The After the Trip Letter

Across the Indian Ocean to the garden city of Colombo, on the beautiful Island of Ceylon. A harbor teeming with shipping, for here the vessels of all the world stop to refuel, and most visitors have only a tantalizing breathless glimpse of it.

Side note: In 1972 Ceylon was renamed The Republic of Sri Lanka*

*Sri Lanka has had many names over the centuries. My very favorite is Serendip. Was it found unexpectedly, or perhaps… serendip-itously??

The Day to Day Journal

100 cents = 1 rupee

Mon. Jan. 3: Woke when the anchor chains started clanging, my first daylight sight of the island was a huge neon sign -- Ceylon for Good Tea. 

Out for a look at the harbor, a mass of boats: British, a French gunboat with a seaplane that buzzed about all day, German, the President Pierce of the $ Line, a Chinese ship that was flying the Japanese flag when she sailed in the p.m., twelve large freight and passenger ships at the mushroom buoys at 7 a.m. Continual arrival and departures. 

Had our passports stamped and harbor police examined them at the head of the gangway. 

Side note: That very day, Roosevelt spoke of the troubled world. Soon, many of those boats and planes buzzing about the harbor would be at war.

Tourist agent came on board, made arrangements for a 3-hour ride at 1£ for the car. Ashore in the passenger launch for a rupee. The first picture was the quay swarming with bullock carts. Thru the customs gate to a wide plaza flanked by the Grand Oriental Hotel and business buildings, in a 7 passenger touring Chrysler, out past the lake, the handsome race track to the Cinnamon Gardens. Leaf and a twig from the cinnamon, rubber, ebony, acacia, mango, frangipani, coffee, cocoa, coconut (here they use the yellow ones for milk, the green for oil, copra), banyan (the shoots hang down and take root, so the tree has a huge trunk and a maze of small trunks), giant bamboo, papaya, bread / fruit, the rain tree. Huge canna, coxcomb, bougainvillea in rosy red and pink and orange, much prettier than our purple. Hibiscus - not a very large flower, gardenias - not in blossom. 

Out to Mt. Lavinia, large mansions in luxuriant tropical setting, Colombo is like one large garden. 

Side note: It all just sounds so perfectly colorful! I had to look up half the plants she mentions… and what they all have in common is color.

Speaking of, frangipani is not only fun to say, it is also the lovely and fragrant flower that is known, among other things, for its use in Hawaiian leis (which I’ve just learnt). Personally, when I think of tropics, I think of that flower and its extra aromatic fragrance and delicate curly bits. It always was frangipani! Stupid me never asked what the flower was called.

And the banyan, not only is it a magical canopy with a trunk maze underneath, but also it is a badass, resilient old-soul kind of tree. The famous one that recently burned in Lahaina, Hawaii, is showing signs of growth just five weeks after the fire. Don’t mess with banyans!

The Grand Oriental Hotel is still around and was built in 1870s. And Cinnamon Gardens is a fancy neighborhood, not a garden of cinnamon.

Here’s a British-y video about Ceylon from 1940, just two years after she was there. Watch it, but imagine it’s in color.

Stopped at a gem store, watched the ebony carvers chipping elephants with a chisel. Bot some straw bags, a tortoise shell cigarette case. Back to town thru the Indian Bazaar, past Buddhist temples, Moslem mosques, Church of England, Methodist church. 4 million people on the island: 3 million are Buddhists (the shaven headed men in the bright orange robes are Buddhist priests), 1 million live in Colombo. Very dark-skinned, bare-footed, the men wear wrap-around skirts belted at the waist, even when they wear European coats. 

Side note: Diospyros ebenum, or Ceylon Ebony was/is highly sought after. The harvesting of it is now super restricted, because the usual suspects over did it.

The women bright colored sarongs, or a tight blouse like our old fashioned corset cover, leaving some skin exposed above the gay skirt. The men (from Madras) wear long hair hanging to the waist, or knotted in the back of the neck, often held by a tortoise-shell comb. In the native quarter we see the history of transportation on a single street: men carrying huge baskets on their heads, other pulling primitive carts, diesel trucks, bullock carts, Buick cars, bicycles, motorcycles, and from one shop comes the shrill piping of oriental music, from another the tinny bleating of ‘I can’t give you anything but love, baby." 

Side note: Observation mode! Close your eyes and imagine shrill piping on one side, tinny bleating on another, and in between the whole history (up until 1938) of transportation in action.

Celluloid toys from Japan mingle with glass dishes from a Woolworth fire sale, and luscious oriental silks are separated by a single wall from a market where the flies drone over tracks of uncovered meat. It's a heterogeneous confusion, but fascinating if you can stand outside looking in. 

The old Dutch fortifications are 300 years old and descendants of the Burghers, are very - shall I say sunburned. The marine drive (Galle Dr.) has some attractive hotels, might be resort hotels inside South U.S. 

To the boat in the Silver Launch, at 4:00, to find the last oil would not arrive before 6 and sailing at 9: and so much to be seen in town. We didn't go back, tho, we stopped here only for fuel oil for our engines, 2700 tons. 

Shag in a boiling rage about today.

Side note: I don’t know if Roy Shadbolt (aka Shag) was wheeling and dealing at this port on this trip, but many decades later, Helen would find herself back in Colombo, and her reason was related to Shag and rubber. But she would not travel there with Shag. Stay tuned for more about that!

Was Shag in a boiling rage about ship stuff… or perhaps over rubber dealings??

The M.S. Silverwillow would push off from Colombo after the last bit above.

Then, just five months later, a small group of Nazis, on a racially motivated research expedition, would arrive on that same lush, frangipani-scented shore. Ceylon was a stopover on their way to India, where they were looking for the origin of the aryan race. The Nazis wanted to stay a bit in Colombo, probably to measure heads, but the British stopped them, and they continued on their fools’ errand. How has Werner Herzog not made a film about that trek??