Fortunately, Unfortunately: Traveling in Sri Lanka Under Terror

My mom and stepdad are teachers in the Middle East. They've come to relish their time off, taking trips to Egypt, South Africa, and Thailand. Three weeks ago, they went to Sri Lanka. There may not have been a worse time to go in the last decade.

After hearing about the bombings, I had two questions: First, I asked if they were okay. Second, I asked my mom to keep taking notes. She had to write.

She agreed. Here's her story:

---

Sri Lanka, pearl of the Indian Ocean, gem of Asia – renowned for its Virgin White tea, Ayurveda medicines, blue sapphires, and peace and mutual respect between its Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Muslim populations, each town having two temples, a mosque, and a church.

Three days into our eagerly anticipated week-long tour of this beautiful country, Easter morning, while staying at Hotel Riu, a luxury hotel in Ahungalla south of Colombo, savoring international buffets and indulgently sipping gin and tonics by the pool, our guide picks us up to take us on a misty morning boat tour up the Madu Ganga river amongst swimming water monitors, heavy overhanging branches, and intermittent islands renowned for cinnamon harvesting, and then on to a Sea Turtle Conservation post.

“I have to tell you something, or you will hear it on the news. This morning, there were suicide bomb attacks on four Christian churches and three luxury hotels in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa. The death toll is about 20.” Several tourists we killed. We stare at him.

Sri Lanka has previously been hit by two major catastrophes in the last 15 years. First the 2004 tsunami from the earthquake in Sumatra. December 26 – holiday time by the beach with families gathered together. The first wave hit, a 5 foot wall of water. Thirty minutes later, while people were still reeling, scrambling to check on family, friends, neighbors and belongings, the second deadly wave blasted in – an 18 foot high wall of water washing away people, homes, and even a crowded passenger train full of people –the largest single rail disaster in world history – with 40,000 killed, if not more.

Our guide, an older Sri Lankan who had worked in the Maldives for over 20 years as an engineer, tells of us a colleague whose entire family had gathered together at his brother’s house at the beach – his brother and wife; his parents; his children. “His entire family was killed” he tells us solemnly, “Only body he ever found was one daughter.” The man was so emotionally wrecked he is presently residing back in Sri Lanka in one of its mental health hospitals…even 15 years later.

Secondly, Sri Lanka suffered a 25 year Civil War, replete with suicide bombs and massive offensives, the island national a veritable war zone, tapering off only 10 years ago, in 2009.

The repercussions of both these were hard felt on the tourist industry, which took a long time and hard work to re-establish. Only in recent years has tourism been thriving again, a significant element of the economy.

And now this. The first terrorism to kill tourists – and in a ghastly way. Fathers watching wives and children blown apart. One father watches both his son and daughter hit by a bomb in a hotel dining area. His daughter is still moving, so he runs to his unconscious son and seeks medical attention. At the hospital, where his son passes away, he sees his daughter wheeled in dead; she succumbed to a second blast near the hotel’s elevator.

The death toll rises to 45.

A celebrity chef from India. A Danish billionaire’s three children. A doctor who has previously opened a hospital in Sri Lanka and returned with his wife to show her. A bright 5th grade boy from America. And more and more.

Our guide tells us of a British couple staying at the Shangri La Hotel, prompted by their tour guide to leave earlier Easter morning than originally planned for the day’s tour. The couple is belligerent, dragging their heels, wanting to sleep in, departing with the guide at 8:30 rather than 8:00. The bomb blasts at 8:45. When they learn this, they ask him to pull the car over and they hug him, sobbing, for saving their lives.

The death toll rises to 82.

Despite queries from friends and family asking if we are cutting our tour short, we carry on. We explore Galle, an early Dutch costal settlement, with an ancient Dutch Reformed Church, brilliant in its resplendence, exterior and interior. In stark contrast are the rusted bars round back of the church shackling slave cells dug down into the ground.

We visit Handunugoda Tea Estate, a unique tea planation where the Virgin White Tea is grown and harvested – the tea of Dubai Princes and UK Royalty, as no human hand touches it while growing, harvesting or in the tea production. Harvesters wear gloves and use small gold scissors to clip the very tip of the tea plant before the sprout blooms. White tea has an antioxidant content of 10.11 per cent, the highest naturally occurring amount in any beverage, and a powerful range of health benefits, even, so it is claimed, of curing cancer. Regarded as the world’s most expensive tea, and with production limited to a maximum of 15kg a month, this is definitely one of the world’s rarest teas.

We continue with our tour – we climb Sigiriya Rock, the early architectural gardens a marvel. At the base, we are required to leave all bags in the boot of our car, camera bag included, and carry with us only plastic water bottles with the paper labels removed so the bottle is entirely clear. Monkeys abound. Cautious tourists do too.

Our guide tells us that the head of one suicide bomber is found, intact enough to get an ID and police raid his home on the east side of the country. A network is unearthed in Nindavur, with bomb-making materials and families committed to this jihad. When the house of a suspect is approached by police, three men set off explosives killing themselves, three women, six children and three police officers.

ISIS claims responsibility, a claim believed due to the extent of the terrorism, the complexity of the bombs, the depth of the infiltration.

In the midst of this, we marvel at the fascinating things we see and learn about Sri Lanka:

The annual National Day celebrations are occurring – fun yet competitive community games (greased pole climbing, potato sack races) played in parks and communal areas; youngsters running marathons along the side of the road (a surprising number of young girls, barefoot, in stifling heat) with others following behind on bikes or scooters to dump buckets of water on their heads for hydration.

The highest paid occupation, we learn – train conductors – stemming from the era of British colonialism, when steam trains were dangerous and required extensive manual labor. Now, train drivers, an esteemed and highly sought after occupation, earn an excessive 200,000 rupees a month (an average salary for an attorney is 70,000, and for day laborers, about 20,000 – a difficult amount to support a family on).

Drug-trafficking, an insidious problem, is punishable by death – hanging.

Tuk Tuks swerve maniacally through the streets. Their form of 3-wheeled taxi, drivers surge in and around other vehicles and pedestrians. It’s a burgeoning industry – used by locals and tourists – such that the government has recently regulated that drivers must be 35 or over to deter youth from driving for money right after school.

Every full moon (once a month) is a public holiday in Sri Lanka – Poya Day – a National holiday with no alcohol served.

The death toll rises to 168.

One sunset, after driving inland from Galle to Habarana, we adventure on an elephant safari, tracking herds wandering naturally through Minneriya and Kaudulla National Parks. We are treated to sightings of mothers and babies, large, proud, tusked males, and finally, an unexpected surprise as we are completing the safari, a young elephant poking through the trees by the side of the road, stepping out to watch our jeep just as curiously as we are watching him.

We are tentative as we stay at a sister hotel (the Cinnamon Citadel) to the Cinnamon Grand which was bombed. Our luggage is searched and prominent signs prohibit bags from being carried around the hotel, particularly in the dining area.

Schools and offices are closed and a National Day of Mourning is declared. People are instructed to avoid congregating – anywhere.

A road curfew is imposed in the country – every night from 6pm to 6am. Only travelers who apply for special curfew passes can be on the roads. We don’t. The military use the nights to sweep through the country virtually house by house, searching, and finding, a larger number of jihadists than expected. White flags appear in the small towns we drive through, hanging outside shops, homes, on poles – a message of peace, sympathy and solidarity – and anger of the people.

The churches celebrating Easter services were full of, predictably, women and children. Mourners gather as St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo holds a mass burial for 44 bombed children.

The death toll rises to 205.

We head to Kandy – the Buddhist center of the country with the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic housing, so we are told, the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. It is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy. The Temple, receiving about 20,000 visitors a day, has only a few of us afoot – a virtual ghost town. And the nightly Kandy Cultural Dance and Fire Show, we learn, has been cancelled since the attacks but is reopening the night we are there – to a scant audience of about 75.

Our guide informs us that 80 more bombs are found and diffused, one near the airport. The destruction, he laments, was meant to be much more severe.

The news turns political – incoming messages from India had been received, it seems, by the Prime Minister and Head of Police prior to the attacks, warning of their likelihood. But these go unheeded and the people are not warned. Sri Lankan authorities come under fire for not acting on repeated warnings about the attacks.

The death toll rises to 312.

Then, the death toll adjusts back to 290, as bomb-flung body parts are found and more accurately reconstructed into full humans.

A bomb, we learn from our guide, has been found and diffused near the airport in Colombo, so we are required to add an extra few hours to our early arrival time at the airport before our departure. The car queue to get into the airport is extensive – each car is stopped at a military checkpoint outside the airport and subjected to a search (bags and boot and occasionally the people too) by military personnel and bomb-sniffing dogs.

How does it feel touring a country that’s reeling from horrific bomb blasts? There’s a game inspired by the picture book Fortunately by Remy Charlip.

On the first page of the book, we meet Ned. "Fortunately one day, Ned got a letter that said, 'Please Come to a Surprise Party.'" "But unfortunately the party was in Florida and he was in New York."

Fortunately, Ned is able to borrow a plane. Unfortunately, it explodes. We see Ned parachute, get a hole in the parachute, spot a haystack in which to land, avoid the haystack because of a stray pitchfork, land in water, get chased by sharks, make it to land, get chased by tigers, find a cave, dig his way out.

Finally he crashes the party, and all is well…after all, the party is for him.

My own version plays in my head:

Unfortunately, there are terrorists attacking in Sri Lanka, starting Easter morning.

Fortunately, my husband and I are in a different city.

Unfortunately, nearly 250 Sri Lankans, mainly women and children, are dead.

Fortunately, there is increased security throughout the island nation.

Unfortunately, additional bombs and a large ISIS network are discovered.

Fortunately, some suspects are identified and apprehended.

Unfortunately, nearly 40 tourists are dead.

Fortunately, we do not die and are home safe.

Photo courtesy of NYT