Kandy

Only 3 hours minivanab Kalpitiya, 1 hour tuktuk roadkill through the Colombo rush hour, 4 hours waiting at the railway station, twice being blown off the kitebag by the sound pressure of departing trains and 3 hours panoramic train into the mountains away lies Kandy, the old royal city of Sri Lanka in the foothills of the mountains at an altitude of 500 metres.

Kandy is a completely different world, one that immediately enchants me, a colourful mixture of Shangri-La and small city, chaotic, loud and quiet. The evening traffic jam is interspersed with drums and mantras from the numerous monasteries. There’s a Burger King, and right next door is the Hotel Muslim, where I cleanse myself of two weeks of British food with roti, naan, curry, fresh fruit juices and candied fruit.

For some time, the British had to contend with the rebellious mountain dwellers, even a Robin Hood made life difficult for them. It was not until the last third of the 19th century that they finally subjugated this part of Sri Lanka – with diplomacy. The British chief negotiator then became a vegetarian hermit. Even today, Sri Lankans still walk much more upright and even the tuktuk drivers are mostly honourable people.

In the past, prisoners were not locked up in Kandy. Before the railway was built, there were only two ways out, and they were heavily guarded. Legend has it that in all those centuries, only Mr Survival Bear Grylls’ British great-grandfather managed to escape to British-occupied Jaffa.

Even without captivity, the colonists’ lives were characterised by hard work, hardship and rigorous sexual morals. When studying the epitaphs in Garrison Cemetery, one might think that the latter in particular weighed too heavily on some shoulders: “William Watson Mackwood, died 1867, when he impaled himself trying to get off his horse with a stick”. Not funny. Gay for beginners.