After Trauma, Tranquility

For nearly thirty years prior to 2009, Sri Lanka was knee-deep in civil war. In the north and northeast of the tiny island, the militant Tamil Tigers fought for an independent state to call their own. Curious to see post-war recovery, but lacking the time or fortitude necessary for a bus to Jaffna way up north (overland travel in Sri Lanka, given its relatively small size, is inanely slow), we settled on Trincomalee. As a northeastern coastal town, Trinco experienced its share of the fighting.

Our guiding light on our journey was a $4 photocopy version  of the Sri Lanka Lonely Planet purchased in Vietnam, with no discernable publishing date (the handwritten 2012 on the back wasn’t very convincing) and a glossary/index that didn’t always match up to correct page numbers. However, making reference to the end of the war in 2009, we knew it couldn’t be too outdated, its information only moderately inaccurate. In it, Trinco was described as “Baghdad on the sea,” a place where the businesses were all shuttered unless you banged on the clang-down garage doors, where there were few to no guesthouses, and where frequent military checkpoints at bus and train stations and armed roadblocks made travel tedious.

What we found couldn’t have been more different.

Yes, there were some roadblocks, but they were barely manned and everyone just drove around the gates and barbed wire. A number of police officers and military men were stationed throughout the town, but they simply smiled and said hello as we walked past. The town was open and friendly, businesses lining every street, and people constantly wanted to talk to us (and not just to sell us crap).

Curled around a sparkling blue bay, Trinco seemed a city at ease. Residents cruised past, more on bicycles than in cars. The bustling market was stuffed with all manner of fruits, veggies and fish, and was home to a small herd of sambar barking deer. Dilapidated buildings, sun-bleached, paint peeling and flecking away, cement chipped and broken, flanked the streets, but no more than in other parts of the developing, third-world island. 

Trinco’s beach, if not for the garbage that invariably litters all third-world beaches, was borderline postcard-perfect. Crabs sideways-skittered and dipped into the sand. Local women dug for clams, using the headscarves as makeshift clam bags, and Lanka families swam and frolicked in the surf, fully clothed for modesty’s sake.

Perched high upon a cliff, at the very tip of the bay, sits Trinco’s famed Hindu temple. After passing through a military fort, which seemed to double as reservation land for the swarms of sambar deer, and trekking uphill among Hindu worshippers, we came to the temple. Hindu temples are elaborate to the extreme; intricate representations of deities cover the surface, climbing skyward, arms and legs akimbo. Incense wafts, prayers are muttered, foreheads dabbed. Beyond the ceremony, sea and sky stretched endlessly. 

To see this seaside community blossoming, full of life and positive energy, after many long years of devastation was incredibly uplifting. Not only was it far from being the shadowy, militarized post-war experience we were expecting, it turned out to be a lovely couple of days lounging by the beach and exploring the town.