sand, floating breakfasts in the pool, and gourmet cuisine in its 900-bottle wine cellar. (Room rates start at $152, including lavish buffet breakfasts and dinner; sunsiyam.com/sun-siyam-pasikudah.)
UNESCO do-or-die
Goats roam around vacant boats used by village fisherman on Kalkudah’s beach in Sri Lanka. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
First, know that driving — or in my case being driven — on Sri Lankan’s two-lane roads is insanely chaotic. Too often a packed bus or overloaded truck was barreling head-on to our hotel’s compact Honda. Everyone zigs and zags, overtaking cars, semis, tuk-tuks, coaches, and motorbikes, sometimes with three vehicles sharing two narrow lanes. Throw in free-roaming cattle, dogs, monkeys, and goats straggling by.
The modern Golden Buddha, completed in 2001, is next to the UNESCO Dambulla caves and above a Buddhist museum with a cartoonish entrance. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
From Los Angeles, I initially touched down in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo in the dark at 3:05 a.m. after two flights, a layover in Qatar, and nearly 21 hours airborne in economy. Sun Siyam was a six-hour drive away (some days you can take a seaplane instead). So, it made sense (then) to visit two UNESCO sites en route to the hotel.
One of the underground sanctuaries in the ancient Dambulla Cave Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Sri Lanka. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
After a couple stops, by 7 a.m. my Sun Siyam driver Chandran pulled into the Dambulla Cave Temple parking lot, populated by numerous stray dogs and bands of toque macaque monkeys, the latter often carrying chest-clinging darling babies. I was by myself in the car changing my shoes in the back seat when in a flash something hurled through an open window into the front seat. I locked eyes with a brazen, long-tailed, mid-sized macaque, its elfish ears and bowl-cut hairdo quite comical. Chandran zipped over and chased off the potential thief.
A toque macaque mom and her offspring hang out on the staircase to the Dambulla Cave Temple in Sri Lanka. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Ubiquitous primates are called, “temple monkeys” because mobs of them run amok at shrines. There’s also the macaques’ clever cousins, the larger tufted gray langur monkeys, black-faced, pointy-headed and considered sacred because of their connection to a Hindu monkey-god. A troop of langurs liked to prowl Sun Siyam.
The tufted gray langur monkey, found in Sri Lanka, has such a black face it can be impossible to see its eyes and mouth. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Perched on a cliff, Dambulla’s five underground sanctuaries are inhabited by more than 150 Buddha statues, many astonishingly chiseled from the caves’ rock. Over 22,000 square feet of intricate frescoes and paintings cover walls and ceilings. Buddhists have made pilgrimages here for 2,100 years and you can feel the hallowed heritage resonate inside the dimly lit chambers. Various recreations of the Enlightened One include an extraordinary 46-foot-long Buddha lying down. Dambulla remarkably began as a hideaway for an exiled king who in the 1st century B.C. commissioned artisans to decorate his lair; subsequent rulers added more flourishes.
Reclining Buddha statutes in the Dambulla Cave Temple symbolize the Buddha’s last earthly moments before passing into the ultimate spiritual state. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
A half hour away is perhaps Sri Lanka’s most famous attraction, the 590-foot-tall granite monolith Sigiriya, also called the Lion Rock because two massive carved paws guard an entrance, their body long gone. In mythology, the Sinhalese people are descendants of a lion who bred with a princess.
Colossal lion paws remain at Sigiriya, once a formidable citadel built during the 5th century. The lion’s body and head have long disappeared from the dramatic gateway. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Sigiriya’s backstory is total drama. The fortress/palace was erected in the 5th century by King Kashyapa after he staged a coup and murdered his monarch father. “He threw his father into a lake and then entombed him in mud to suffocate him,” explained my guide, another local named Suranga. (There are several versions of the death.) Years later, Kashyapa’s half-brother and rightful heir returned to fight for the crown, and about to lose, Kashyapa “committed suicide and slit his belly with his dagger,” Suranga said, pantomiming the violent slash. While at Sigirya, party animal Kashyapa tallied 500 wives/concubines and required voluptuous women to dance bare-breasted for him
Sigiriya, a 590-foot-tall chunk of granite in Sri Lanka, once held aloft a kingdom erected by a 5th-century murderous king. Today, tourists climb 1,200 steps to see the summit’s ruins, which are basically foundations. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
To reach the palace ruins at the summit, along with other tourists I ascended 1,200 challenging steep steps, both original uneven stone ones and metal spiral staircases bolted to the rock and with gaps between so you can look straight down if you dare. (Honestly, the heat and jet lag nearly offed me.)
Now ruins, the royal palace in ancient Polonnaruwa was once the grandiose residence of medieval King Parakramabahu. He was praised for building hospitals and an artificial lake for farmers during a drought. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Another day, I wandered through the second capital of Sri Lanka, once-glorious Polonnaruwa, dating to the 11th century and still containing a bevy of crumbling religious sanctums, remnants of a seven-story palace, cremation grounds, friezes of elephants, Buddhas and a swimming pool vaunting crocodile spouts. A shrine in Polonnaruwa previously housed Lord Buddha’s revered left canine tooth (smuggled eons ago by a princess from India in her hair), although the relic is now relocated in another Sri Lankan temple.
Tuk-tuk trippin’
I loved my three-wheeler tuk-tuk outings to local villages, about 15 minutes from Sun Siyam. The hotel summoned two brothers, Kishorth and Dharshanth, to ferry me different days in the siblings’ sky blue motorized tuk-tuk, emblazoned “Good luck” on the front and “Open your mind always” on the side rooftop. Life moved slowly — in Kalkudah, a school-aged boy shepherded goats on a fishermen’s deserted beach; nearby at a small ancient Hindu temple, I washed my feet in a faucet before a compassionate caretaker applied lines of white ash to my forehead for divine protection.
The Sri Munai Murukan Kovil is a longstanding rural Hindu temple across from the ocean in Kalkudah, Sri Lanka. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
In Valaichchenai village, which is mostly Tamil and Muslim, my white skin and Western looks (note: dopey wide sun hat) drew curious stares but once I smiled, welcoming grins broke out. With hand signals, I was beckoned into the spice shop, where a mountainous table of red chili powder set me coughing. Barbers motioned me to come inside their hair-cutting cubicle. Fishmongers in bloody aprons stopped filleting to greet me. And although I couldn’t understand anyone’s language, it spoke volumes in warmth.
The spice shop in the village of Valaichchenai sells aromatic seasonings crucial for robust Sri Lankan cooking. Cinnamon, cardamon, turmeric, and chili powder are among essential ingredients. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Arshed, Sun Siyam’s GM, keeps working with communities so tourism can benefit them. He’ll get guests over to see Kalyani, a woman enrolled in a government-assisted program and handcrafting pottery in her rural shed. She chuckled with me when I clumsily mushed my spinning blob of clay.
Kalyani Idayachandran makes pottery in a women’s co-op financially aided by the Sri Lankan government. The Sun Siyam hotel offers guests trips to her rural shed to help her economically. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
One morning, my tuk-tuk stopped at another Hindu temple, where six adult members of a family stood outside in a sacred area with a chanting priest performing rituals. I hung back in the driveway, but the patriarch immediately gestured for me to join his clan. A grown daughter beautifully sung. Then the family invited me inside the deity-festooned temple where the priest continued the prayerful aarti ceremony; I warmed my hands over the flaming lamp he held and touched my forehead to connect with spirituality and gratitude. At the end, the family insisted on giving me huge helpings of their homemade sakkarai pongal, a sweet rice pudding also offered to the gods.
After offering sweet rice pudding and fruit salad to the deities, a Hindu temple member distributes the consecrated food to family members as a way of sharing joy. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
Back at Sun Siyam, beach hut bartenders created drinks in green kurumaba coconuts and honeymooners swayed on a mid-ocean swing set. A chef taught how to make curried dal at a cooking class under a banyan tree, and later a Zebu humped cow cruised the shoreline. The hotel, incidentally, sponsors Kalo, an elephant found abandoned in a well at 8 months old and now cared for at a distant sanctuary until being re-introduced to the wild.
The tranquil beach at Sun Siyam Pasikudah glows at sunset. (Photo by Norma Meyer)
I still think about what Arshed often said: “If you have good intentions, it will all come from the heart.”
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