My month in Sri Lanka was coming to an end. It had been a journey through two circles — one geographical, the other human — gradually woven into the same story.
It had all started unexpectedly in Galle. A brief encounter, a scrap of paper with names of places I had never heard of, and then another encounter that grew into two weeks of travelling together, stories, confidences and conversations about life, war and all that had happened along the way.
Galle, Tangalle, Kataragama, Arugam Bay, Kandy.
Or Rasika, Claudia, Muna, Anusha, Sooriya.
I came to know places through people, and people through places.
Five months in Asia had changed the way I travelled — and the way I looked at the world. I was no longer that slightly mad traveller trying to tick off an endless list of places, experiences and photographs.
Vietnam had begun as a marathon. Bali brought choice and spontaneity, which eventually took me to India.
And then came Sri Lanka.
Two Thousand Years vs Twenty
On 1 May, we left Kandy and headed towards Dambulla. By late afternoon, we had reached the cave temple, set beneath a vast overhang of rock.
Dambulla had been a Buddhist sanctuary for more than two thousand years, its natural caves gradually transformed into shrines over the centuries. Inside, paintings followed the uneven surfaces of the rock, surrounding statues and stupas. Perhaps it was this sense of entering a world enclosed and preserved within the stone that unexpectedly reminded me of the tombs of the pharaohs.
We left at sunset.
The next morning, we climbed Sigiriya. In the fifth century, King Kassapa had turned the rock into the centre of a royal capital, with a fortified palace above and gardens, pools and water systems below. His capital lasted less than twenty years. After more than two thousand years of continuity at Dambulla, there was something striking about standing amid the ruins of such an ambitious project and seeing how little of it had endured.
On the summit were the remains of Kassapa’s grand design — terraces, walls and pools against the red earh. Beyond them stretched an immense expanse of green forest and distant hills beneath a clear blue sky.
Back to the Sea
From Sigiriya, we continued north-west towards Kalpitiya, a narrow peninsula between the Indian Ocean and the vast Puttalam Lagoon. We had reached the sea again. We stopped there to rest.
The following morning, as we travelled south along the western coast, the landscape changed. Coconut palms stretched for miles, so dense that they seemed almost like forest. Much of what looked entirely natural was in fact a cultivated landscape, shaped by the expansion of coconut plantations that had transformed this part of Sri Lanka since the nineteenth century.
Negombo was the last stop — half a day by the sea and a few hours of sleep before an early flight. At sunset, fishing boats rested on the sand while people were still swimming in the warm water.
The Other Circle
By then, the map of Sri Lanka in my mind was no longer simply about places. It was shaped by people and their stories, many of them inseparable from the land itself. A white cow given as a birthday present for good luck. An injured iguana rescued from the road and, according to Muna, returning afterwards to visit the man who had saved it. Stories of family, war, animals, temples and villages — told along the road, over meals, or simply while sitting somewhere together.
Perhaps this was the other circle I had been travelling all along.
A month earlier, in Galle, I had been given a scrap of paper with names of places I had never heard of. I still had it with me.
Much later, when I sent Muna one of these stories and told him that only one more was left to close my Sri Lankan journey, he replied with three words: “The journey infinite.”
In the early hours of 4 May, I left Sri Lanka.