Sri Lankan paradise resurrected

Nirmal Ghosh visits a national park that has survived the tsunami and civil war.

ON THE morning of December 26, 2004, Wicky Wickremasekera was in a Land Rover a few metres inland from a lodge on the edge of the ocean when he saw the tsunami coming.

That fateful morning still etches his nightmares.

Seeing the massive swell rolling in at a frightening speed, he told the driver to step on the gas and drive inland. Behind them as they fled, the 40-foot high wall of water thundered ashore, obliterating the Yala Game Safari Lodge, killing staff and dozens of tourists, among them a group of Japanese enjoying a picnic breakfast on the picturesque shore.

Wicky is the top naturalist for Jetwing Eco Holidays, a travel operator run by Sri Lankan naturalist, conservationist and author Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne. Jetwing owned the hotel that was destroyed, just outside Ruhuna Yala National Park in south eastern Sri Lanka.

Wicky took me to the site earlier this month. We walked around the shells of the ruined buildings, with the rubble of the disaster still crunching under our shoes. In a bizarre facsimile of some Kipling tale, long-tailed grey langur monkeys wandered about the ruins, some sitting on top of solitary walls looking out to the unbroken ocean. Continued..