Travel to Sri Lanka: Trincomalee

Trinco, for short, is the great natural harbor on the east coast of Sri Lanka.  Were it not for civil war, it would also be a great port.  As it is, it's a quiet town, but not a peaceful one.

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The road in from the north, with fuelwood delivery by bicycle.

The coast here is Tourist Beautiful, even Tourist Picturesque. What makes Trinco a port, however, is the hill in the background, which creates the only stretch of cliffed coast on the whole island. It also creates calm water here and also to the right, or south, on the other side of the spit that ties the island to the hill.

The road from the spit to the rocky hill leads to this old tunnel, piercing the wall into the old British naval base.

Nowhere else in Sri Lanka do you find coasts like this.

The view south.

This is Tamil country. Hence the Hindu shrine atop the cliff.

A fishing boat passes below.

Looking back to the town, whose position on the linking spit is shown well here, along with the two anchoring grounds.

There's plenty of room on the spit for local enterprise, in this case drying fish. (Flakes of spicy, dried fish are a popular, even classic condiment in Sri Lanka.)

The Christian cemetery. The monument in the foreground will be of interest to Jane Austen fans.

Hard to read? "Sacred to the memory of his Excellency C.J. Austen, Esq., Companion of the most Honourable Military Order of the Bath, Rear Admiral of the Red and Commander-in-Chief of her Majesty's Naval Forces on the East India and China Station, died off Prome, the 7th October, 1852, while in command of the Naval Expedition on the river Irrawady against the Burmese Forces, aged 73 years." Lewis comments that Austen, who was the younger of Jane's two brothers and who was born several years after her, died of cholera and was probably buried at sea--this monument being merely a cenotaph. Jane Austen died much younger than either of her brothers and so would have known nothing of this.

Main street. Things are quiet today because Buddhist nationalists have just insisted (Spring 2005) on placing a large statue of the Buddha at a nearby intersection. It's a provocation in this mostly Tamil community, and there are soldiers everywhere, imposing an uneasy calm.

Commerce, too, struggles to stay alive.