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the finches, sparrows, swallows and crows flying through the air. In the breakfast room we
ran into different tourists who had stayed loyal to Sri Lanka despite the war. They came
from the Persian Gulf region. I was the only woman in the dining room who was not wear-
ing an abaya or a head scarf. These tourists—couples and families—told us they came to
the lush green hills of Kandy to escape the desert heat at home. Airlines from the Gulf
were among the few that had continued flying into Colombo throughout the war, and Sri
Lanka's small Muslim community welcomed the tourists to their mosques.
We ran into them again later that morning when my husband played a round of golf on
a six-hole course laid out on a nearly vertical slope. I tagged along in sandals and had to
scrape the leeches off my ankles afterward. After a few days walking in the hills around the
Hunas Falls, we paid our bill. Another bargain: our two nights with breakfast and dinners
totaled $169.93.
It was easier driving down the hills toward the plains and we reached the coast before
dusk. We spent our last day in Sri Lanka at Negombo, the beach resort area just north
of Colombo and close to the international airport. This was pure mass tourism. Think
Thailand in the 1980s. Europeans who bought Sri Lanka package holidays during the war
ended up here. The beaches are hardly the best on the island, but they were safe. Buses
took the tourists into Colombo by day and returned them at night. On the beach and on
the dinner menu the first language was German. We stayed at another Jetwing hotel, and
the manager said that Germans were the most loyal visitors to Negombo. A beach holiday
at low prices was a big reason.
We left the next day. On the drive to the airport we saw a Buddhist shrine and a Chris-
tian shrine, with the portrait of Jesus displayed much as the statue of Buddha. From this
direction, we were required to show our papers at only one military guard post. The lasting
impression was an island frozen in time. The infrastructure is terrible. The possibilities are
endless. I was reminded of the anomaly of the demilitarized zone that divides North Korea
and South Korea. For sixty years it has kept out people—developers and tourists—and is
now one of the more pristine wildlife preserves in the world, a refuge for birds and bears
and endangered plant species despite the fact that it is seeded with land mines. Korean
conservationists are in the awful position of worrying what peace might do.
As Cooray said, “this is the perfect opportunity—either we make the right tourism that
lifts up all the communities—Sinhalese, Tamil and the minorities—or we ruin it—ruin
the landscape, the beaches and the communities.”
One year later Cooray sent me an email saying he was encouraged that the government
still cared about sustainable development. Tourism had grown an astonishing 46 percent
in a single year—with almost 1 million visitors. “Hoteliers are finally regaining the confid-
ence to put money back into tourism,” he wrote. His life had also changed. He became the
first Sri Lankan named as chairman of the Pacific Asia Travel Association. “Peace fever,”
as he called it, was as high as ever. Foreign governments and international companies
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