Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 21, 2004

Backpacking to Gimhathiththa is the title of a short story by my sister. Gimhathiththa is what is the town that's known by the name Galle, but I very much doubt if many of the modern inhabitants know of this fact.

Yesterday I was at Galle to attend a wedding of a good friend. I didn't exactly have to backpack because my father very kindly leant me his car and driver. Though I love driving, I hate driving on the galle road. Sri Lankans are notoriously bad drivers and the worst ones seem to be concentrated along this road, in the end I had to take the wheel myself on the return trip because the chauffer was obviously too frizzled out fighting through traffic the whole day.

Galle certainly isn't what it used to be. To be quite frank, it looks appalling, hard to believe this is the charming small town that I grew up in. The elegent old buildings have given way to glass fronted eye-sores. The roads are ten times more crowded than they used be nineteen years ago when I left galle as a ten year old.

I have been a regular visitor to galle since then; visiting once in every few months, but then after my grandmother died about two years ago I have been there only once. This was the first trip after an years gap and the changes in Galle are too obvious to see.

Posted by raditha at May 21, 2004 2:42 AM