A Simple Abode: the Knuckles Mountains by Jini Reddy
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High in the little-explored Knuckles Range of Sri Lanka, a grassroots tourism project is helping to sustain and preserve the traditional ways of a dwindling village community.
Walking uphill in the pouring rain with leeches nipping at your ankles isn’t an experience for the faint-hearted but it’s a small price to pay for a visit to the remote mountain village of Walpolamulla – population six – the site of an inspiring small-scale eco-tourism venture in the Knuckles Range, a conservation area that lies in Central Sri Lanka.
A vast wilderness of misty mountains – the highest peaks reach 1900 metres – waterfalls and rivers, the area covers 155 square kilometers, contains five major forest formations, and an astonishing variety of endemic flora and fauna. With over a 1000 species of flowering plants, 100 species of birds, 75 species of reptile, wild boar, geckos, civet cats, torque monkeys, sambar, porcupine, mousedoor – and the shy leopard, The Knuckles are a nature lover’s paradise, although with little infrastructure one that’s not easy to explore.
Which makes the journey to Walpolamulla all the more colourful: some 50 km south of the market town of Matale, in the Dumbara Valley, the hike kicks off from Rathinda village, the last point where a vehicle can go. Balancing on the bunds of terraced rice fields, crossing a mountain river, snaking through a village of stone-walled houses, before a sustained uphill slog through dense forest trails that intermittently clear to reveal sublime mountain scenery, all who’ve tackled the eight kilometre trail would agree it’s a calorie-burner – and a treat when the sun shines.
The Abode Project (named after the village house where guests stay) was set up three years ago by local guide Sidantha Ananda Elikewela, who grew up trekking in the Knuckles. Witnessing first-hand how unregulated development could have a devastating impact on the lives of locals in remote areas (there are estimated to be some 60 inhabited villages in the Knuckles area), he decided to create a tourism venture that would promote traditional village life – without damaging the inhabitants’ quality of life or the natural environment. ‘I wanted to bring people here who would appreciate witnessing a way of life that is dying out,’ he says.
Focusing on a single community, he chose Walpolamulla, which he stumbled upon whilst hiking. ‘I was impressed by its pristine environment and the hospitality of the villagers. We became good friends, but when I first put the idea to them, they were incredulous. They’d never seen foreigners and were used to those in the surrounding areas who have electricity and television ridiculing them for their old-fashioned ways. They couldn’t understand why their world would be of interest to outsiders. But I explained to them: “ the way you are living is of interest, and the people who will come to stay are my friends from Europe and Sri Lanka.”’
All are carefully vetted by UK-based independent tour operator Experience Sri Lanka who arrange visits. (Elikewela met and became friends with co-founder Tom Armstrong, when the latter was based in the country.) To minimize impact, numbers are limited, with no more than eight to ten people a year coming to stay.
‘They come to absorb the way of life of the villagers, to enjoy the views, the fresh air, to read, or take hikes,’ says Elikewela. The energetically inclined can embark on a tough five hour trek through thick undergrowth and sometimes impassable rivers, to a waterfall beneath the 1600-metre high Kalupahana Peak. ‘There is a beautiful three hundred foot drop, and at the base a cave where we camp,’ he adds.
The exchange is mutually enriching – Abode hosts Wijeratne Medagedera and his wife Bisomeinke – they put their ages at 70 and 60 respectively – are paid a wage, and are stakeholders in the project. ‘More than that, they enjoy welcoming people into their simple home and exchanging views with those who lead lives so vastly different from their own,’ says Elikewela.
Subsistence farmers, they’re involved in the cultivation of paddy, which they supplement with chena or shifting cultivation. With stone and mud walls, roof tiling and a flooring of buffalo dung mixed with water and clay, their 75 year-old home is snug and spartan: there’s a kitchen, the couple’s bedroom, which doubles as storage space, a narrow corridor, and a small but comfortable guestroom, simply furnished with a bed, chair, candles and a trunkful of books. There are no facilities, no electricity, and candles and a kerosene lamp provide light.
Currently the venture brings in about 400,000 rupees a year (around £4,700.) About 15 per cent of the income generated from every visit goes to the couple and a helper from Rathinda. ‘It might not seem a lot of money to an urban dweller but to those who don’t have easy access to hard cash, and who live in an ancient and remote village – Walpolamulla is believed to be over 300 years old and dates back to the Ravana era – it is a quite substantial sum,’ says Elikewela.
Twenty percent goes towards visitor and administrative costs, and a further 15 percent pays Elikewela’s own wages. The balance goes into The Abode Trust, administered by Elikewela, alongside Liverpudlian co-trustee Susan Bennett, who first visited the village in 2006, was bowled over by the kindness of her hosts and the dramatic scenery, and has since returned three times.
Trust money is used to benefit the village as a whole: ‘It’s earmarked for medicines or improvements to the villagers homes’, for provisions when crops fail, for lorries to take crops to the market in Matale, or to help the villagers when tourism is slow. The Trust also exists to look after their welfare when they are too elderly to participate as hosts,’ says Elikewela. Those in need in Rathinda and Atanwala also benefit, as close ties exist between the three villages.
When the current inhabitants die out, the plan is to employ people from the latter as hosts to carry the project forward. ‘We don’t want to expand or build more homes in Walpolamulla, we just want to retain its character and charm. If anything I’d like to take the impact off it a little, and replicate the idea in other remote villages in the Knuckles,’ says Elikewela.
When I arrive wet, filthy, and leech infested in Walpolamulla, my hosts lead me to the nearby rock pool to bathe. Fed by a mountain stream – which like sixty percent of the streams in the Knuckles feeds into the Mahaweli, Sri Lanka’s longest river – the water is instantly reviving.
Back at the house, I warm myself around the clay hearth in the kitchen, and am handed a mug of the toddy that had fortified me on the walk up here. Made from sap from the Kitul Palm tree the strong, sweet tasting drink – free of yeast or hops – contains eight to ten percent alcohol and packs a punch.
The couple speak Sinhala so Elikewela, who has brought me here, translates as we get acquainted. Bright-eyed, kind and gentle, they treat me like a daughter, tenderly cleaning my leech bites, and making sure I’m comfortable and warm. Bisomeinke cooks dinner with a practised hand, and like all the meals here I eat the staple fare the couple live on: roti made from Kurrahan ( a grain similar to wheat), coconut rice, sambal and potato curry, with the additional treat of dried fish. It’s simple, but delicious. After dinner, Wijeratne sings folksongs – a village tradition. There is no particular meter or intonation, but the joy with which he sings is apparent.
My hosts, like all the villagers are Buddhist, but have animist leanings that involve the worship of mountain gods and the trees. ‘During our annual harvest ritual, a shaman comes to us from Pitawala, south of the Knuckles. We make an altar out of coconut leaves and twigs by a stream, and prayers and rice flour pancakes and sweetmeats, made from rice flour, coconut and Kitul honey are offered to the deity in return for blessings for the following year’s crops, and protection from evil spirits,’ explains Wijeratne.
The couple tell me they are natural health practitioners: in the absence of a doctor, concoctions of herbs and plants are used as first aid. Common cures include heated coconut oil to treat migraine, while the oil extracted from the nuts of the Mee Tree is used to soothe wasp stings and joint inflammation. (‘He’s cured myself of the sting of six hornets,’ says Bisomeinke, nodding at her husband. )
The following morning I inspect the couple’s crops. The forty acres of paddyfields, ringed by mountains, are terraced and maintained using a very basic rain-fed irrigation canal system made with bunds (embankments) fashioned from earth and rock. Water buffalo are used to plough the rich soil, which needs no fertilizer, herbicides or pesticides, and to the thresh the paddy come harvest time in June – the seeds are milled using a mortar and pestil carved from hardwood.
Rice is exchanged in the village shop in Rathinda for provisions: potatoes, coconut, chillies, lentils and kerosene oil, or if a lorry is available, sold in Matale’s market. (‘Local traders who come to Rathinda fleece the villagers,’ says Elikewela.) Otherwise, baskets and fan-shaped sieves made from rattan, ladles fashioned from coconut, and stools crafted from hardwood trees are sold to the neighbouring villages for small sums and supplement wages from the project.
Kurrahan is grown over three acres on an adjoining plot. Less popular than wheat – delicious though the grain is –there is little demand for it in the market, so what isn’t used is sold to neighbouring villagers in Atanwala and Rathinda, or even guests.
Wild board, porcupine and torque monkeys are a constant threat to the Kurrahan fields. To protect against the damage they can cause, the villagers fashion closely-knitted fence systems made of stumps and vines with spikes, and traps made from twigs and branches. When the crop starts to mature, my Abode hosts sleep in a hut in the fields to keep guard. ‘If we hear any noises we flash our torches, beat a tin can with a stick or kindle a fire,’ says Wijeratne.
An even graver threat – not only to the fields – but to the villagers themselves, comes in the form of marauding elephants. In July, following my visit, the elephants, believed to be part of a herd of twelve, entered Walpolamulla in search of food. The eldest villager, Kapilaratne Banda, was gored in the leg, had to be treated at Matale hospital, and the villagers reluctantly evacuated.
‘Elephants have been seen in Walpolamulla before – theirs is a seasonal movement, and over the last eight years or so, they have been penetrating the boundaries of the Knuckles in July and August. A scarcity of food and water near their home, on the outskirts of Wasgamuwa National Park (north of the Knuckles range) owing to drought, is to blame, as is the damming of the Amban Ganga River on the northwest coast of Wasgamuwa which has affected their jungle corridor – but this is the first time anyone has been injured, ‘ says Elikewela when I speak to him about it on the phone from London.
With the onset of the rains in the lowlands a few weeks later, the elephants retreat, and the villages are able to return. ‘However, we need to think about safety measures; hiring elephant trackers to keep an eye on their movements is the obvious short-term solution. Still, we are optimistic that The Abode Project will carry on, to everyone’s benefit.’