Sri Lanka - OutboundHolidays

Sri Lanka tourist arrivals up year-on-year 27 percent in…

Sri Lanka Tourism (SLTDA) has recorded a 27.2 percent increase in tourist arrivals in September this year in comparison to the corresponding period last year.

Since the end of the war against the Tamil Tiger terrorists in May 2009, the country has seen increasing tourist arrivals every year for the past two years.

SLTDA statistics have recorded 60,219 tourist arrivals in September this year while the number of arrivals last July stood at 47,339.

Overall, the arrivals in the first nine months of 2011 rose 34.3 percent to 598,006, compared to the 445,228 arrived in same period last year.

The government predicts arrivals to grow by 20 percent and hit a new record of over 780,000 this year.

According to the Central Bank, income from tourism in the first eight months of this year rose 49 percent from a year ago to US$ 521.7 million.

Sri Lanka last month launched a new five-year plan under the guidance of the Economic Development Minister to boost tourism in the country. Under the plan Sri Lanka expects to raise the number of arrivals to 2.5 million and to earn annual revenue of US$ 2.75 billion by 2016.

The Economic Development Ministry with the private sector has launched a programme to double the hotel room capacity to 45,000 by 2016 over the current 22,745 to accommodate the 2.5 million arrivals by that time.

Sri Lanka: Temples and tea leaves

Nigel Tisdall is charmed by Sri Lanka’s landscape and religious shrines. But what really gets him going is a nice cuppa.

(By Nigel Tisdall) — “Some of these bushes are over 130 years old,” Andrew Taylor explains as he escorts my wife and me through the emerald hills of Bogawantalawa, otherwise known as Sri Lanka’s “Golden Valley of Tea”. Set 4,000 feet up in the hill country near Hatton, the enveloping landscape presents a fairy-tale scene of misty lakes, tranquil woods and vividly coloured tropical gardens.

Every available slope is striped with long, winding rows of tea plants, while at carefully chosen spots former bungalows built in the Twenties for estate managers drink in the views. Now converted into well-appointed lodges, these elegant retreats offer visitors the chance to overnight in a nostalgic world of scones, croquet and hot-water bottles slipped between the sheets. Every day starts with a cup of “bed tea” brought to your room, and later you can tour a tea factory, follow well-signed walks through the plantations, soak in a detoxifying green tea bath – then dine on roast lamb with a crusting of Earl Grey.

Bearing the title of “Planter in Residence”, our guide is a genial descendant of James Taylor, the pioneering Scotsman who introduced commercial tea-growing to the island in 1867. His enthusiastic tours round the Norwood estate, where leaves plucked at 7.45am become tea for sale at 8am the next day, provide an absorbing introduction to a beverage we all take for granted. And they can be a life-changing experience – now I only drink my tea black and sugarless, and made using leaves properly brewed in a pot with freshly boiled water. Milk? Ugh! Tea bags? No thanks. A nice cup of full-bodied, single region Meda Watte? Yes please!

In every way, a trip into the hill country is the high point of a holiday to Sri Lanka. Following the ending of its 25-year civil war in 2009, the country is now back on the tourist map as a hot place for some winter sun. One reason – besides its beaches, cultural sights and warm climate – is its people. The Sri Lankans are a smiley, welcoming lot with a multi-faith society that is particularly apparent at night. Then you spy the many roadside shrines and churches that light up the darkness, beaming out their faithful messages. Here’s a smiling Buddha, there’s an anguished Catholic saint. The green neon of a mosque shines beside the crazy statuary of a Hindu temple. To the traveller, it feels like all the key gods of the world are looking after you.

And we need protection, because Sri Lanka’s roads are mined with hazards. The customary way to tour is with a car and driver, and our lives have been entrusted to the safe and cautious steering wheel of a gentleman called Hector. “We must watch out for wild elephants here,” he remarks nonchalantly as we head down a rough track near Dambulla. “Did you know those fellows love pineapple? They can even smell it inside the car.”

I hastily review what we had for breakfast. While my wife has been enjoying Sri Lankan classics such as string hoppers and curd with treacle, I’ve been healthily eating yogurt and, er, fruit … Fortunately, our only animal encounter is with the monkeys that swing by the bathroom window as we check into our room at the monumental Kandalama Hotel. Buried in the jungle, this designer masterpiece was completed in 1994 by Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka’s most famous architect. Devotees trek here just to admire its strict geometrical lines and unadorned surfaces, but the hotel is also an excellent base for exploring what’s known as the Cultural Triangle.

These are Sri Lanka’s northern plains, bejewelled with historic royal sites that include the rocky citadel of Sigiriya, the ancient city of Anuradhapura, and the former capital of Kandy. We opt to visit Polonnaruwa, which flourished in the 12th century. Its ensemble of beautiful ruins is so extensive it’s best to drive around. The star attraction is Gal Vihara, a set of four massive granite Buddha statues of which the largest is 45ft long. Unusually, the companion museum turns out to be excellent, with exquisite works of art, informative commentaries in English and photographs of the unexcavated site, which lay buried in the jungle for seven centuries.

While you need to head inland to get a sense of Sri Lanka’s long, rich history, there’s a second story to be enjoyed around the coast where Portuguese, Dutch and British colonists came gnawing at the edges.

Tourism is most developed in the west and south, and while it’s tempting to head for the perfect white-sand beaches that fringe the east side of the island, these are best visited after the north-east monsoon that ends in March – and as yet there are few good places to stay.

So we head south to the traffic-free environs of Galle Fort, a World Heritage Site. Built by the Dutch in the 1660s, its massive ramparts are so formidable they withstood the 2004 tsunami. Inside, its streets are lined with boutique hotels and chichi shops, but there is still a thriving local community that has saved it from becoming a tourist ghetto.

Galle was the island’s principal harbour until Colombo overtook it, and it is scattered with colonial memories. There are imposing mustard-coloured warehouses once stacked high with cinnamon, and a sleepy library that was once the officers’ mess of the British Ceylon Rifles. The old racecourse is now the international cricket ground, and every lunchtime immaculately uniformed schoolgirls from Southlands College, established in 1885, gather under the 180-year-old rain trees beside what was once the prestigious New Oriental Hotel.

Today this has been restored as Amangalla, a grand hotel for our times with four-poster beds, a huge jade-green swimming pool and an airy restaurant serving delicious local dishes such as seafood white curry and watalappan with coconut ice cream. Add complimentary yoga and a top-class spa, and a stay here engenders such a sense of wellbeing there is a serious danger you will wander off and spend a reckless amount of money in one of Galle’s bijou shops.

And that’s not hard, given that they are filled with quirky antiques, handmade lace, richly coloured cottons and the one thing few travellers go home without – precious stones. “Come in, we love the rain,” a shop owner expounds when I step inside his glittering emporium holding a dripping umbrella. “It’s so very good for selling sapphires.”

In Sri Lanka they like to put a positive spin on everything, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the minute I pop out to take some photographs, my wife decides this is an ideal time to whip out the credit card and buy some gorgeous moonstone jewellery.

By contrast, my souvenir is a cloth for the kitchen that bears a mantra I can’t resist. “Keep Calm and Make Tea” it says – and after discovering the joys of Sri Lanka, I’m doing just that.

DID YOU KNOW?

“Orange Pekoe” tea has nothing to do with fruit – the name derives from the Dutch royal house of Orange-Nassau.

For all the travel details: telegraph.co.uk

Sri Lanka in plaster – a road trip with…

Helen Anderson finds a road trip in the tear-shaped island is marked by serendipity.

The girls are sensational: topless and eye-poppingly well endowed, wasp-waisted, draped in bling, with come-hither eyes and long hair piled high. We’re already breathless from the heat and the climb, and sudden proximity to such sauciness renders us speechless. “No flashes,” an attendant warns, oblivious to the scenes of tumbling bosoms all around.

How these women have kept their figures after 1500 years is a mystery, though it’s not the strangest thing I encounter on the enchanted island of Sri Lanka. Out of nowhere on the dry central plains rises the abrupt rock fortress of Sigiriya, declared the eighth wonder of the world by UNESCO. A rebel prince named Kashyapa retreated here after murdering his father and usurping his brother, and turned this astonishing volcanic plug into a pleasure palace.

Legend has it the self-appointed king assembled an entourage of 500 women from home and abroad for his entertainment and to enliven his frequent parties. It seems he hosted a kind of 5th-century nightclub.

One school of thought says the frescoes portray these concubines; another that they represent a central figure in tantric Buddhism and yet another that they’re images of celestial goddesses (the clouds that envelop their nether regions might support the latter theory). Their survival seems a miracle; we’re walking on protective scaffolding high on the cliff face and there’s some shadecloth flapping in the breeze but the frescoes, on a rock overhang, are exposed to the elements.

From these heavenly beauties we keep climbing, past the ancient graffiti scribbled on the Mirror Wall (an easy way for a king to keep an eye on his back), to a plateau dominated by a pair of massive stone paws, all that’s left of a huge brick lion. We climb between these monstrous paws, grasp the handrails and head higher. Finally, after 1682 steps, we reach the palace on top, with the remains of a regally proportioned swimming pool and a throne from which the king might have surveyed his realm and his spangled dancing girls. Kashyapa lasted only 18 years here before his brother hunted him down, but the man knew how to live.

Sigiriya is one of the island’s eight UNESCO World Heritage sites and most of this embarrassment of riches is clustered in a central archaeological zone known as the Cultural Triangle. This was the seat of powerful kingdoms and some of the world’s most beautiful ancient art – the sacred cave temples of Dambulla are extraordinary. Wild elephants roam here and gather once a year and vast, 1000-year-old water “tanks” and the ruins of the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa reveal a complex and fascinating history barely known beyond the island.

Named Serendib by early Arab traders, the origin of “serendipity”, and famous for its peerless coastline, spice gardens, fabulous gems and jungles full of wild creatures, the island has been a honeypot for empire builders and travellers for centuries. Ceylon, as it was then known, gained independence from the British in 1948 without bloodshed – unlike India – seemingly a model state with a bright future. But long-running enmity between the majority Sinhalese Buddhists and the minority Hindu Tamils escalated into civil war in 1983, pitting the Sinhalese regime against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighting for a separate state in the island’s north. The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 compounded the tragedy, swamping the southern coast, killing about 35,000 people and displacing half a million.

It’s a little more than two years now since the end of Sri Lanka’s long and terrible war. For nearly 30 years the real threat of violence and bombings dissuaded many travellers, though they were never targeted. They’re returning now – arrivals since January have risen 35 per cent to 537,737 compared with the same period last year – and tourism is increasingly important for the devastated economy.

I confess I almost didn’t get here. A few days before my departure, ABC’s Four Corners screened a British Channel 4 documentary about the final shocking months of the war in 2009. Following a United Nations report released in April, which found credible reports of war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger leaders, the documentary showed harrowing interviews with witnesses and mobile-phone footage of atrocities. None of the Tamil Tiger leaders survive to answer these allegations; the Sri Lankan government denies it targeted civilians.

The documentary was so disturbing I thought about cancelling my trip. I wasn’t worried about personal safety – Sri Lanka is not among the countries the Australian government advises travellers to avoid – but I struggled to reconcile what I saw with the idea of making a holiday.

No point punishing ordinary people for the sins of their leaders, one colleague advised. “If everyone avoided visiting places where human rights have been abused or where there’s inequality or sectarian tension, no one would travel to China, Indonesia, most of Africa, the Middle East …” another said.

I went, and would return in a heartbeat.

“You have to understand the importance of small private investors in Sri Lanka’s recovery,” says one newly minted hotelier, who asked not to be named (“it’s a small island…”). “The private sector has always done what governments can’t or won’t.”

She has built a small eco-resort in the Cultural Triangle, employs 12 staff from the region and has supplied water to the local school and electricity and roadworks to the closest village. There are similar stories throughout the central and south-west regions I visit and a real sense that the presence of travellers makes a difference.

Among the people I meet – shopkeepers and tuk-tuk drivers, hoteliers and students – the sense of relief at the war’s end is palpable. Though the peace is fragile and nation-building seems to have barely begun, “for the first time in my life, I can feel safe”, says a young woman with her toddler, who shares a lift with me near Kandy. “We can take a train and not worry about never returning.”

There’s a party mood in the wood-panelled observation car of the train pulling uphill from Kandy to Sri Lanka’s tea estates. Overhead fans oscillate wildly in their cages. A woman feeding her large extended family on white-bread sandwiches filled with seeni sambol, a spicy onion relish, thrusts four rounds into my hands. Passengers want to know how I rate the Australian cricket team’s form and what Shane Warne is doing. Everyone hangs out of the windows at well-swept stations to buy bags of sliced mango cheeks sprinkled with chilli powder and salt. The stationmasters wear hats, black jackets with gold buttons and white trousers.

It’s a rock’n’roll ride through the jungle, past teak and clove plots, over clear streams and terraced rice paddies, past grazing buffalo herded by men with bare chests and sarongs, then higher through valleys laced with waterfalls and majestic “flame of the forest” trees. Then we labour through Sri Lanka’s famous tea gardens, so steep, so perfectly pruned that they might be the work of a mad celestial gardener.

“So, we take a good slurp of tea, taking in some oxygen at the same time, and swirl it under the tongue,” says Andrew Taylor, a tea planter for 40 years and the planter-in-residence at Ceylon Tea Trails in Bogawantalawa. “Give it another good turn around the mouth, then swallow or spit it out. Relax, take a breath. Feel that sense of vitality? That refreshing feeling?”

My cup of BOP (broken orange pekoe) is very fine and couldn’t be fresher, since the leaves were plucked only yesterday morning. But I suspect my “cheering feeling” has more to do with Taylor’s encyclopaedic passion for tea and his splendidly fruity Lankan-British accent. I swirl, slurp and swallow while he discusses the “liquor’s” strength and colour, briskness and pungency with a precision I’ve heard only among sommeliers. Sacks of just-plucked Camellia sinensis are unloaded beside the tasting room and the grassy, toasted aroma of withering and roasting tea settles inside the Norwood Tea Factory, close to my lodgings at one of four restored tea-planter bungalows run by the Dilmah-owned Tea Trails.

Taylor is a third-generation tea planter and a descendant of Scotsman James Taylor, regarded as the founder of Ceylon’s tea industry, after all the coffee plantations were destroyed by coffee blight in the 1860s. Andrew drinks five or six cups a day, never with milk or sugar to mask the flavour or diminish the power of tea’s antioxidants. “Most problems seem better after a good cup of tea,” he tells me cheerfully as we sit down to high tea that afternoon. “Another cup?”

Madame Helga de Silva Blow Perera pours our tea from an antique swinging silver pot in a room with a hand-painted zodiac on the ceiling and walls plastered with photos and newspaper clippings of her remarkable forebears with Hollywood stars, European royalty and Asian powerbrokers (“there’s Lord Mountbatten scratching his nose”, “there’s mother with Indira Gandhi”). In a purple silk robe and startling white-framed sunglasses, she’s working with an artist on a fresh mural (“I really need a monkey with wings here”) when I drop in at Helga’s Folly. She describes her art deco family home high above the lake in Kandy as an “anti-hotel” (“god, I hate that word, ’boutique”‘). Guests stay, sometimes for months, in 35 rooms filled with family heirlooms, Gothic chandeliers, Portuguese antiques and wild, hand-painted walls. I follow Helga along corridors and random staircases as she points out more photos and fantastical etchings (“a couple asked if they could doodle something simple on the walls in this room; it ended up as a kind of advanced lesson in the Kama Sutra”).

She opens a door and we step into sunlight around a swimming pool flanked by jungle. “This is where we have fabulous parties,” she says. “And where leopards come late at night to drink from the pool.”

A few days before I arrive, travel restrictions to the northern district of Jaffna are lifted for foreigners. I don’t have time to venture north – though Sri Lanka is a small island, about the size of Tasmania, the roads are mostly rough and travelling times are long. Yet even in the relatively small area I cover, the diversity of landscapes and characters and the richness of the island’s treasures are remarkable.

I head south from the Cultural Triangle to Galle and in one crowded day I descend from sculptured tea gardens to lowland rice paddies, through sleepy villages and buzzing market towns and past big communal lunches held on Poya, the full-moon holiday. From the sacred Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, holding the only surviving relic of Buddha, we pass Hindu temples, Buddhist dagobas and arrive as the evening call to prayer is sung at a dazzling white mosque on the Indian Ocean at Galle.

I had heard much about the old fortified town, an ancient trading post for cinnamon quills and sapphires, peacock feathers and ivory; settled by the Portuguese in 1505, then the Dutch, then the British. I wondered what it was like now, a decade or so since a new wave of foreigners began restoring crumbling colonial villas.

Serendipitously, it retains an air of sleepy mystery in its labyrinth of alleys, spice warehouses and mouldy bungalows. It’s a place that reveals itself slowly to the traveller who lingers. No better place to start than a breakfast of thick buffalo curd and kithul treacle, egg hoppers and a cup of lowland tea on the terrace of Amangalla, one of Asia’s oldest hotels and a landmark in chic subcontinental luxury.

By the afternoon a pre-monsoonal shower has settled the dust and at sunset everyone is either promenading or playing cricket on the

17th-century Dutch ramparts. I meet an elderly Moor, hobbling to the mosque on a walking stick. He used to be the muezzin; now he teaches Arabic to children.

“We survived the tsunami and everything else,” he says. “Look, it’s a beautiful sunset. We must give thanks.”

Helen Anderson travelled courtesy of Banyan Lanka and Singapore Airlines.

Thanks: stuff.co.nz

On the tea trail in glorious Sri Lanka

When ancient Arab traders discovered a fertile, teardrop island in the Indian Ocean, they called it Serendib. We still use their word, serendipity, to describe the phenomenon of finding something valuable yet unexpected. With this word stuck in my mind, I drive into Sri Lanka’s central highlands, passing dense jungle and milky waterfalls. Locals smile and wave, exuding their distinctive cultural warmth, even as the temperature drops because of the rising altitude. By late afternoon, we’re high in the mountains, which here are covered in a rich carpet of manicured plants that roll with the hills. I had arrived at the source of Sri Lanka’s most famous export: tea.

My destination is Ceylon Tea Trails, a luxury bungalow resort originally built for the tea barons who ruled over the estates. Owned and operated by Dilmah, one of the world’s largest tea brands, Ceylon Tea Trails is a love letter to anyone with a passion for tea, tranquillity, hospitality and the region itself. The four bungalows, which resemble large country estates, are at least four kilometres apart, serviced by butlers and private chefs, and encircled by gardens that offer breathtaking views of mountains and lakes. Entering the colonial Tientsin Bungalow, built in 1888, relics of the posh lifestyle of English tea barons are still on display: polished wooden floors, high ceilings, plush four-poster beds. Uniformed staff wait with an evening cocktail in a lounge that smells of old, expensive leather. Old, faded paintings of tea barons hang on the wall. The fireplace in the lounge is blazing, warming the chill mountain air that comes as a relief after the hot sticky weather on the coast.

And then there’s the tea. I’ve never enjoyed a fresher cup of tea than the one waiting for me on the patio. It tastes like fine Bordeaux after years of quaffing box wine. As I sip, the early-morning sun sparkles on the evergreen tea terraces that look like surreal layers painted onto the hills. “What are those yellow and blue specks moving around up there?” I ask my butler. (I’ve never had a butler before, and I think it rather suits me.) “Those are the tea pluckers, sir.” My education in tea is about to begin.

While Ceylon Tea Trails offers hiking, mountain biking, tennis, a spa and croquet, most guests simply enjoy the opportunity to discover a working tea estate, to learn about the finest tea in the world. The estate’s guide is Andrew Taylor, a friendly, quick-witted tea master and direct descendent of Sri Lanka’s first tea planter. We start in the fields, where I learn how tea is plucked – always two leaves and a bud. Left alone, these plants would grow to more than seven metres tall. The estate’s army of pluckers consists of short, skinny ladies wrapped in colourful saris, each with a long basket strapped around her forehead, hanging down her back. The women are paid according to weight, so with lightning fingers they pluck as much as 16 kilograms of tea leaves a day. I ask one lady if I can give it a try, which solicits a cackle of laughs. The basket is heavy, already straining my neck, even though it’s relatively empty. I clumsily pluck away for a half-hour, before deciding that it’s work best left to wispy women with necks of steel.

Since its inception, Dilmah has prided itself on being an ethical tea company. Through MJF, its charitable foundation, the company supports 1,500 community projects, including child care, geriatric services, arts programs, counselling, even prisoner rehabilitation. The company also provides free housing, education and medical services to estate workers.

On the slopes, the mood is light as the women chatter, moving between rows of waist-high plants, gathering the tea leaves that will find their way into teacups in 92 countries.

At the nearby tea factory, I learn about withering, rolling, fermenting and drying, and how leaves are classified and graded. Andrew explains how to make the perfect cup of tea: Bring the water just to a boil, one spoon of tea per person, and one for the pot. Never add sugar, which negates the considerable health benefits, and only a dash of milk if required. We taste different grades, letting the liquid roll around the tongue, expelling mouthfuls into a spittoon. There’s still a lot to learn, but my appreciation for tea has deepened, and no afternoon break will taste the same again.

Back at the Tienstin Bungalow, named after the Chinese village from which the tea seedlings came, a fine mist rolls across the hills. I consume my afternoon tea without sugar, enjoying its aroma, strong flavour and bright colour. I hear a gentle strumming guitar in my head, inspired by former Tientsin guest Paul Simon. In a country once scarred by war, I realize I may never before have enjoyed such peace and serenity. Finding something valuable not originally sought? Serendipity indeed.

IF YOU GO:

Ceylon Tea Trails is Sri Lanka’s only Relais & Chateaux resort. It is located south of Hatton in the Dickoya and Bogawantalawa region of the hill country in south-central Sri Lanka. Most guests come by private car either as part of a bigger exploration around Sri Lanka or arranged by Ceylon Tea Trails. It’s a 4½-hour drive from Colombo Airport, 3½ hours from Colombo and two hours from Kandy. Expect cool mornings, warm days and cool evenings, with daytime temperatures in the low-to-mid-20s C, and night around 10 C. The driest part of the year is from December to April. June/July and October/November are wetter months because of the monsoon. All bungalows have ensuite bathrooms, with dining rooms, Wi-Fi, communal TV and DVD libraries. Rates include all meals and drinks. From $348 (single) a night; teatrails.com.

Special thanks to The Globe and Mail

Robin Esrock is the host of the OLN/CITY-TV series Word Travels. His website is robinesrock.com.

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First Gateway Hotel opens in Sri Lanka

The Indian Hotels (Taj group) announced the opening of the first international gateway hotel, with the rebranding of the Taj Airport Garden Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Announcing the opening of the new property, Gateway Hotel group COO, P.K. Mohan Kumar, said that Colombo Gateway was the 21st hotel in the chain, which aimed at upscale market (mid-market). As many as 17 more hotels will come up under the brand. “By 2015, we will be a 50 hotel brand. That is our medium term goal,” he said.

The Gateway brand was launched in September 2008. Right now, the hotel had 2,000 rooms across India (and now, Sri Lanka), and had been operating with 70 per cent occupancy since the first day of operations, he said.

The Taj Airport Garden Hotel is located in a 38 acre property in Seeduwa, which is 10 minutes away form the airport and located right next to one of the largest lagoons in the country. The Indian Hotels bought the property about 25 years ago and has 113 rooms and suites.

Taj came to Sri Lanka about three decades ago, and is the only international chain with three properties – the Taj Airport Garden, the Taj Samudra and the Taj Exotica Bentota.

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Amos Nachoum shoots the elusive Blue Whales at Trinco

In Sri Lanka last month to shoot the elusive Blue Whales off Trinco, award-winning photographer Amos Nachoum shares his passion for the wilds with Renuka Sadanandan.

It is an image that Amos Nachoum can’t forget. An image that this tough-as-boots adventurer who has been up close with some of the most dangerous predators on earth, acknowledges still moves him beyond words.

It happened when the Israeli-born photographer was on a National

Amos-in-Sri-Lanka-Pic-by-Chitral-Jayatileke — Amos in Sri Lanka. Pic by Chitral Jayatileke

Geographic expedition in Norway in 1997-98, diving in icy waters to photograph the orcas. Hampered by the heavy gear he had to carry, Amos was frustrated- he was getting too few good shots. To compound matters, it was winter and they had precious few daylight hours, a very limited window of opportunity.

“A good photographer needs to see the picture in his own mind before taking it,” he explains, relating how he then spent long hours between dives huddled in his bed visualising the images he wanted to shoot. And then came the moment. “One day we saw the orca coming in, we jumped into the water, myself and the videographer. A pod of orca moved past us and one came towards me. She had something in her mouth.”

He began shooting automatically, and it was only minutes later when he got out of the water and gulped a breath of fresh air, that it clicked. What he had seen was actually a mother orca carrying her dead calf in her mouth.

It is the only picture of its kind in the world, Amos says – and for him, the most tender moment that he has ever been witness to in the wilderness, of profound mother love. “Orcas are mammas, just like ‘Blues’,” he explains. “Later when I started researching this I found out that they will carry their dead, a young female for even a week before she lets go. A more experienced female will let go after a day.”

Amos Nachoum has seen the world like few people have and after thirty years of exploring the frozen splendours of the high Arctic, Africa, Galapagos islands, Papua New Guinea, Argentina, climbing mountains, diving underwater with great white sharks and polar bears and numerous other adventures, he still counts it a rare privilege to be privy to such moments.

He has led the National Geographic’s Red Sea, Great White Shark and Killer Whale photo expeditions, his images of the wild and of big animals have appeared in most leading publications -Time, Life, National Geographic, the New York Times, Le Figaro and other magazines and journals around the world and won noteworthy awards including the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007 but the man himself is still hungry for more.

Making his fourth visit to Sri Lanka, Amos who spent ten days at Chaaya Blu in Trincomalee and long hours out at sea with their Nature Trails Team and the head of the John Keells’ eco-team Chitral Jayatileke, a nature photographer himself, affirms that indeed the Blues are here and also the Sperm whales, though there is just a short space of time to see them (from February to early April) off the East coast. “The difference is that compared to 1982 when I first visited, there is pollution to the ocean. But the sea, if you go out about 15 km is superb. The waters are warm, beautiful, calm.”

His own adventure travel company Big Animals Expeditions specializes in taking small groups of just four to six people to the farthest reaches of the globe. In Trinco there is potential, he says, cautioning though that it should not go the way of Mirissa, now swamped by tourists and fishing boats all desperate to get a sighting of the whales at any cost. The aim should be to show them the richness of the ocean and he feels the way forward would be for the government and the private sector to join hands to monitor and sustain the industry.

When he initially began leading underwater diving expeditions, the destruction of the reefs he was witness to made him call a halt. Conservation is uppermost in his mind when he says that the ocean needs to be sustained for it to continue to provide.

You can’t chastise the fishermen and small-time operators for wanting to cash in, he reasons. Philosophically he adds, “Everybody, wherever in the world wants to have pride and to provide for their families and they will do anything for that, they will kill the ocean for that and we can’t hold them responsible. The only ones who can be held responsible are the ones that know, not the ones that don’t know.”

Amos-captures-sperm-whales-in-Trincomalee — Amos captures sperm whales in Trincomalee

What he envisions is a different model of tourism for this still unspoilt destination. “Trinco could be your Tiffany,” he says emphatically, expanding that it should be positioned as the crown jewel of the lot.

This will need support, educating the local community on whale behaviour and also building the infrastructure – proper vessels, the 4 stroke engines that are quieter, also trained personnel who have water skills and a basic understanding of marine biology, he urges.

That most tourists want to get the maximum is well known. “They offer another five bucks to the boatman to get the best shot. You have to learn not to accept this – the private sector must pay the people well enough for them to rise above this. I saw fishermen taking boats just over the whale. The whale will go away because it is very sensitive to noise.”

He is more than willing to come back even twice a year, he says to work with local marine biologists and researchers to educate the people of this amazing treasure on their doorstep. What he would like to see is the creation of a trust, a non-profit organisation which will lobby support for the ‘Blues of Sri Lanka’- which he terms the most elusive species today in the world. “A trust can raise money in order to tag the Blues. Satellite tagging is hugely expensive- 3,000 dollars a tag.

But put a few tags and track them when they go from Trinco to Mirissa and to the Maldives or Somalia or who knows where. Then you will be able to tell clearly about this particular population which is untouched and unknown and get attention from the world’s scholars,” he says, citing the example of the Blues that migrate from the Arctic along the west coast of America to the Sea of Cortez and back. “The US did a lot of research with radio tracking; they figured out exactly how the whales migrated and they established the pattern. Because the No. 1 cause of whale deaths was shipping accidents, they were able to get the shipping route changed,” he says, adding, “You can do the same thing here.”

Whales apart, his fascination extends to other big animals, but he steers clear of picking a personal favourite. “Each animal is so fascinating, I couldn’t choose between them. I can choose among my pictures,” he twinkles, “but the animal I can’t because they are created by something bigger than I am, than all of us. It is a gift.”

That conviction is what led Amos who began his career as a war photographer in Israel to turn to wildlife. Too much misery, he says bluntly, pausing to touch briefly on the recent deaths of two young war photographers – and a lack of creativity in the work that left him searching for more. Propelled by a desire to go into film and television, he landed in New York in the late 70s, and looking to study at New York University, found himself before a panel – none other than Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen.

Only 30 were picked, Amos among them but the cost was too high. So he worked as a taxi driver at night and in the day at a dive shop in Manhattan, drawing on his previous experience in Israel. Four months later they were running a trip to Cuba and he went as an instructor, returning with the realization that he could do this so much better. So began the adventure tours, initially to the familiar territory of the Red Sea.

“I showed them underwater and did my photography. I came back and wrote stories for American magazines. People gravitated to my photography and to the adventure.” He never studied photography, he confesses, but instead the paintings of the Great Masters, to see how they used light.

Underwater photography is different, he concedes. “It is chaotic, a lot of things going on. There is no light, the photographer needs to bring the light – either artificial light or know how to read ambient light and choose the proper lens in order to isolate part of this amazing environment. It’s the opposite of painting. And that’s what I took as a challenge.”

blue-whale-sri-lanka-by-chitral-jayatilake — Blue Whale Sri Lanka by Chitral Jayatilake

With his study of underwater photography came another realisation, one that would take him on a different trail. Big animals, it struck him were portrayed very negatively, very unkindly, in his view. “I decided to take it upon myself to look for the big animals, the ocean giants and photograph them in a way that would be complimentary because my experience with them had been positive.”

Big animals are not in one place, he says, explaining that their behaviour – migration, feeding, predation etc, keeps them on the move. “So I started looking at different animals and preparing trips to places that were hotspots at a particular time.” What began with three expeditions a year is now in the region of 12, he says and he feels that by limiting his groups he can offer them rare moments to experience the wonders of the wild in a manner that does not damage or destroy.

Amos carries some hefty equipment around but his words to anyone seeking advice is that it’s all about understanding. The equipment however advanced and sophisticated, is just a tool to do the job, he says, recalling that his first shots were with a bellow camera that his father used in World War 2. “It’s what you have between your two eyes. And your heart and soul. It’s about the person understanding the animals, respecting the animals, to be able to understand the light and composition.”

That his work had taken him to the brink is obvious but Amos is not one who believes in risk. His own mantra is that “the enemy of all fear and danger is knowledge.” If you know what you’re going to look for and always leave room for surprises, know that those animals are bigger and faster than we are and that retreat is not a defeat, it is a time to regroup and return again, then there is no risk involved. “Risk is only when we behave arrogantly towards each other and towards nature. This is the stem of all conflict and disaster when we ignore the basic rule of life,” he says.

There’s a whistle-stop visit to Singapore to address a diving convention on the art of making pictures vs. taking pictures on his way home and then there are far horizons beckoning – diving with the Humboldt squid in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, with the leopard seals in Antarctica (the only predator left there), to Canada with the salmon sharks and to Ladakh to see the snow leopard –so much yet to discover.

He still lives in a rented apartment in San Francisco, a city where he can indulge his lesser passions for skiing, horse riding and motorcycling. And when the wanderlust kicks in, he’s happy to give in. “This kind of life, I cherish it, I hold it in reverence-it gives me a chance to do only what I want to do,” he says. And for the man who thinks of the world as his backyard, “Every place I go to it feels like home.”

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More hoteliers flood in to Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan firm, Sunshine Holdings Ltd – which has a partnership with India’s giant Tata Group on plantations -, said a subsidiary last week signed an agreement with Nadathur Far East Pvt Ltd, an affiliate of Singapore-based SilverNeedle Hospitality Group to manage and develop new hotels in Sri Lanka.

In a statement last week, the company said this is in line with SilverNeedle’s plans to expand its room base in Asia through 3-to-5-star properties to 10,000 in five years. The agreement is with Sunshine subsidiary, Sunshine Travels and Tours Ltd which operates a string of boutique hotels in Sri Lanka using colonial-styled bungalows in Sri Lanka’s tea-growing hill country where another plantation subsidiary manages tea estates.

Company officials said the agreement was to manage new star-class hotels while the current range of boutique hotels under the brand name, Mandira will continue to be managed by Sunshine. The group has a joint venture with India’s Tata group, managing tea plantations in Sri Lanka’s central hills and selling tea under the brand name Zesta.

Sri Lanka’s tourism and leisure industry is looking up and attracting a number of new players following the end, in May 2009, of 30 years of conflict.

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Singapore Airlines to promote Sri Lanka tourism

Singapore Airlines (SIA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) to jointly promote tourism to Sri Lanka through the airline’s services to Colombo, the airline said this week.

The one year agreement, effective from 1 April 2011, will see SIA and SLTPB jointly funding tourism promotion activities such as familiarisation trips targeting trade partners, international media and overseas markets. “Key markets in the agreement include Australia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and China. Under the partnership, both parties will also provide each other with branding opportunities in their proprietary marketing channels,” the statement said.

SIA is the longest serving foreign airline operating to Colombo, providing air services between Sri Lanka and Singapore for more than 40 years. It has daily flights between Singapore and Colombo. “Sri Lanka was named the ‘Number 1 Travel Destination in 2010’ by The New York Times and offers visitors a wealth of attractions. The forming of this strategic partnership with SLTPB is testament to our strong commitment to the Sri Lankan market,” said Mak Swee Wah, Singapore Airlines’ Executive Vice President Commercial (sundaytimes.lk).

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Six Senses Spa Hotels Group ventures into Sri Lanka

Thai-based Six Senses & Spa hotels is planning a public float of shares (IPO) in the summer (June-August) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, aimed at setting up its South Asian regional office to handle hotels and resorts in this region, according to its founder/CEO Sonu Shivdasani.

The energetic Indian-origin entrepreneur, told the Business Times in an interview in Colombo that all the company’s current four properties in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and India would be brought under this holding company to be based in Colombo.

“Peace has dawned on Sri Lanka and there are exciting times ahead,” he said on Friday as he enthusiastically explained the organisation’s current properties and plans in Asia and other parts of the world while grabbing a quick breakfast on the roof-top lounge of the Cinnamon Grand.

Mr Shivdasani and his wife -Eva, who together set up their first property in the Maldives in 1995, spend five months on an island in the Maldives and the rest in Thailand where the company – which has over 26 resorts across Asia and the rest of the world- is based.

The company has spas at Aitken Spence Group hotels in Kandalama and the Tea Factory and is setting up – as a joint venture – another resort adjoining Heritance Ahungalla which will have 54 villas and in the adjoining Madu Ganga island, 15 tents. “We want to create a low impact (on the environment) resort at Madu Ganga and replicate this elsewhere as a low-carbon (living-with-nature) unit,” he said.

The company is also looking at a site in Galle and contemplating a health resort either in the central hills or the Niligiri Mountain in South India. “Tourism will grow here because you have a tiny base,” he said.

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Chaaya Blu hotel celebrates its first year in Trinco

(Elizabeth East) — There comes a point in the long, hot journey to Trincomalee, somewhere in the last pot-holed, bone-shaking 50km, that you wonder, ‘is this really worth it?’ When you arrive at the gates of Chaaya Blu hotel, the answer is simple – yes. Celebrating its first anniversary today, Chaaya Blu has seen a successful debut year, and it’s easy to see why. From the moment you arrive, you feel relaxed and taken care of. Check in is a breeze, with a chilled towel handed to you as you enjoy the views through the open lobby to the swimming pool and the pristine beach beyond. The hotel itself started life as a 1970s resort, designed to look like a cruise ship. The bare bones of the building are still there, but Channa Daswatte, master architect and former assistant to Geoffrey Bawa, has transformed the hotel into a breezy, cool symphony of white and blue to mirror the colours of the beach outside, with accents of orange meant to mimic the rising sun. The décor is so effective, you know that you’re near the ocean without ever having to look outside. It’s retro-chic, and looks beautiful, but the very modern polished concrete walls of the bathrooms, giving an almost unfinished look, might not be to everyone’s taste.

Rooms are spacious and extremely comfortable – this is a luxurious hotel, but you immediately feel as if you’re at home. If your home is beautifully decorated complete with a private terrace, a daybed and access to the beach, that is. Whereas with many hotels you simply use your room to sleep, at Chaaya Blu it becomes increasingly difficult to leave your own sunlounger except to bob around serenely in the calm sea or cool down with a splash in the swimming pool. You don’t even need to leave the hotel to find good food. Chaaya Blu boasts two restaurants – The Captain’s Deck, an extensive buffet of various delights from Sri Lanka and beyond, and The Crab, an open-air a la carte restaurant that offers seafood specials right on the sand. There’s also The Rum Hold bar, with a pool table, sports on TV and drinks offers to keep you going until late

If you can bear to drag yourself away, however, the hotel provides numerous experiences around Trincomalee for guests to enjoy. There is an on-site dive centre run by the expert staff of Sri Lanka Diving Tours (www.srilanka-divingtours.com), who organise both diving and snorkelling trips to various sites nearby, including Swami rock, local wrecks, and the national park of Pigeon Island. Underwater visitors can expect to see stunning coral as well as a wealth of marine life, from parrot fish to turtles to black-tipped reef sharks. For those who would rather stay dry, there are tours of the main sights of Trincomalee town, or boat trips to catch sight of the elusive Blue Whale.

Wherever you go, coming back to Chaaya Blu is a pleasure. And in May, there are even more treats in store to celebrate the resort turning one year old. Guests can enjoy 25% off at The Crab restaurant, a daily happy hour at The Rum Hold, 15% off on the wine of the day, high tea, daily happy hour ice cream for kids and a free goody bag, as well as 10% off dolphin watching and snorkelling trips. What better excuse to visit the East Coast?

www.chaayahotels.com

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