m i l LI o n a i r E T R A V E L

Sri Lanka

Little island...
Expansive
luxury

Sri Lanka is the new addition to the itinerary of the discerning

traveller. In its little boutique hotels that promise that
Jetwing Vil Uyana

most-wanted commodity – personalised luxury – you can be

a responsible tourist

text and photographs Shalini Seth

Jetwing Vil Uyana resort

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 m i l LI o n a i r E T R A V E L

W hen in Sri Lanka

a luxury tourist
can expect the
Siddartha
Just like the Buddha when he was a
tour.

prince instead of a monk and spared all

suffering by a royal edict, you can spend
days being guided gently from Colombo
to Sigiriya to Kandy without ever
setting foot anywhere that might shock
your senses.
Discerning tourists can customise
each aspect of their tour, with a little
help from the Sri Lankan Tourism Board,
its responsible national guides, baby
elephants, restaurants dotting all major
roads and spice and tea gardens. All of
these conspire to make sure you never
step out of the picture postcard.
Our first stop was at the Hilton in
Colombo, before going on to the hill
country of Kandy and Sigiriya for the

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The pool at Amaya Hills
latter part of our trip. The hotel is
located in the most security-heavy zone
in the city, with the Presidential Palace
in clear view. The closest you will come
to a reality that is not about swans, miso-
glazed oysters and blue fish in fountains
with exotic flowers is the tiny notice
that you should avoid photographing
anything through certain windows. “Sri
Lanka has seen five million tourists since
1983. No harm has ever come to them,”
Faizer Mustapha, the country’s deputy
minister for tourism, tells us.
The minister’s office is located close
to another attraction where, we are
told, guests are scrutinised for suitability
before they are admitted. One step into
the world of Galle Face hotel and you
see that the Raj never actually went
anywhere. In the more recent past,
the Galle Face has hosted personages
such as Richard Nixon, Indira Gandhi,
Jawaharlal Nehru, Emperor Hirohito,
Don Bradman, Roger Moore and Yuri
Gagarin. While the elevators belong to
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another era, there is nothing primitive
about the guests lounging in the
verandah by the sea.
Nearby, in the particularly tourist-
happy Negombo, the flower era has
come and not gone, along with all its
Dutch, Portuguese and British influences.
Resorts like Jetwing’s Ayurveda Pavilions
give you luxuries such as an open air
bathroom right in the middle of a resort
town. Little shops sell everything from
Sri Lankan masks to Ayurvedic cures
and the gemstones for which the country
is famous.
In Colombo, as in most of Sri Lanka,
you can choose your scenery. While
the area around the Hilton has all the
lushness of a tropical rainforest, Galle
Face and Negombo startle you with a
seascape, and hotels in Kandy actually
boast cloud-level pools. For an island
that is 435km by 225km, it packs a huge
amount of variety.
Though chartered planes and helicopter
drops are available, most tourists choose
At the meeting
point of its
three wings, the
swimming pool
allows guests a
swim on the edge
of the valley
to hire a vehicle and travel around Sri
Lanka by road, sampling everything
that is on offer. On the way to Kandy,
most restaurants that see tourist traffic
offer standard fare – continental or Sri
Lankan. You come across little spice
gardens that ensure tourists get a whiff
of the real thing without having to go to
a specialised farm. A few shrubs each of
cardamom, pepper, tamarind, cinnamon,
clove and saffron find a place in a little
garden where a spice doctor explains
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Bedroom at Vil Uyana
their medicinal uses to visitors who stop
by for an hour or two. Most tea factories
have a little shop and will let you have
a cuppa of their special brew after you
have taken the tour. Ditto with gem
mines, batik shops and anything else
that might have souvenir value. A man
sits playing the flute on a makeshift deck
outdoors while you have your lunch on
your way to Kandy.
You encounter absolute luxury
combined with unassuming courtesy
from doe-eyed hotel staff clad in sarongs
with fan-shaped detail – and you begin to
wonder what happened to all the touts,
beggars and souvenir-sellers ubiquitous
to tourist destinations. Anywhere else
in the world, hotels may spend millions
hoping for just the right service staff; in
Sri Lanka, you would have to try really
hard to fault the service. At a wayside
lunch place, a lady server takes me into
a restroom to demonstrate how to wear
the sarong; in the Herbs and Spice café
at the Ayurveda Pavilions, a banjo-
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Monks strolling at the Peradeniya Botonical Garden
player presents us with a selection of
Indian and Western songs beyond his
standard working hours; at Amaya Hills,
the staff welcome us at dusk by letting us
light the brass lamps. Even the security
forces are the most polite you would see
anywhere. At the Temple of the Tooth
Relic a gun-toting female security guard
has no qualms helping a tourist
tie her makeshift scarf a little
more modestly.
Perhaps it is Buddhism that truly
envelopes the country and its inhabitants
in a peaceful existence, in stark contrast
to the violence that makes it to the news
headlines. While the temple may be
heavily guarded, this does not disturb the
serenity that reigns inside. For an equally
picturesque look at daily life, you pass
Buddhist monks waiting at bus stops or
strolling at the Botanical Garden famous
for all the diplomats who have planted
trees there; and village women carrying
bouquets of anthurium flowers that
grow wild, like a five-star hotal lobby >
The gong at the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy
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Ayurveda Pavilions
recreated on a hillside. Maybe it is the
fact that Serendib is almost impossibly
rich. “No one goes hungry in my
country,” says Sampath, our guide, one
of the battalion of responsible national
guides trained by the Sri Lankan Tourist
Board, on the way to a spice garden. “If
nothing else, there is the coconut tree.
You can climb up, get yourself a coconut
and make a curry,” he says.
LITTLE ORPHAN
ELEPHANTS
Elephants are so plentiful in Sri Lanka
that in certain areas you might have to
give way to them as they cross the road.
At the Pinnawala elephant orphanage
there are now some 80 pachyderms
Flute player at lunch living on state support. Their minders
bottle-feed the babies and the grown-ups
The library at Vil Uyana are allowed to mate and have families.
Twice a day they cross the road for a
bath in the river Maha Oya. Tourists are
not mere hangers-on. Like most other
places in Sri Lanka, their presence in the
orphanage is woven into the schedule
and the landscape.
Just outside are little factories that
make paper from elephant dung. And
on the path to the river, numerous
restaurants serve as viewing posts for the
bathing elephants. “We do not encourage
human contact with elephants any more.
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The 100-year-old Giant Java Willow Tree at
Peradeniya Botanical Gardens near Kandy
The new policy is to send the elephants
back into the wild,” says Sampath.
RESPONSIBLE
TOURISM
A late entrant on the world tourism map,
Sri Lanka has the advantage of being able
to weave responsible tourism into each
activity instead of relying on cosmetic
changes. Right from the time you flip the
pages of Serendib, the in-flight magazine,
to the moment you land, the words keep
reminding you to leave the smallest eco-
footprint possible. For the discerning
tourist this is a definite draw. Resorts such
as Jetwing Vil Uyana make it a point to
advise you about the “less friendly wild
life”, keep separate bins for dry and wet
garbage in your room, and let you know
that if you throw towels for a wash every
day you will be responsible for polluting
the rivers. Whether it is a spice garden
visit or a batik demo, Sampath assures us
that he takes us only to producers who
support local workers and their families.
The little country has at least three large
botanical gardens.
At the end of the day that
began with elephants is Vil
Uyana. Already familiar
with the eco-resort from
our in-flight reading, we
are still pleasantly
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surprised to see wooden cottages nestled
amongst paddy fields, over water. The
resort has introduced a wetland system
on reclaimed agricultural land creating
a private nature reserve with lakes and
reed beds.
When it is time, guests can even
participate in both the farming and
harvesting of paddy if they wish. Each
cottage or chalet is secluded but
interconnected with timber walkways.
There are separate decks that function as
outdoor dining areas. Some rooms have
individual swimming pools, some others
have plunge pools and the largest villa
comes with a jacuzzi. Just outside ours a
peacock chose to grace us with a dance
announcing a few raindrops.
Outside there is an island spa, a library
and dining areas. Inside, in our chalet,
there is wireless internet, a shower with a
skylight cut through the thatched roof, a
sunken bath next to the bed, a timber floor
and thatched coconut-palm roof, a ceiling
made out of rattan and bamboo. Air
conditioning is at its most discreet – you
can almost pretend it’s the weather.
We spend the evening
climbing a rock to see
the ancient frescos and
the ruins of a palace
at the top. Back at the
resort one is most
reluctant to leave
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Frescoes at Sigiriya
Bath time for elephants
– until we are assured that the next stop
is even more beautiful.
FOLLIES AND FOIBLES
Once in Kandy we spend a lot of time
just looking and pointing. The winding Nutmeg at a spice garden
road which is to take us to Amaya Hills
is full of delights. Every turn houses a
Millionaire was hosted by:
hotel – including quirky ones such as
Helga’s Folly, where the most luxurious AMAYA HILLS
suite is called the Nutcracker. Heerassagala, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Amaya Hills, where we are headed, is a Tel: +94 81 2233521/2
bit higher up, which automatically denotes Fax: +94 81 2233948
the luxury of a better view. Understandably, e-mail: amayahills@amayaresorts.com
the biggest draw of the hotel is its pool
HILTON COLOMBO
with a view. At the meeting point of its 2 Sir Chittampalam A Gardiner Mw,
three wings, the swimming pool allows Colombo 2, Sri Lanka 02
guests a swim on the edge of the valley. Tel: +94 11 2492492
The other candy is the chance to play Fax: +94 11 2544657
billiards with cricketers. In the billiards
JETWING AYURVEDA PAVILIONS
hall, autographs from international
Ethukale, Negombo, Sri Lanka
cricket teams are strewn on cricket bats Tel: +94 4 870764 0/ 31-2276719
around the room. “As Amaya Hills is a Fax: +94 31 4 870765
favourite spot for visiting cricket teams, e-mail: ayurvedapav@eureka.lk
you may even have a chance to enjoy
a round of billiards with some of the JETWING VIL UYANA
players in person,” we are promised. Sigiriya, Sri Lanka
Tel: +94 66 4323583-6
But billiards is all you should dare to
Fax: +94 66 4923587
play. Back in Dubai, when one visitor
e-mail:viluyana@wow.lk
asked a member of the Sri Lankan Trade
Council about what not to do in Sri Millionaire flew
Lanka, he answered: “Don’t play cricket. Sri Lankan
You will lose!”
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