INGULFED
(Notes for the Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah)Archive for tuk-tuk
Forget-me-not
Sri Lanka Part Ten
Sri Lanka Part Nine
They told us we would find elephants on the road to Hambantota at dawn. It was six-thirty, and in the air that hung with a heavy mist and a distinct paucity of elephants, we pushed west. And when we got west, elephants, as they had for so many days, were not.
In Hambantota, the fast paved road continued through northwest to the ancient city Anuradhapura, famous as an ancient capital of the island nation, and not at all known for having elephants. Let down, I turned off onto an uninviting dirt road just to have a peek and to turn around. And lo, the giant hindquarters of our proboscidean friend materialized, just down the path.
Entran¢e Fees
Sri Lanka Part Nine
Kandy revealed itself in the morning, pressed against a wide sunny lake invisible the night before. We left our hotel — the cheapest of a certain class in Kandy, with dark gray carpet and heavy curtains and clearly designed for vampires — for the Temple of the Sacred Tooth. The entrance fee: more than 10 US dollars — a shock after driving through towns where so much could buy dinner for a week. “We’ve come from America,” we suggested, readjusting our sarongs. Half price. Is it okay to get a deal at a temple?
The temple is stunning, not for its size or for the goldenness of its Buddha statue, but for the smells of floral offerings on the second floor, and the beautiful devotion with which they are laid. Common practice is to touch the flowers with flat hands and fingers outstretched, to lean forward to touch them again further along the table, then to pray with palms pressed together above the heart, and lift them to the forehead. I stayed bent over to smell the flowers. “Wow, this American is very devoted,” they might have thought. “Mmmmmm,” I was thinking.
Fool of a Tuk-Tuk, or The Carma Sutra
Sri Lanka Part Two
You drive like a local is everywhere both curse and compliment, a label given to one that has just saved a life or nearly lost one (or both). To earn such damnation/praise in Sri Lanka, a driver must adopt all of the English sentiments toward the left side of the road while rejecting every ounce of their trademark restraint, propriety, and unexcitability.
Almost every road in the country is two-lane (one in each direction), always curvier than topographically necessary, and rarely with room for central Asian third-laning between your lane and oncoming traffic. Passing has got to be fully committal, usually before a blind curve and with no shoulder for aborted missions. Honk honk.
INGULFED 
