Helga’s folly

Set high above Kandy lake Helga’s folly is an idiosyncratic hotel, decorated in an excessive, gothic style. It is a wonderfully atmospheric place, steeped in its own glamorous history.

My parents have come to stay for a couple of weeks and last night we took them to Helga’s folly. This unique hotel in Kandy is must-see, must-visit for all bohemian or bourgeois bohemian travellers to Sri Lanka. The rambling building is perched in the jungle, on a steep slope that drops eventually into Kandy Lake. The views are spectacular. Even arriving in the dark, you are struck by the gaudy colours of the hotel and the bizarre detailing on its exterior. Across its concrete walls swoop mural birds and prowling animal. Lianas and bougainvillea weave between terracotta soldiers and china swans, while cheeky monkeys play about the terraces and fruit bats screech in the trees above.

Inside it is a showpiece of gothic excess; the deep crimson and purple sofas and long low coffee tables of the sitting room are lit by dripping candelabras, seemingly unmoved in the last 60 years; the vast wax stalactites recording decades of long nights and raucous parties. The spacious dining areas are festooned with mirrors, which reflect a planetarium of suspended stars and baubles. These are set against striking aquamarine Buddhist iconography above austere oak panels and polished teak shuttering. The staff and fellow guests blend in and are camouflaged against the ordered chaos of antiques, furniture and unclassifiable objects, while the bedrooms appear to have been decorated on LSD. Their Daliesque neon swirls, four poster beds and black mosquito nets are not for the faint hearted or mentally unstable.

Pallegama – a town that is soon to be drowned

Sri Lanka is short of power and large areas of the country suffer seasonal water shortages. Over the last 30 years successive governments have dammed, piped and diverted the flow of the Mahaweli – the country’s largest river – and its tributaries to try and drive social and economic development. These schemes have achieved differing degrees of success.

On Thursday and Friday of last week we joined a group of colleagues and students from the Centre for Environmental Studies in the geography department at Peradeniya on a field trip to Pallegama, a small town of about 3500 people in the North-West of Sri Lanka. The town lies in the foothills of the spectacular Knuckles Mountains, on one of the tributaries of the Mahaweli river. This provincial spot is set to be the next victim of the Mahaweli scheme as a large dam will soon be constructed downstream that will flood the town, sinking it beneath 100 feet of water. 

Our team had been charged with carrying out an Environmental Impact Assessment in the area, to try and gather and gauge the opinions of local inhabitants to their imminent inundation and devise the best option for their future relocation. They are keen on EIAs in this country and they appear to have a much more social and democratic emphasis than in the UK, where they merely enumerate rare species that will be lost.

The capitalised title EIA sounds very grand. In fact we spent the day driving around in a van stopping people on the road, asking their opinions then letting them take us to who they thought might have an important opinion – it was a wonderfully emergent process, full of detours, dead ends and encounters with wildlife.

Sri Lanka Grand Turismo

Grand Turismo is a computer driving game, the aim of which to get from A to B as fast as possible without killing yourself, or anyone else.

We arrived at Colombo airport at dawn last Saturday on a wet and humid morning. Bleary eyed we were met by Royce, our aptly named Sri Lankan driver. Blood-shot, he had been up all night driving down to meet us. Our destination was Kandy, the old capital city of Sri Lanka set up in the hills a winding 120 km above Colombo.

Royce stuffed our bags in his battered Samsung, his already decrepit shock absorbers groaning under the load, and we set off at pace. Stories about Sri Lankan driving had reached us before our arrival and we were not to be disappointed. There is a brutal logic to the rules of the road in this country. Size and noise take precedence and the bigger your vehicle and the louder your horn, the more likely you are to get your way. However, around the margins of the lumbering trucks and the over-stuffed buses, opportunities open up for nippy tuk-tuks, motorcyclists and the branded SUVs of aid organisations.

We were soon amidst the throng, lumbered by two hefty Westerners and their gear Royce bravely attacked the road. Shoulders hunched over the wheel, palm flattened against the horn he drove at the sea of hot metal in front of us. Miraculously he made progress and we were on our way. Nominally, they drive on the left in Sri Lanka. However, this is where the similarities with the UK end. Flashing lights say I’m coming; the horn is a mode of greeting or background amusement; and the white lines on the road make pleasant decoration.

In spite of its anarchic appearance, it soon became clear that these rules of engagement are both strictly ordered and surprisingly efficient (leaving aside the fact that Sri Lanka has one of the worst traffic casualty rates in the world). Many more lanes are opened up than the two marked in white, slower vehicles make way or are forced off the road and the flux of traffic ensures there are ample commercial opportunities for diverse roadside vendors.

Trouble occurs when the traffic is forced to halt by a third party or act of god. Shortly outside Colombo we came to a level crossing. One of Sri Lanka’s wonderful yellow trains was lumbering towards us and the barriers were down. Taxis jostled with tuk-tuks, buses edge alongside lorries, the pavement was swallowed up and shopkeepers forced into their houses as the traffic pushed inexorably up against the barrier. Like a queue at an Indian railway station, there was no angst expressed, only a continued forward pressure that filled all available space. The lifting of the barrier was like the bursting of a dam and all vehicles burst forward snarling up the road.

Further on our path was blocked by a monitor lizard. These large prehistoric reptiles live at large in Sri Lanka in sizeable numbers. They appear harmless and occasionally wander across main roads. Ahead of us the traffic stopped with some respect, the lizard crawled slowly across the glistening tarmac eying up the cars and slipped into the ditch. Everyone, save for Magali and I, seemed nonplussed. A two metre lizard on your way to work is clearly a common event for Colombo’s commuters. Less respect was given to the packs of feral dogs that line the road, their noses inches from passing cars, seemingly playing a canine version of chicken. Further down the road-kill food chain, spectacular porcupines are fair game as targets for angry drivers. Detested by farmers, they aim for them like Australians squashing cane toads.

Before we got to the hills we had another surreal encounter. Coming towards us at speed in the opposite lane was a large truck with an elephant on the back. Ears blowing in the wind it seemed at ease on the on back of its diesel chariot. This elaborate procession represents a weird reversal of the Raj tradition, where saddled elephants carried Maharajahs and colonial hinters. Elephants are still widely used in Sri Lanka in temple ceremonies and for logging in less accessible areas.

Mid-way through the race Royce stopped for breakfast at a small restaurant beside the road. Here we had our first curry and rice (the staple dish). At seven in the morning a curry is a daunting prospect, even more so a Sri Lankan curry – which is fiery hot and eaten with the fingers. We washed it down with lots of sweet tea and tried our best not to cry.

After breakfast the road steepened as it started to wind its way up into the mountains, the rev counter moved into the red and the speed did not let up. Swinging over bridges and around steepling gorges our ears popped. The route itself is a feat of Victorian engineering and is one of the colonial additions the Sri Lankans are most grateful for. Indeed its chief engineer, Captain Dawson, is commemorated by a large phallic tower beside the top of the road, which is still lovingly maintained. The road runs alongside an equally impressive railway, which grinds upwards through tunnels and over bridges and will no doubt feature in future postings.

We eventually arrived in Kandy three hours later and having prised my fingers free from various handholds and extracted my cramping braking foot from under the drivers seat we got out of the car, exhilarated.