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| Whaddya mean there's no wi-fi? |
After a troublesome six or so attempts to get the necessary travel documents in order, I took a quick hop skip and jump (over land mines and flood areas) to Tamil country to check out what was going on up there. I had been suuuuper excited about this trip for the past few weeks and couldn't wait to get rolling. In my mind, I had painted the area to be a completely distraught bombed out distress zone with an entirely divergent culture and population from the rest of the island.
I was, quite pleasantly, proven to be completely wrong in my assumptions. While its true that the areas up top there are dotted by a relatively constant military presence and some destroyed remnants of buildings and headless statues, stolid reminders of the thirty year civil war that ravaged this rain-soaked region, the people were incredibly friendly and welcoming. What's more, they were incredibly Sri Lankan. My fears of danger were allayed right quick and replaced with the usual travel woes of intermittent internet and insanely slow lunch service. Once it arrived, the food was stellar as always and the service unbelievably congenial. Thanks to its out of the way location, the area was even free of touts and grifters and my movement was entirely unhindered by scams for a change.
The Indian businessman I spoke to briefly while waiting for the return trip to the airport this morning said that in his opinion, two more years of development were needed to turn the area into a viable tourist and business location. In my opinion though there's no reason to wait...yes it's a little unnerving to have 15 machine guns pointed in your general direction at every street corner, but it was incredible to see a town so recently recovered from violence and slowly rebuilding.
And it's not everyday you get to watch a cow wander through a mine field.
WAAAAYYYYY cool!!!!!
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