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On a 16-day backpacking journey throughout Sri Lanka, I reached a nondescript coastal city, Mannar, within the northern a part of the nation. It wasn’t the best-connected place. I had modified two buses to get right here from Anuradhapura by way of Medawachiya in Central Sri Lanka.
Mannar was a windswept city. It had an arid, wild west panorama with remoted patches of sandy shoreline dotted with palmyra timber and empty fishing boats. The whole city carried the odor of fish. It wasn’t the type of place to supply picture-postcard photographs, like the remainder of Sri Lanka was identified for. However I had my causes to be right here.
I used to be simply 30 kilometres away from India, making it the closest I might be to house from Sri Lankan soil. This small coastal quarter on the northwest fringe of Sri Lanka is separated from Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu by the Palk Strait. Research counsel that there was a bridge right here, popularly known as Adam’s Bridge — a sequence of sandbanks that, till the fifteenth century, linked the 2 nations. Nevertheless, storms deepened the channel over centuries and made the bridge inaccessible. And it doesn’t finish right here. In response to legends, this bridge is talked about within the Hindu epic Ramayana because the place Lord Rama pointed to with the tip of his bow, and Lord Hanuman constructed a bridge (Setu) to cross the ocean to succeed in Lanka and rescue Sita from Ravan, therefore lending the identify Ram Setu.
Torn by its previous
As I walked round Mannar, it felt like I had travelled to the eighties! There have been no fancy eating places and retailers, no supermarkets, no site visitors lights, and never even site visitors! My pink rucksack invited a number of curious stares from locals who questioned what I used to be doing of their non-eventful city. Mannar was reeling from a tense previous the place the insurgent group LTTE had arrange base right here throughout the 26-year-long Sri Lankan Civil Battle. Though the warfare ended over a decade again, tourism was but to select up on this area. A handful of holiday makers from surrounding districts drop by to see the better flamingos throughout the migratory season between December and April. Amongst newer tourism initiatives to lure the intrepid traveller is the promotion of kite browsing as a result of its windy location.
However issues weren’t all the time like this! Mannar had seen higher instances. It as soon as served as the executive centre for the Jaffna Kingdom in North Sri Lanka earlier than the Portuguese occupied the area, adopted by British colonisation. Because the closest border to India, Mannar thrived as an necessary port metropolis for transferring items and folks between India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The city was additionally identified for its profitable pearl fishing business till its assets have been depleted, killing its pearling business, nevertheless, fishing stays an necessary supply of revenue for the locals.
An abode in a abandoned land
Upon reaching my homestay, after a 15-minute stroll from the bus stand, I used to be welcomed by Jude, my twenty-something host. For a big half, we conversed in damaged English about our backgrounds. He then steered some locations I might go to — there was a big irrigation tank with a synthetic lake, a cluster of large baobab timber, and a 400-year-old Catholic shrine that acted as a refugee camp throughout the Civil Battle. He graciously provided me his bicycle to journey, and I humbly obliged.
As I pedalled across the quiet neighbourhood, it was abandoned, aside from the sight of some wild ponies. I wasn’t certain if this was siesta time or the lifestyle right here. Cautious of not venturing too far-off, I ended to seize a lunch of fish curry rice at a close-by no-frills restaurant earlier than returning to my homestay.
Later that night, I took the bus to Talaimannar — house of the fabled Ram Setu bridge — and the explanation I used to be right here. The general public bus had stuffed passengers like chickens and the roads received progressively worse on the forty-five-minute journey. After getting off on the final cease, I hailed a rickshaw to the quayside.
Shut, but thus far
The view at Talaimannar was a sight to behold. There was a wood pier, inaccessible and past disrepair. I stood dealing with the pier surrounded by the Indian Ocean on three sides. Someplace on the hazy horizon was India, close to however not in clear sight!
At one level, the Talaimannar pier served as a ferry service between Dhanushkodi and Mannar for greater than fifty years till a cyclone hit the Andaman Sea in 1964, destroying the coasts in each nations. The service briefly began from Talaimmanar to Rameshwaram island in Tamil Nadu, however as a result of political tensions triggered by LTTE, it was terminated and by no means resumed.
What stays at present of Talaimannar is an deserted lighthouse — its whitewashed tower as soon as guided passing boatmen and ferries stopping right here. Adjoining is the dead-end of the railway monitor and the Talaimannar station that operates a practice service to Medawachiya connecting to the remainder of Sri Lanka. There’s a sturdy presence of the Sri Lankan navy throughout the world, not surprisingly due to the shut border proximity it shares with India.
I spent a very good 45 minutes right here below the watchful eye of the navy, observing the ocean and sights round me. Offended waves crashed into the pier, and I couldn’t assist however take into consideration the magnitude of destruction the cyclone might need induced on that fateful night time on each side of the area. It was a second to mirror on the facility of nature to uproot life and wipe off cities.
My night tour had ended on that sombre notice as I bid goodbye to Talaimannar, and it dawned on me that Mannar was not a lot about the fantastic thing about its panorama, however the resilience of its individuals.
This humbling go to to an missed city introduced a refreshing sense of actuality to my backpacking journey in Sri Lanka.
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