Travel Reference
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slide into a better future. “Done right, tourism could help save our environment, our wild
spaces and our coast.”
The salient phrase was “done right.”
Bernard Goonetilleke, chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism, welcomed me to his bare office
along the esplanade in Colombo. His mandate was to encourage projects and optimism. A
former ambassador in the Sri Lanka foreign service, Goonetilleke was newly appointed to
his job, which required recalibrating the island's image as well as building up its infrastruc-
ture, training Sri Lankans in tourism and lobbying the government to regulate tourism
growth that enhances the beauty of the island rather than turning it into a cookie-cutter
version of the beaches of Thailand.
His simple rule of thumb: “No hotel should be taller than a coconut palm tree and the
beaches remain public property.”
Goonetilleke knew that international corporations were lobbying to buy up the beach
property that until a few months ago had been battlegrounds. He worried that Sri Lanka's
poor human rights image would dampen the return of tourists. Europeans, in particular,
have been adamant that the Sri Lankan government show greater respect for human rights
and democracy.
It was as if ghosts haunted the island, a theme of the novel
Anil's Ghost
by Michael
Ondaatje, the island's esteemed author of
The English Patient
, who now lives in Canada.
In the chilling prose of human rights reports, those ghosts are confirmed as victims of grave
abuses and murder.
It turns out that most tourists don't check out a country's human rights record before
taking a vacation. My husband Bill joined me for a week-long trip around the southern
half of the island, famously shaped like a teardrop, where we ran into pockets of tourists
from surprising parts of the world, none of whom were concerned about human rights.
We rented a car with a driver, the only practical alternative in this land of rutted, un-
paved roads and questionable signage. Then we headed southeast, along the coast road
toward Galle, the walled city first built by the Portuguese.
Driving along the palm-fringed coast road, we marveled at what was missing: no chain
stores, no international designer boutiques, no fast-food joints and no ATMs. Women still
dressed in traditional pastel-colored saris and shopped at small greengrocers and roadside
stalls. This part of the island was spared during the civil war, which was fought largely in
the northeast. Driving along, we saw extraordinary wildlife, from purple-faced langur mon-
keys to peacocks, butterflies, brilliantly colored parakeets, and, from a distance, leatherb-
ack sea turtles. We traveled past spectacular stretches of beaches and lush tropical forests.
Traffic was spare. Trucks and antiquated buses hogged the center lanes, careening on worn
tires. Three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, or tuk-tuks, hugged the periphery. Ours was one of
the few private automobiles on the road.
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