By jeep and by tuk tuk through Sri Lanka - A traveller's vignette #2: eka, deka, tuna.
It’s 10:30pm and we’re hurtling through the backstreets of Kandy in a tuk tuk, careening around corners and shooting down side alleys as if in a chase scene from the new Bond movie. The driver is taking a constant stream of calls on his mobile phone, speaking quickly and insistently, as if organising the getaway plane that’s to meet us if we ever escape this maze of narrow lanes and nameless byways that our driver is propelling us down, screeching around corners like there’s no tomorrow.
The reason for the haste is simple. We’re not, in fact, being chased by a Kalashnikov-wielding SMERSH agent, nor are we in danger of missing our rendezvous with a submarine off the coast. It’s simply that for the first time today the streets are not gridlocked; traffic is flowing at greater than walking pace, and the tuk tuk driver can finally complete a few fares in short time and so have a chance of maybe making a little more than a subsistence living this week.
The ride through the now cool evening air of Kandy is exhilarating, though not without some danger, and as I grip tight to the upright bar to my left I can feel the indentations of others before me who have also clung on for dear life. But after an evening of drinking Lion beer, eating exotic foods and listening somewhat incongruously to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin in a local eatery, this ride back to our hotel is a tonic and every bit as good as a decent late-night lamb kebab with an extra zingy garlic sauce to top it off.
This then, is Sri Lanka. The first things you learn here are all to do with the roads: dealing with traffic and negotiating a reasonable fare with the tuk tuks being among the most important. It’s important to negotiate the fare before setting off, unless you want to pay five times the acceptable tourist rate if you happen to have caught an unscrupulous one. The majority are friendly, fair and helpful, but as many of them have only limited English, it pays to learn some basic Sinhalese numbers: Eka, deka, tuna being the first three.
The other extremely important thing to learn is that yes, they really do drive like that all the time. The traffic is seriously insane and unless you learn the simple premise by which it operates you’ll either get nowhere fast or die trying. You’ll certainly have your heart in your mouth until you learn to just relax and accept that it is normal to drive on the wrong side of the road and break every known road rule on every journey. The only vague road rules drivers in Sri Lanka seem to operate by are:
The bigger you are, the more right of way you have.
If something is on a collision course with you, slow down, blare your horn and move out of the way.
Use your horn, always. Even if it's the middle of the night with no other traffic, sound your horn to ensure it doesn't fail through lack of use.
Go behind anything that is crossing or blocking your path.
Traffic signs and speed limits are advisory only and may be ignored.
It somehow works, although the death and accident rate, along with the incident of cardiac arrest among visiting tourists is alarmingly high when compared with the west. Indeed, we saw a serious accident on our first afternoon, although it seemed nothing unusual to the locals. A small sedan was upside down in the middle of the road, and a group of bystanders nonchalantly manhandled it out of harms way while a bored policeman looked on whilst waving traffic around the mess. Nobody seemed particularly surprised by any of this.
And so with our exhilarating tuk tuk ride over we arrived back at our hotel revitalised by the journey and the cooler night air. Our tuk tuk driver was also happy, having been able to give his little two-stroke tuk tuk engine full throttle, and reaching the dizzying speeds of nearly 40kmh on some of the downhill sections.
The next morning at breakfast we learned that our son Chris and his wife Tash had quite a different experience, their tuk tuk taking the same journey but nearly colliding with a car, giving them significant conniptions and causing them to read the fine print of their travel insurance.
Exhilarating and scary all in one. Sri Lanka is certainly never dull.
Fab Fun Feb
