Travellers in search of unique adventure in the wild - an excursion that offers a virtual treasure trove of unique flora and fauna - have long regarded Sri Lanka as a compelling destination.
What is a well kept secret, however, is the country's ecotourism infrastructure, which has been quietly developing over the past few years to offer a level of hospitality as unique and diverse as the wildlife itself.
A cohort of experienced wildlife guides, trackers and jeep drivers is also emerging, armed with a wealth of local knowledge and expertise.
In short, the Sri Lanka wildlife safari is well set to give its venerable African counterpart a run for its money.
Among the front-runners is Jetwing Eco Holidays. Under the dynamic leadership of Jetwing Hotels' managing director, Hiran Cooray, and high-profile CEO, banker turned naturalist and wildlife photographer/publisher, Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, the Eco Holidays subsidiary has added considerable eco-value to the company's 14 properties. And it has also hired many of Sri Lanka's top naturalist-guides in the process - seven of the hotels have in-house naturalists.
Gehan is driven by simple passion for Sri Lanka's biodiversity. He thinks about ecotourism in both practical and philosophical, "big-picture", terms: "I'm moving away from it as a concept, even from the international definition of it as responsible travel to natural and cultural areas," he says, " because all forms of tourism, not just ecotourism, should be responsible travel and minimise environmental impact."
"But," he grins, "I wear a commercial hard hat as it were. It all makes good business sense too."
Jetwing's eco lodges have entrenched policies that, among other measures, minimise the use of plastic, regularly review waste management practices, desalinate sea-water, recycle sewage as fertiliser, and ensure that lights facing sea-frontage are shuttered or dimmed to protect turtles on the beach that need to orient towards the ocean. And all the lodges are expected to liaise regularly with schools to create educational programmes.
Most eco-travellers begin their journey in the big-city Colombo. For an easy and luxurious introduction to the delights ahead, Villa Talangama, lies within easy reach of the city.
The Villa is tastefully designed, tailor-made for simple nature walks and bird-watching and has a commanding position overlooking the extensive Talangama Lake urban wetlands.
Very much 'boutique', with three air-conditioned rooms - one double ensuite, and two twin-bedded singles with a communal bathroom off the passageway - the Villa reflects an architect's tender loving care through its understated elegance: earthy colours, granite fittings in open-sided 'Bali-style' bathrooms, cut and polished cement floorings, and antique furnishings.
There is a TV and games recreation area, an in-house cook and room-boy and all the necessary comforts including ample hot water and electricity. A swimming pool is in the pipeline. The gastronomic theme leans towards what Sri Lankans call 'courses', i.e. Western-style dinners - but simple Sri Lankan fare is also possible on request.
Just beyond the bungalow verandahs and patios, the Talangama marshes offer sightings of teal, lily-trotter jacanas, egrets, kingfishers and waders galore, besides grazing buffalo, wild pig, mongooses and dinosaur-like outsized water monitor lizards.
A little bit further out of the city is The Rafters Retreat, a magnet for white-water rafters and jungle-trekkers. This eco-friendly lodge sits astride the fast-flowing Kelani River and the Bandara Kele remnant rain forest at Kitulgala, just an hour's drive inland and east from Colombo.
The Retreat is the brainchild of colourful wildlife celebrity Channa Perera. A former marine engineer and scion of local land-owning aristocracy, Channa walks on the wild side, sporting a plaited beard clamped by a python's vertebra for a hair-clip.
The Rafters Retreat is a complex of 10 well-designed rammed-earth and timber tree-house-style "eco-lodges" or chalets with verandahs overlooking the river and the forest, all virtual bird and beast-watching hides.
Eight of the lodges are big enough for three-person occupation. They are semi-open to the environment and forest-cooled, not air-conditioned. There are also three more conventional 'standard rooms.'
The site shelters under luxuriant forest, including exotic fruit trees bearing rambutans and mangosteens. The design theme is natural-rustic, using thatch, timber beams, hand-made furniture featuring coffee-tree stems, and woven rattans. Even the flush-toilet seats are crafted from massive logs. As at many ecotourism lodges in Sri Lanka, the staff come from the local villages and are experts on the surrounding forests.
You need never leave The Rafters Retreat if 'twitcher'-type bird-watching is your holy grail. The birds are simply bursting out of the bushes - including sought-after endemics like the Sri Lanka Hanging Parrot, the Blue Magpie and the Red-Faced Malkoha, not to mention several species of jewel-like kingfisher and babbler. It helps too that the Retreat's version of the traditional Sri Lankan culinary feast, accorded the deceptively simple tag of 'rice and curry', is of particularly high quality, complete with marvellous, nutty red rice.
But for some, the greater lure is the thrills and spills in the churning waters just behind the lodge and the medium-tough hill and boulder-scrambling of the adjacent forest, which is replete with everything from lizards to giant black squirrels that measure about a metre from head to tail. There are prehistoric -- 28,500 year-old -- cave tours too.
With their eco-appetite by now thoroughly whetted for more, most travellers to Sri Lanka will want to take to the hills, if only for the sheer spectacle of undulating forest-clad peaks topping an altitude of 2,000 metres some 170 kilometres east of Colombo.
While it is hardly an eco-lodge, the lure of the historic Grand Hotel at Nuwara Eliya in the heart of chilly, mist-swathed tea-plantation country, is compelling.
The 156-room colonial-kitsch hotel, more than a century old, makes a good base for one-day hikes across the extraordinary Horton Plains National Park grasslands, home to the country's second and third highest mountains -- Kirigalpotta at 2,393 metres and Totupolakanda at 2,359 metres -- and also to sambar deer, bear monkeys and countless birds.
For a spot of sport, it's also possible to arrange access to the 18-hole course belonging to the elite Nuwara Eliya Golf Club, next door to the Grand.
In the country that bred renowned architect Geoffrey Bawa, you might expect to find stunning eco-lodge design, and Sri Lanka does not disappoint. Two examples of the genre, drawing on Bawa influences, are the Galapita Eco Lodge, on the Buttala-Kataragama Road; and the award-winning Boulder Garden at Kalawana, both crafted out of stupendous rockscapes.
Galapita (meaning 'Atop The Rock' in reference to the visibly looming Galapita Gala peak) sits in a remote part of the southeastern interior of the country, amid sugar-cane plantations. It's accessible from Horton Plains and from Ella, and is just 20 kilometres from the sacred site of Kataragama, also conveniently located on the route into Yala National Park.
A long jungle-fringed mud-path, just one car wide, announced only by the most minimalist signboard, leads into the 12-person Galapita Eco Lodge. The final leg of the approach must be completed on foot via a mildly exciting suspension bridge slung over the foaming Menik Ganga ("Gem River") and hugely impressive boulder outcrops.
Until only recently, this was a private paradise.
Most guests can hardly get past the stands of teak forest on their way in, the premium birding available on the way simply irresistible - black robins, bee eaters, wood pigeons, orioles and even grey hornbills, are abundant, as well as large monitor lizards. Elephants may also be seen in the area.
The lodge's open, traditional wood-fired kitchen is a tourist sight in itself, and turns out exquisite 'rice and curry' spreads, including fresh vegetables and exotica such as jackfruit seeds, from the lodge's own garden.
Sleeping at Galapita is a bit like luxury camping under the stars in four open-sided pavilions up on raised tree-house style platforms, or in thatched mud cottages with driftwood furniture. 'Beds' are more mattresses on platforms. Mosquito nets are there to protect you but the overall impression is of being virtually out in the jungle, exposed to nature. No electricity here to interfere with the close-to-nature ambience; guests live by the rhythms of the forest.
The lodge will arrange for massage, hydrotherapy in the river's natural 'spa', or tubing through its waters, star-gazing, forest treks and wildlife watching, even a spot of river-sand panning for gems. There is a small library, even a small souvenir shop, and soon, a yoga and meditation area in a discreet spot away from the main lodge.
Perhaps best of all is a tree house, "Palu Maluwa", for covert wildlife watching. Galapita is a seriously eco-friendly venture, and isolated enough to make escape from the 'real world' a real possibility.
The upmarket if remote Boulder Garden is the gateway to a World Heritage Site -- the Sinharaja Forest Reserve -- just 15 kilometres from the property, a true wet-tropics rain forest, lush, mysterious and dripping with humidity.
This steeply stepped four-tier 'high-rise' lodge, literally carved from hillside boulders is accessed up a cryptic, narrow mud trail. An award-winner, it's virtually a fantasy imagination of gem magnate and hobbyist wildlife photographer Sarathchandra Ramanayake, and young Sri Lankan architect Lalyn Collure, honed through three years' hard labour.
Of the 10 double or twin suites, two are quite literally, caves. Full occupancy means about 35 guests. Rocks intrude into some of the bathrooms. The spacious bedrooms are finished with titanium or flagstone floors.
A veritable tapestry of tall rain forest draped in front of the discreetly lit open dining area (you may need a torch to get back to your room), which is housed beneath a massive rock overhang, complete with a chirping frog and cicada soundscape, makes dinner at Boulder Garden memorable. To top it off, chef Kirti whips up magic in his kitchen - just for instance, seven-course dinners featuring items like grilled darne of seer (fish) with garlic butter sauce, coq au vin or peppered smoked beef, followed by lime granita.
The elegant stone accommodation offers all desirable amenities -- a reading lamp and desk, telephones, air-conditioning, a complimentary mini-bar - and in the deluxe suites, jacuzzi tubs too.
A naturally formed rock-sheltered swimming pool gives the sensation of being in your own private Tarzan movie, with twisting lianas and lush ferns overhanging the pool, surrounded by those ever-present rocks.
Special touches at this inspired lodge include a leafy message composed on the bedspread every night, wishing you a good night or, in the honeymoon suite, saying "Have A Great Wedded Life."
Quite the reverse of the wet Sinharaja forest surrounding Boulder Garden is the environment offered by one of Sri Lanka's greatest wildlife tourism magnets, the dry scrubland environment of Yala (or Ruhuna) National Park.
The 63-room Yala Safari Game Lodge, another of Jetwing Eco Holidays' several eco-hotels, is a natural choice as a base for a jeep safari into the Yala park - and under two hours' drive from the elephant-rich Uda Walawe National Park.
The lodge sits on a 4-hectare (10-acre) jungle site just outside the Yala park boundaries. Here you get the beach and the Indian Ocean thrown in as well, not to mention traditional Ayurvedic health treatment options, custom-built bird-watching hides, and the chance to dodge wild boar haunting the beach at night.
A well established, sprawling luxury lodge with swimming pools, bars and a restaurant serving first-rate food and wine, Yala Safari Game Lodge offers the ideal environment in which to swap travellers' tales of leopards, elephants, sloth bears and monkeys spotted during the day.
In the same area, a twitcher-birder's dream, the internationally recognised Bundala wetlands sanctuary, and close by, the Tissamaharama marshes.
There are erudite naturalists in residence at the Yala lodge, to guide and advise ecotourists eager to learn, both on safari and for simple walks close to the lodge. Uditha Hettige, certified master naturalist and birder attached to the Yala lodge, is typical of the breed: "I like birds, and I like people. Birding tours are 20 per cent about the tour, 80 per cent about the people."
-Ends-
Villa Talangama
A Jetwing Eco Holidays property
370/F/1 Hokandara South
Sri Lanka
Tel: (94 11) 274 4675
Or
via Jetwing Eco Holidays.
Tel: (94 11) 234-5700
Fax: (94 11) 244-1289
E-mail: eco@jetwing.lk
Website: www.jetwingeco.com
www.srilankaluxury.com
© Press Release 2004
