February 28, 2020
Meeting a fellow-believer
UDAWALAYA - We met our first cycle-tourist today. That doesn't sound special but, for us and seemingly for him, it was a big moment. All we had seen, remember, was a group ride with a leader and a van for luggage and a bus to collect the weary.
Our man today was the real thing, dusty, sweaty and carrying bags. We were riding out of a town and he was riding into it. We pointed at each other in the way that all cyclists spot a brother and he beamed. We too.
"You're the first cyclists I've seen," he said, like Stanley meeting Livingstone. He was tall, lean and stained by the road. His pale red T-shirt showed evidence of many days in the rain or in the wash. He spoke with a light accent and rode a small-wheeled bike with generous baggage front and rear.
"Same for us," we said. "We thought the trip was going to end without meeting anybody."
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It's a curiosity of cycling that two believers will greet each other as brothers. Yet you can be only a few hundred metres apart, or camping in a neighbouring field, and you'd never know anybody was near.
"I'm from Norway," he said. He wore glasses and carried a large black bag on his bars and a black backpack behind the saddle.
He was on a three-month trip that had taken him through southern India. After Sri Lanka he planned to fly to Berlin, where he lives, collect his conventional touring bike and then ride to northern Norway to see his family. He was a man not on a seamless and endless journey but the next best thing.
"I rent out my apartment in Berlin for as long as I choose and I go cycling," he explained.
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We talked of things that cyclists talk about, including India. He had had enough of traffic and chaos there, he said. He reminded me of a friend pleased that he'd ridden in India and even more pleased that he didn't have to do it again.
We started this morning with a long drop from Haputale. The day started misty but warmed up by breakfast. The mountain rose to our right, ever higher as we dropped. Our way continued with hours of tobogganing, short stiff climbs followed by gentler descents. We went down more than we went up but we paid a stiffer price than we thought reasonable.
The heat made it hard but the deep green valley to our left and the cloud-scratching mountains to our right made it scenic although no more relaxing. And then came an odd encounter.
Hunger nagged and we struggled up a last hill to stop at a café on a bend. We served ourselves from bulbous steel pots with rounded lids. A tiny woman with large eyes watched with the pride of a cook and hostess but showed the frustration of not being able to talk.
It was then that a neatly dressed lad with long fingernails asked to join us. And that set off the day's first and oddest encounter. We got him to explain to the little woman with big eyes that we'd enjoyed her food but that we hadn't been able to finish it because it was too spicy.
He relayed the message in Sinhala, using the word "spicy." There are other possibilities but linguistically it suggests there was no word for spicy in Sinhalese before the British arrived. Had there been, he wouldn't have said "spicy." But the locals had never thought their food was remarkable until it blew the heads off the British and it was then, I imagine, that they learned "spicy."
Our lad explained that he sold houses and land, sometimes to foreigners. To make conversation, I asked if it was easy for foreigners to move to Sri Lanka.
"Oh yes," he insisted, though we'd seen no sign of it. And then he said he wanted us to meet his manager. "We are only two doors away."
It's only by meeting local people that you learn more of a country and your journey becomes worthwhile. So we said we would.
Three girls sat at desks in a row to the right of the entrance, their backs to the wall. They were maybe 23, or 30 at most. They smiled warmly with a touch of self-awareness. Their job, we suspected, was to make the place look busy.
The manager sat at the end of the row and at right angles to it, a little older with an air of importance. He gestured for us to sit and, unsure why we were there, ventured "So you are from France?"
He looked nervously at a form in front of him, the one he would have filled in had we wanted a house. But he didn't know why were there, so he just fingered the form nervously and hoped we'd give him a clue.
"Do you like Sri Lanka?", he asked. We said we did, very much. He looked pleased but unsure. And then we said we had to be going and we stood up and shook hands with him and then, in turn, with each of the three girls. They smiled brightly in return, pleased by the interruption to looking busy but no more certain why we'd been there than we were.
The Norwegian said touring on small wheels was fine provided the road was smooth. That meant he got on well where there was traffic but struggled on the dirt roads that he and we preferred. We told him to expect an hour or two of bumpy dirt road preceded by a seven-kilometre climb on rocky tar. He didn't look pleased. But he adopted the expression of a man who accepts whatever life gave him and we parted with handshakes and best wishes for the rest of the ride.
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