I fell in love with Sri Lanka when I visited with my parents when at University. The wonderful, welcoming people, the lack of ‘superb’ tourism facilities and the passion of the tour guide team just wowed me. 

Bearing in mind this was despite being rushed to what could only be described as a sanitarium in the hill country in the middle of the night, driven by a doctor who told me not to worry, because he wasn’t a witch doctor, and dressed in my father’s dressing gown, my mother’s slippers and god knows what else, this was quite something.  Luckily, I was too ill to bother too much about the straight jackets.

This followed a glorious tour of the country, from the city of Colombo, to the hill fortress of Sigiriya where the prospect of falling off the sheer rock face was more than 50/50.  Following my serious infection, I got to sit at the front of the tour bus with the wonderful Bobby Senaweera – making every other female on the bus extremely jealous – but it was a true eye opener for me, those last few days actually being truly unforgettable.

Bobby invited me to travel to Jaffna and Trincomalee with his family – after all, we were booked for three more weeks on the tour, but I think he wanted to educate me into the real ways of the Third World.  Given that my trip had been paid for and my family expected us all to enjoy three more weeks on the beach, I declined.

Do I regret it?  Maybe a little bit, but I learnt so much at the beach anyway.  There was National, running the bar, who had just been christened International because he had taken a job in the Middle East.  There were the Bentota Bees, a fabulous, ‘real’ singing group whose ‘Ayubowen means, Welcome in Sinhalese’ song will live with me forever.  There was the head waiter, Shirley, who tried to woo me as a very eligible 19 year old with access to a UK passport!  There was the night the swimming pool area was taken over by Buddhist monks for a religious festival and the chanting went on all night; the little lizards that ran in and out of the air conditioning as my sister slept; the monsoon seas and the waitress in the little village 10 minutes from the hotel, who discovered I liked “shrimp cocktail” so would pursue us through the undergrowth luring me with her seafood offering.

For three-weeks I had a mential battle with a young lad in the local bazaar who had a T-shirt with an elephant print.  I didn’t really want the T-shirt but, as always, if somebody says you must, I say ‘why?’.  We bartered every day, haggling over the price of a T-shirt I didn’t even want, my trump card being that it had a small hole in it and his being that he really wanted to trade my shampoo, conditioner and suntan cream for this less than perfect item.

Idyllic – yes, absolutely, but there was always an undercurrent.  We were loved as a family by the hotel staff and became their extended family, to the extent that we were invited to a football match in the middle of the Sri Lankan jungle, between rival hotels.  We were our hotel’s main support and we took the duty seriously, trekking through the coconut mangroves, past the wells from which villagers drew their water, to settle on to a colonial looking, faded pavilion from which we would watch the match.

The picture of us all on that veranda with its peeling paint and echoes of a previous era is my prize possession.  I have never seen a more ecstatic look on my face in any picture since. 

But there, on that veranda, emerged a split in the team.  One waiter seemed to be shunned by the others – a team member, but one that would have quickly been on the transfer list if the others – all beautiful people – had their way.  The reason?  He was a Tamil.

Bobby, during our last few days on the front seat of the groaning and creaking bus that had wound its way through tea plantations, stopped off to allow us to ride an elephant bareback, just because we’d passed it on the road,  and dropped us off to walk in pitch darkness, shoeless, through goodness knows what in the streets, to enter the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, had tried to explain the Tamil split to me.  I think that’s why he wanted me to go to Jaffna, so he could show me the issues and explain them to me.  The events unravelling at the football match in the coconut groves made it very clear.

I’ve never returned to Sri Lanks, but my heart never left.  I wept tears for days after the tsunami hit and, had circumstances allowed, would have headed out there to assist the rescue mission.  Now, the Tamil issue has arisen again and again my heart bleeds.

Ayubowan means, welcome in Sinhalese.  Will Sri Lanka’s tourism industry be able to survive the recent turn of events.  Will Sri Lankan tourism still lure pale English teenagers who arrive with an open mind and leave completely in love with the country, its people, even its fiery eat-with-your-fingers curry?  Will there be an inspirational Bobby Seneweera to guide the ship?  After all, if he convinced me to climb up a bare rockface, mount metal steps that the metallurgist climbing behind me condemned as being ‘totally unsafe’ and wrestle with the guides standing in the only footholes on the way down demanding rupees for the pleasure of safe passage down, could he not have persuaded anyone to board a plane to Colombo?

Personally, despite the excellent offers Sri Lankan tourism is putting out, including free weeks and extremely low prices, I don’t think the battle will be won.  Until someone breathes the fire into the experience, conveys a passion for a country that is truly spectacular and people who are simply delightful, in-roads will not be made.  Until more pale English girls who gained their awakening in Sri Lanka speak out about this wonderful, amazing country, religious schisms will undermine a tourism economy on which so many of those people in the coconut groves depended on for a better standard of living.