TeeTimeTales in Sri Lanka: Travelling to Timeless Trincomalee

The Dykes Rest back door opened out on to a picture-perfect setting along Trincomalee’s Dutch Bay.

By Rahul Banerji

The waves run every which way as they draw back off the beach, wild and uncompromising.

I’m sitting outside our little guest house in Trincomalee, eastern Sri Lanka, completing a 43-year promise to visit this preternaturally beautiful and perennially vital port of the Emerald Isle with one of the world’s deepest and most secure natural harbours.

The nautical connection has a basis. In 1981, my classmate and fellow Choirboy from the CE class of Loyola College, Madras (now Chennai) Kuri Abraham was part of the national team that travelled to Trincomalee for a sailing championship.

When he returned, young Abraham just could not stop raving about the beauty of the harbour and the friendly people.

Out-rigger canoes at work off the Trinco shoreline.

It planted a seed that took deep roots in the mind. In the intervening years, I travelled in my previous life as a cricket writer more than once to Sri Lanka but Trincomalee was always off-limits owing to the troubles that wracked the island from the Eighties of the last century till into the first decade of the current one.

Dambulla was the closest I reached, and the dream was revived all over again on spotting a milepost that said “Trincomalee, 105 km” on the main road just outside the newly-constructed cricket stadium slap bang in the middle of the island.-

At the Thirukoneswaram (Thirukonamalai) Temple after which Trincomalee is said to be named.

First stop

So when this current trip was in planning, Trinco, naturally became the first port of call, even though it meant a six-hour drive after a tiring night’s flight (and attendant formalities)  from Delhi to Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport.

Fortunately, a recommendation about a friendly and knowledgeable Colombo-based driver with his own vehicle led us to Dileepa (more about him later) and from the time we exited the airport, it has been smooth sailing so far.

Not that it looked so when we first drove out towards Trinco. Very quickly the sky clouded over and barely an hour into the journey the first drops splashed down on the car.

A rainy drive.

After Dambulla, one enters elephant country, and between the rain hammering down and stories of tuskers popping up on the highway, it was high alert time all the way till we hit Trinco.

Dykes Rest on Dyke Road was our first destination, a nondescript doorway on a quiet street but a rear exit that opened out to the crescent-shaped Dutch Bay beach, our home for the next three days.

Now, a little drinky is usually high on the agenda but with the rain showing no signs of letting up and having passed up on the attractions of the airport Duty Free shops, it was time to go hunting for the trip’s first tipple.

Tonic water

That was duly located at the euphemistically named Trinco Garden, a mishmash of fake trees and concrete umbrellas that heroically held out against the rainstorm but blessed with a healthy supply of Lion lager and some meaty snacks.

With that box ticked, day two brought better weather, more opportunities to walk the little town almost from end to end – and finding the nearest hooch joint which is very important considering t need to connect quickly with the local booze, which has been a custom ever since I started touring as a sports writer.

Eat local, drink local and you usually won’t go wrong. And so it was with some super-smooth arrack and a diet of idiappam kottu, curry and rice (the Sri Lankan equivalent of the thali) and biryani, hedonistic desires were well looked after.

Our most memorable meals were at Aachi (pictured above) and the swank Isso beachside restaurant.

Day three brought a visit to the Trincomalee Naval Museum Dockyard and the heights of Hood’s Tower, again a throwback to Kuri’s stories of their campaign on the sheltered and picturesque waters of the harbour as the Sri Lankan Navy had hosted them.

That was capped by an evening walk along the inner port’s shoreline which also led to a chance meeting with St Ignatius at the local Loyola campus. It was my second encounter with him, the last one coming just about a year ago at a Goa museum.

Another long drive awaits next, which will take us from the eastern coast down to Galle on the southern edge of the country and I can’t wait to see what our stay inside the walls of the old Dutch fort that overlooks the Galle cricket ground will bring.

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