A weekend with a family in Sinharaja

By Siri Ipalawatte
Canberra

The bus disappears around the bend, and the villagers who disembark with me shuffle off into narrow paths whilst carrying their heavy gunny sacks. Night is falling, the cicada buzz is rising, and I begin to get that panicky feeling that the city-coddled folk might experience upon finding themselves suddenly alone on the roadside in a remote village in Deniyaya with no idea where to go!Before my panic escalates, a man wearing an oversized checked shirt over a pair of faded brown shorts appears. He says his name is Palitha, and tells me to follow him on what turns out to be an ankle-jarring trek up the steep, stony tracks that make up the road to his house, my accommodation for the next two nights.

We pass through a high corridor of stunted tea bushes and arrive at a brick building with a pitched roof of locally made tiles. This simple structure and the man who runs the place is the reason I have ended up here rather than a hotel. Sinharaja Homestay is fairly basic. Staying here saves a lot of hassle as you can arrange a rainforest walk with a certified guide who is very knowledgeable about the forest. You can enjoy home cooked food prepared by his mother and have a late-night chat with his old father. The look and feel of these places is very different from a star hotel,’ a Canberra friend who stayed here last year, told me after his holiday in Sri Lanka, a delicate way of saying that guests wanting air conditioning will often find themselves presented with portable fans. ‘Once that understanding and appreciation is there, I think visitors like going ‘free range’ and getting to know the village people. People and their way of living are at the heart of this experience.’

Waiting outside in the cooling dusk was Palitha’s father, wearing two button-down shirts, a white sarong and a woolly, handmade headscarf. His face is crinkled with old smiles. We creak up the small wooden staircase and sit on the veranda, which overlooks sweeping terraces of abandoned tea plantations edged with balustrades of bamboo and banana trees.

Technicolor butterflies flutter by as large as ‘dolled-up’ bats. I glance toward a giant wood spider, its body the size of a blackened plum, floating in mid air. Recalling suddenly, that if it could string up a web between a jak tree and a mango tree more than five yards apart, it could just as easily pounce on my face! But Palitha’s mother rescues me by offering a steaming cup of tea with pieces of Sinharaja kithul jaggery and Palitha keeps feeding me information about the forest.

Sinharaja Reserve covers 19,000 hectares of natural and modified forest and occupies a broad ridge at the heart of the island’s wet zone. It was once a royal reserve, and some colonial records refer to it as Rajasinghe Forest. In 1840 the forest became British crown land and from that time efforts were made to preserve at least some of it. On most days the forest brings plentiful rain-clouds that replenish its deep soils and balance water resources for much of South-Western Sri Lanka. Recognising its importance to the island’s ecosystem, UNESCO declared the reserve a World Heritage Site in 1989.

I see Palitha’s mother is doing her cooking in the kitchen just next to where we sit. As I zoom my eyes around the warren-like space dimly lit by a kerosene lamp, I see a jumble of warped pans and dented pots hanging from the wall. A snarl of just harvested vegetables and foraged greens blanket the small table opposite her. She moves swiftly from task to task, using simple culinary tools to chop, mix, stir, taste, and then add correct ingredients. Palitha notices my keen interest and says almost everything that went into her dishes came from their home garden. The aromas from the kitchen are intoxicating – herbal, musky, and I can think of no other adjective but ‘fecund’.

Four of us gather round the dinner table and spoon her ‘kitchen aromas’ to our dinner plates. I look around as everyone is savouring her meal that includes dishes such as dried fish with fried onions and green chillies, dhal mixed with Maldives fish, mixed vegetables with coconut milk, ambarella curry and rice. I feel I have been enfolded into this beautiful and simple family.

After dinner, the house turns quiet. With the dishes done Palitha’s mother disappears back into her bedroom as Palitha, his father and I get our tea and take it out onto the front stoop. I listen to the night sounds making their way along the forest canopy as the mosquitoes begin to rise. I am enveloped in stillness. I hear silence; I make remark about this while tending to my hot tea.

In the morning, Palitha gets behind the wheel of an old green-colored jeep. I get a closer look at it and try to figure it out. I can see that he’s added a few cosmetics and some modifications, but a two-piece windshield and side-mounted seats suggest this is likely a reincarnated ‘Willy’. We are on our way! First he has to take on some extra supplies. He heads to the middle of town and parks outside a little shop. He settles on a few bakery items, cans of drinks, salt, and some ambul bananas. On the edge of the town, Palitha fills up on diesel and drives faster as the town falls away, skirting some potholes, hitting others. Soon he leaves the tarmac road altogether, taking a gravel road toward the reserve.

He pulls over to pick up a skinny, bow legged middle-aged man carrying a shoulder bag and a long knife. The man is chewing on betel, the mild stimulant that is everywhere in rural Sri Lanka. ‘This is Piyasena, he is going to get some thelijja’. We pass a very narrow one-lane bridge and numerous rice fields. The trees look different, taller and healthier, and we are getting closer to our destination; we walk the final four kilometres into the rainforest. Palitha takes some betel from Piyasena and begins to chew. We get a warm welcome smile from the young girl at the counter. ‘You are the first visitors of the day! She chirps.

After fitting ourselves with the not so fashionable but vital ‘leech socks’ generously sprinkled with salt, we are ready to set off into this magical rainforest. It is a warm and humid world where no wind penetrates and there is dense shade with moving flecks of lights. It is amazing to notice that every tree and plant has the tip of its leaf drawn out to a point in order to drain off the water rapidly. The forest floor, carpeted with leaves that fall off in never-ending rainfall the year round, opens into dark aisles, with undergrowth of tiny shrubs and tree seedlings. It is the forest of the future!

‘Look at that canopy of trees’ Palitha points out to the very top of a hill, much higher than the one we are climbing. ‘Every tree up there is specific and unique to this island. They occur in no other place in the world.’ As we walk he points to one bush, and then another. ‘There is nothing here that cannot be used for something. So much of this forest can be used for medicinal purposes. The local villagers use the woody climber – venivel – here as aspirin. The heen bovitiya is used against jaundice and hepatitis.’

He points out a paradise flycatcher, blue magpies, a crested serpent eagle, and a bee-eater. He knows how to identify them visually, but almost thirty years in the rainforest has also taught him to identify almost anything by its song.

I see many little walking paths used by villagers. These paths are overgrown with shrubs on narrow ridges so that in some places we have to walk in single file, watching to keep strictly to the middle of the ridge. There are numerous small rocks right in the middle of the rail, but the paths have been trodden so close to the rocks that they seem friendly to Palitha. He knows the terrain so well that he doesn’t need to look down as he moves. My feet have never felt rocks this hard and spiky, and my ankles give out over and over again. I have suffered a leech attack and am bleeding from my leg in various places. But I never bother to investigate what has been irritating me, until we come back to Palitha’s house and grab that steaming cup of plain tea with soft brown chunks of jaggery.

Later that evening, I sat with Palitha’s father and talked on the deck overlooking the little creek. The mosquitoes have risen and then settled in for the night, but small flies are landing on every available surface as we listen to the sounds of the water below. The birds have tucked themselves into the trees for the night. Whatever is hunting in the forest is doing it silently!

As the sun dips behind robust tall trees, I sip my tea while Palitha’s father is having a cup of polpala. He tells me that he is 89 years old. ‘I walk ten kilometres every day in the forest’ he says. His mornings begin when he wakes up and his days end when he feels like going to sleep. He eats ‘what he likes, twice a day: one big meal for lunch and a small portion for dinner’; mostly rice, yams, fruits and vegetables and occasionally dried fish, and no meat or eggs.

‘How is it’ I ask carefully, ‘to grow old in this way?’

I am wondering if it is imprudent to discuss mortality when someone is on the edge of his, but something tells me he knows things I can’t find in a book!

He says he spent all those years watching birds, animals, and chopping wood. He tells me when he gets stressed out he slows down. There’s no need to rush about and make a mess of things. Just slow down and take long breaths. He purses his lips and sucks in a deep, fierce breath through his nose, eyes closed, belly rising. He rests his knobby, wrinkled, knowing hands on his abdomen as it lifts, and when he is quite satisfied with this, he opens his eyes and slowly, fully releases his breath.His silver white hair is alight with the last rays of sun. The creek races past us with its incessant movement against the rocks. I cannot see how any life can be fuller than his.