Kalutara, Bentota, Brief Garden = Superb Sunday SightSeeing

8.30 Sunday morning my phone rang and there was Jill in the other end, asking me, if I felt adventurous ? Only one way of answering this question on a Sunday where nothing was on the carpet! 25 minutes later, Jill was waiting for me in her 4x4 and we headed south and out of Colombo. No particulat destination, just exploring ! We were driving on Galle Road, which is a main road that pretty much goes all around the country, I think, and within 30 minutes we made our first stop in Kalutara. I've passed this city several times, but never had the chance to stop there.

The Buddhist temple was built in the 1960s and houses the only hollow stupa in the world, as well as the Kalutara Bodiya. It is one is one of the countries most holy places of worship. What really made it quite a special visit for me, was that a man in the temple approached us just before we were going to offer some flowers we had bought. He asked us, if we knew the proper way of making an offering, and to that question the answer was no. This resulted in him of course, showing us the right was of cleaning the flowers, explaining to us how we had to take a minute to empty ous minds before offering the flowers. From there he, I guess he saw an opportunity to make earn a little money, beacuse he took us around the place and explained a lot of things to us.

Normally, I might have founded a tad irritating, but he was very knowledgable, and he was capable of answering a lot of the questions that have been whirring in my mind after visting quite a few temples by now. I learned, for example, that the offering of flowers, water, the colored flags with writing on them and lighting the coconut-oil candles all serves the same purpose. I thougt it might have been different offerings for different purposes - I guess, I got a little wiser.
From here we headed further south. Just driving along on Galle Road is actually quite the adventure of it self. When you're driving south, the ocean is on your right, just next to the road a lot of the time. This means that the view is something of it's own... also along the road you find a lot of different small stalls selling FRESH fish, dried fish (looks nice, smells interesting, and tastes....well that's still up for investigation!). Different stretches also specializes in different things. On our drive we came through a broom and wicker work stretch! That meant that all the road side stalls sold pretty much the same thing for a kilometer or two. I guess, you'ld know where to buy your brooms & wicker work, but I can't really see how it gives anyone a competitive advantage!
Driving on we came to Bentota. This is yet another place that is famous for its lovely beaches. Along the beach side, you find a lot of high end resorts, and not a lot of guesthouses, as you would further south. We decided to go down a small side road, and see where it would lead us (we were hoping to find a nice place for lunch, where we could get some tasty sea food - being right on the beach and all). We drove for a little while, and soon we saw a big metal gate and a looooong driveway. Jill has an almost magic sign on her windscreen saying DPL, which is short for diplomat. That silly little sticker really clears the way - up went the metal gates and on with us ! It proves to be the Taj Exotic - a 5 star resort in Bentota (http://www.tajhotels.com/Leisure/Taj%20Exotica,BENTOTA/). We figured that this would be a proper lunch place for us; we've had some food for the mind, so treating ourselves with some nice food for the body seemed appropriate! The place was nice of course. Personally, I found it a bit too grand and enormous. But the food was nice, suprisingly cheap considering the place, and the surroundings were beautiful.

From there we headed in-lands. I'd seen in the Rough Guide that there should be some kind of lovely garden'ish not too far away form where we had lunch. We had no map, but the one the book, and that really isn't all that detailed. There really is a limit to how lost one could get though, since the road system (at least the bigger roads) isn't very extensive. So the adventure proceeded, and lead us right to where we wanted to be.

Before long we were driving down the smallest of roads, getting deeper and deeper into the landside, densely covered with palmtrees, rubber plant, banana trees and heaps of other kinds of plants, and at once the sign that we had been looking for was right in front of us.

We were going to 'Brief Garden', which is the life's work of Bevis Bawa, a renowned Sri Lankan landscape artist, sculptur and gardener.( http://cerno.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/a-highly-tentative-map-to-bevis-bawas-brief/ link that offers road directions and even a map to get there! http://cerno.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/bawa-gardens-of-sri-lanka-book-a-long-wait-ends/ Detailed description of the garden and house)

If anyone should ever find themselves in Colombo, Galle or anywhere else on the westcoast in Sri Lanka, I would highly recommend that you visit the place. Bawa has spent his whole life creating a 5 acres garden and coloniol manison on the same piece of land. He stayed there and continously worked on it for 60 years, and both the garden and house bear the stamp of a incredible creative and artistic soul, who has thought about every little detail. Just before he passed away in 1992, I think, he gave the place to his head gardener, who runs the place today - this means that he maintains the garden and house, but pretty much leaves it, as it was when Bawa was alive. He had no family, and after seeing just a few of the amazing pieces of art in the house, I asked the man who tells Bawa's and the garden's history, if he was gay. The answer came swiftly, almost automatically; "He might have been".... Not the slightest chance that he wasn't, that's for sure! In Sri Lanka it is not accepted - not then, not now. So even though every one knows it, it's kept out of public light.

This experience came as such a surprise, and that might have been the reason for it making such a lasting impression on me. I cannot emphasize enough though, that it really is a hidden gem!

High on what we had seen, we started moving in the direction of Colombo, but instead of going back the way we came down, of Galle Road, we took a smaller road in-lands.

Time for some serious country side and rural living!

Amazing really, that you only need to get out of Colombo by around 50 Km's to find yourself in what feels like a totally different world: goats climbing the road sides, skinny cows all over the place, people spreading rice to dry it in the sun, and mountains peaking up in the distance. Such a contrast to the hustle and bustle that surrounds me during the week.

On the outskirts of colombo 'harsh' reality confronted us again, leaving us in chaotic traffic, beacause all the people, who had spend their weekend out of Colombo, were driving back.

We made it back around 6 pm. and eventhough it hadn't been a high impact day physically, I was just totally worn out - I guess it's hard work to cope with all the excitement and strikingly beautiful sights, even on a sunday!