by Aryadasa Ratnasinghe

The open semester to Sri Pada, the holy mountain, began on the ‘Unduvap’ fullmoon day (Dec. 30) and will end on the ‘Vesak’ fullmoon day (May 26) in the ensuing year. This mountain is also known as Samantakuta, Sumanakuta, Samanalakanda, Samanhela, Samangira, Medumhelaya etc. The Christians call the mountain Adam’s Peak, derived from the Portuguese Pico de Adam (Peak of Adam).

This conical mountain is situated 16 km. North-East of Ratnapura, and rises much abruptly from the lower valley than any other mountain in the island. Although it is not the highest mountain, it rises to a trignometrical altitude of 2,243m. (7,360 ft.) above sea level, offering an unobstructed view over land and sea, overlooking the South-central mountain ridges.

The splended view of the tropical wilderness, with its hills, dales and plains, all luxuriantly wooded, bounded by blue mountains, fleecy clouds resting on low ground, and a brilliant sky over-head adds to the panorama of the resplendent island. The charms of the prospects are heightened by the coolness and freshness of the air, and by animation of the scene produced by the singing of birds, in addition to the harsh cries of the wild peacock and the jungle fowl.

From remote antiquity, the visibility of the conical mountain from vessels off-shore to a distance of about 15 km, excited great interest of foreigners, when the island’s interior was unknown to the outside world. It was also the landmark of the sea-faring Arabs, Moors, Greeks and Persians, who came to the island to barter in gems, ivory, spices, elephants etc.

Footprint

The sacred footprint atop the mountain (as most of us have seen) is a superficial hollow of gigantic size, measuring 156 cm. in length, and 76 cm. towards the toes and 71 cm. towards the heel in width. There is the belief that the actual footmark lies on a blue sapphire beneath the huge boulder upon the summit, and what we see is only an enlarged symbolic presentation. The placement of such a huge boulder is attributed to god Visvakarma, who had done so for purpose of protection.

The summit is a small plateau, having an area of 164 sq.m., or 1,776 sq.ft. (74 X 24 ft.), according to measurement taken by Lieut. Malcolm of the British Rifle Regiment, the first European to ascend the mountain in 1816. He had signalled his arrival at the summit by firing three cannon shots from his swivel musket, into the valley below.

The sacred footmark as seen by Dr. John Davy in 1817, was ornamented with a single margin of brass and studded with a few gems. These are now not to be seen. He says, “The cavity of the footmark certainly bears a coarse resemblance to the figure of a human foot but much oversized. Whether it is really an impression is not very flattering, if not for its huge size. There are little raised partitions to represent the interstices between the toes, to make it appear a human foot.”

Robert Knox, the European captive, who spent 20 years (1660-1679), in the Kandyan kingdom, says “The Mountain is at the South end of the Country called Hammalella (Samanhela), but by the Christian People, Adam’s Peak, the highest in the whole island, where, as has been said, is the Print of the Buddou’s foot, which he left on the top of that Mountain in a Rock, from whence he ascended to Heaven. Unto this footstep they give worship, light up Lamps and offer Sacrifices, laying them upon it, as upon a Altar.”

According to the Mahavamsa, the Great Chronicle of the Island, the first person to ascend the holy mountain Sri Pada, was king Vijayabahu I (1058-1114), having come to know that atop the mountain is seen the footmark of the Buddha. It is said that he had gathered this information from the pious woman Manimekhala, who, as a devout Buddhist, was living in South India. Another version is that the king had seen, in the early hours of one morning, angels plucking flowers in his garden. When questioned, one of them had said “We are plucking flowers to worship the footmark of the Buddha atop the Samanalakanda.”

Copper

The Ambagamuwa rock edict and the Panakaduwa copper plate bear witness to the royal patronage extended by king Vijayabahu, by building ‘ambalamas’ (rest camps) on route for the convenience of the pilgrims, and also provided them with food and water. The king also built a lower ‘maluwa’ (place of worship) for his Hindu consort Tiloka Sundari to make her benefactions to the Hindu deity Siva alias Iswera. Actual pilgrimage to the mountain began during the reign of Sri Nissankamalla (1187-1196), after he ascended the mountain with his fourfold army with great faith and devotion.

There are two historic approaches to the summit of Sri Pada. The oldest is the Ratnapura path, popularly known as the ‘difficult path’ via Malwala, Kuruwita, Eratna and Gilimale. The last station is Palabaddala. The path runs through ascending and descending hills, deep valleys, along edge of precipices, with a river foaming beneath and, sometimes, under over-hanging rocks and along the beaten track, highly infested with leeches (blood-sucking worms). On this path, pilgrims have to walk long distances until a camp is reached.

Half way up the mountain, there is a small torrent that flows over an immense tabular mass of rock, which forms the ‘Seetagangula’ (stream of icy water), the parent stream of the Kalu-ganga. At this point, the scene is very impressive and the atmosphere calm. The pilgrims stop here for a break to perform their ablutions, while some bathe, some make a frugal repast of rice or bread, some rest themselves before making the steep climb, some chew betel and others chat to break the monotony of the jungle.

The itinerant Arab pilgrim Ibn Batuta alias Abu Abdallah Mohammed (1304-1377), and the Venetian traveller Marco Polo (1254-1324), had ventured to reach the summit via the Ratnapura path “to worship the sepulchre of Adam” as they believed the footmark atop the mountain to be that of Adam (the first parent of the human race). From Barberyn (Beruwala), they had followed the Kalu-ganga to the summit.

Path

The other path is the Rajamawatha (now the Hatton path), and it came to be so known because many kings, during and after the Gampola period (1347-1412), had made their way to the mountain through that path. It began from Gangasiripura (now Gampola) via Ambagamuwa, Kehelgamuwa, Ulapangama, Horakada, Dagampitiya, Makulumulla, Hangarapitiya, and by the Laxapana pass to the summit. There is also a ‘Seetagangula’ on this route which is the parent stream of the Mahaveli-ganga.

The Rajamawatha was constructed by the Chief Minister Devapathiraja who served under king Parakramabahu III (1283-1293). Pilgrims travelling by train break journey at Hatton (173 km. from Colombo) on the Main Line, and continue by bus to Maskeliya and thence to the Delhousie Bazaar, from where all transport facilities cease. A serpentine gravel road leads the way to the Sama Cetiya, en route, where camping is available for cooking food and for resting. The next halt is the ‘Seetagangula’, where pilgrims get ready to make the ascent.

A group of pilgrims is known as a ‘nade’ and the chief is the ‘nade gura’ who is supposed to have made many visits to the holy mountain during his lifetime. A newcomer is known as ‘kodukaraya’ and he or she is at the mercy of the ‘nade gura’. Age is no barrier to this novice.

As we see from the valley below, the upper part of the mountain is free from jungle growth. Only tundra vegetation adorns the granite surface, as such incomplete plant layers are generally characteristic to exposed sites under humid tropical conditions. Climbing this part of the mountain is risky, if not for the concrete steps now built because the surface of the bare rock is slippery at most places, where water flows from in between crevices of the rock. Before the concrete steps were built from Indikatupana to the summit, iron railings fixed on to iron posts driven into the rocky surface, supported the pilgrims along this stretch, to make the ascent safely. It is said that these railings were fixed on the orders of Alexander the Great (BC 356-323), the Macedonian king, for pilgrims to ascend the mountain without risk to their lives.

Many pilgrims make an effort to reach the summit before dawn to witness the unique phenomenon known as the ‘irasevaya’ (the effulgence of the rising sun) extremely bright and splendid, as it punctures the eastern horizon like a ball of fire. Simultaneously, on the western side of the mountain slope could be seen the conical shadow of the mountain as it falls upon the valley below. Buddhists call this natural phenomena as the worship by sun-god.

The apostate Rajasinha I (1581-1592), the king of Sitawaka, in order to overcome the retribution of patricidal sin in killing his father Mayadunna of Sitawaka, assigned the administration of the holy mountain to a non-brahminical Saiva sect known as ‘Andis’ of South India. He did so on the advice of his Hindu priest Arittakivendu Perumal. These ‘Andis’ collected enormous wealth offered to the footprint by the devout Buddhists. King Kirti Sri Rajasinha (1747-1781) appointed Ven. Asarana Sarana Saranankara Sangharaja thera, as the new incumbent of the holy mountain to preserve it from further damage.

Saman

With the onset of the open semester, the statue of god Saman (the tutelary deity of the mountain), along with the insignia of his divine vehicle (white elephant) and other sacred paraphernalia are carried to the mountain in procession, to be placed within the niche below the summit. During the close semester (June to November), these objects of veneration are safely deposited at the Galpottawala Rajamaha vihara at Pelmadulla. At the appointed time, they are taken out, in the presence of the incumbent priest of the temple, and make the historic journey (now through the Hatton path), after a short break at the Maha Saman Devale in Ratnapura.

The collosal brass lamp (’dolosmahe pahana’) atop the mountain, which keeps burning through night and day, is an offering made by king Virawickrema in 1542. Fuel is supplied by the pilgrims in the form of oil, copra etc., to keep the lamp burning.

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by Ajith Samaranayake

Unnaturally for Nuwara Eliya the sun is shining in August. Not enough to drive away the cold entirely, of course, but there is sunshine nevertheless. It falls on the flowers in the park, the grass on the race course and the waters of Lake Gregory. Even when the town is wrapped in that fine thin rain so characteristic of it, the air is luminous with the sun. It is even possible to go about without too much warm clothing.

What strikes you about Nuwara Eliya is its paradoxical size. The centre of the town is like anywhere else, no bigger or smaller and cluttered with the monuments to commerce such as banks, shopping centres and restaurants but beyond these immediate bounds lies a different spatial dimension. The town then begins to stretch outwards in the rolling acres which carry you up to the residential districts or those leafy, flowery streets leading out to Lake Gregory or the remoter roads which take you in different directions, to Kandapola, to Welimada and the other outposts in the hills.

Everything in Nuwara Eliya is at walking pace. There is no vehicular scramble, no pedestrian rat race and the drivers are the best behaved anywhere. And to savour Nuwara Eliya too you have to walk. Along those wide, winding leaf-laden roads, past those gingerbread houses with their smoking chimneys, past the churchyards and the graveyards. Even the meaner parts of the city are covered with their own gloss.

Nuwara Eliya is, of course, a town in a cocoon. To look at the splendour of the town, its hills and gardens and lakes, and even the lowly plantation workers going about in their second-hand warm clothing, is to be transported to another planet, a slice of the Home Countries in Britain where all those planters and military officers from the colonies retired to spend the evening of their lives. To look at the Grand Hotel and the Hill Club and the race course is to be reminded of the days of imperial glory when the White Raj rode on his steed.

But yet for all the remnants of this splendour Nuwara Eliya is a town cocooned, cocooned from the poverty and the backwardness in which the plantation workers of recent Indian Origin as well as the Sinhala peasants live around it. Nuwara Eliya is a town for the Sahibs, for their rest and recreation in April (when things get hot in Colombo), a seasonal town descended from nowhere and transplanted on Sri Lankan soil during a long dead era.

So the English created a dream town in Nuwara Eliya, a replica in microcosm of the English Home Countries with their manors and their castles, their eccentric squires and baronets straight out of the pages of P.G. Wodehouse. And in the town centre they put down the Grand Hotel for their culinary pleasures, the race course where they could practise the Sport of Kings, the Golf Club where they could putt in peace and Cargills where they could shop for those peculiar English delicacies such as strawberries and cream.

However, behind this tinsel facade is the reality although you will not see it easily among the green hills. In fact the billiard table smoothness of the acres of tea dotted about with their colourfully dressed quaint tea-pluckers (the delight of the Tourist Board or SriLankan Air Line poster) is calculately designed to conceal and obscure that reality. How many who admire the nimble-fingered tea-plucker or the swarthy estate coolie (those colonial hang-overs again) care to think of their ancestry? These after all are the successors to a miserable generation who were plucked out of their homes - in South India and driven in great hordes (many perished on the way due to weakness and hunger) and brought to Ceylon and transplanted on alien soil. They lived in line rooms and were dominated by a ‘kangany’ who was the overload of their world. Men, women and children were compelled to work on the land for a pittance.

If they were sick they had to go to the dispenser. If they were broke they had to go to the money lender (more often than not the ‘kangany’ himself). They were not permitted to leave the orbit of the estate over which revolved the sun of their lives, the Periya Dorai or the Superintendent who was the lord of all he surveyed from his palatial English-style bungalow.

And the country thrived, prospered and fattened. It got swollen and bloated. The tea flowed into the factories and the great ware houses of Mincing Lane, there to be marketed as ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ by the big-name British companies which dominated the industry and funnelled back their profits to Good Old Blighty. The best of Ceylon tea was drunk at Buckingham Palace and in the best of clubs and finally when the white man packed up his bags and left leaving the brown sahibs to move into his John White shoes the Ceylonese comprador bourgeoisie was quite satisfied to fatten and bloaten itself on the surplus which emanated from the plantations and live it up in Colombo. The line-rooms were another story altogether not a fit subject for polite conversation.

But the British planters were no hobgoblins either. They were after all only doing their job. There had to be sturdy English, Irish and Scots men to come and work in the colonies as planters, civil servants and soldiers and these men were only taking up the challenge, shouldering Kipling’s White Man’s Burden. Once in a while there was even a George Orwell or Leonard Woolf to sing of the indigenous people’s misery, to make a dirge of their hopelessness. And there were the faceless and nameless English who had lived and died and buried their bones in the Kandyan hills. To visit the churchyard of the Holy Trinity Church, Nuwara Eliya for example is to confront this grim truth.

There either in ornate plaque or in fading letters on humble gravestone are the names of phalanx upon phalanx of Englishmen who had perished in Ceylon sometimes whole families out of illness. Illness in primitive Ceylon was no respecter of persons. Sahib and Memsahib could die as much as a coolie or his over-burdened wife. Some had died in the wars, the great European wars which the British had fought to ensure ‘peace in our time’. Not all of them were professional soldiers, some of them planters who had volunteered to go up to the front where they were killed and where the poppy flower is said to bloom over their unmarked graves.

But now that the English planters are long gone what is left? A new elite has taken over the place of the old agency houses under companies some of which even flaunt suitably rural Sinhala names and privatisation is the name of the game. The cry goes out from time to time that the tea industry is in the doldrums and that other countries are overtaking us. But the tea industry will go on for ever with the Periya Dorai and the ‘meenachchi’ at the two ends of the pyramid. But what of the hills themselves? Who is to be fill the economic vacuum left by the Planter Raj. The plantation workers have their Thondamans and their Chandrasekerans and the Sinhala peasants have their Dissanayakes and their Dassanayakes. But who is to revive the plantation industry? And who is to give a better deal for the potato and vegetable growers of Welimada and Kandapola? And who is to ensure that the two communities, the Tamils and the Sinhalese, live in harmony?

Shrouded in mist, overhung by majestic mountains and caressed by the Lake Gregory’s waters these are the real questions for Nuwara Eliya. On a morning the boy jockeys will hang around the overgrown race course waiting to take a child on a pony’s back. The Grand Hotel looms over the city its bare lounges and billiards room and bar waiting for unseasonal custom, having made a concession to an Indian eatery on its grounds (what a delicious revenge on those pukka sahibs who would have squirmed at the idea of eating ‘thosai’ and ‘vadai’ in its grandiose setting).

As we reach Colombo we hear of plans by the Grand Hotel management in collaboration with Sri Lankan Airlines to make Nuwara Eliya an all-year-round holiday destination. So perhaps the Nuwara Eliya town will await its destiny but as we come down the Ramboda pass back home passing those tea pluckers and the farmers of Kotmale (where legend has it King Dutugemunu had gone into exile before preparing for his last battle for Anuradhapura) the question echoes through the hills: What of the people?

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by BEVERLEY JANSZ

Alpine is the newest luxury hotel to be added to Sri Lanka’s number one tourist destination, Nuwara Eliya. Going by the name ‘Alpine’, the luxury hotel is surrounded by Nuwara Eliya’s ever green mountains. The plus point for Alpine is that is has been built overlooking Nuwara Eliya’s two main tourist attractions, the race course and Gregory’s lake.

The ‘cottage’ type hotel has 25 spacious and luxury rooms with all modern facilities of a 5-star property. All rooms are equipped with hot/cold water, large TV, modern ‘warmers’ telephone facilities, etc.

To add beauty to this luxury property, all electrical fittings and furniture are of Italian origin. ‘I wanted to make my hotel the best in Nuwara Eliya. During the construction period, every ’stone’ was supervised by me, and all fittings and interior decor, were selected by me to make Alpine a truly ‘luxury’ cottage in Nuwara Eliya, Chairman, Alpine Hotel, D. G. Mahinda Kumara said.

In order to provide a star-class service and hospitality to tourists, both foreign and Sri Lankan a new management team has been recruited, headed by a versatile hotelier Roy Wootler as the General Manager. Roy has over 15 years of star-class experience in the hospitality industry. The soft opening of Alpine Hotel took place with the new management, recently.

Alpine is flanked by two beautiful misty mountains, Mount Pedro and ‘Single Tree’ and guests are provided a panoramic view of the Nuwara Eliya’s hill country, from their rooms.

The hotel has also recruited a new chef, Vijitha Gunawardena who has over 25 years experience having worked in a number of star class hotels. Gunawardena’s entry to Alpine Hotel will no doubt offer tourists, delicious Sri Lankan, Western and Eastern cuisine. The week-end buffets and BBQs, and specially the ‘rice and curry’ home-made style, have already become popular amongst guests, General Manager, Royal Wootler said.

The beautifully designed restaurant with colourful decor, could accommodate around 90 guests. Special packages are being offered to Sri Lankans and expatriates, in order to popularise the new hotel.

Alpine has already become popular for eco-tourism. The hotel offers excursions to mountains, water falls, boat rides in Gregory’s lake, and safaris to the Hakgala Botanical Gardens, Horton Plains, and other places of tourist attraction in and around Nuwara Eliya.

Alpine Adventurers Tours, which is a subsidiary of Alpine Hotel, offer exclusive deluxe wildlife safaris and natures tours too, including trekking, camping, birdwatching, mountaineering, rafting, mountain biking, fishing, adventure sports etc, Chairman, Alpine Hotel and Alpine adventurers Tours, and Municipal Council Member, Nuwara Eliya, D. G. Mahinda Kumara said.

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