Page 55 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

The currency issue was more important. One obtained rupees from the chief
steward at a rate of about ten to the pound. While walking in the city, however,
I found that the initial offering of strange little men walking on the street was
twenty-two rupees to the pound, and that it was not difficult to obtain twen-
ty-eight after a bit of haggling. I, therefore, wrote home and asked for a couple of
pounds to be mailed to me for my expenses, and upon their arrival was able to
obtain a very good rate.
Of course, there was very little on which to spend this largesse.

There was, however, one exception; a tour. And on one of our days off (for
the most part we were kept busy by the mate in chipping the decks, painting, and
suchlike menial tasks) we cadets engaged a driver to take us on a trip to Kandy,
apparently a truly exotic city and the ancient capital of this historic island. This
was an all-day expedition and a truly enlightening one. While the road to Kandy
from Colombo can only be described as very primitive, the traffic met, which
included a number of elephants and oxcarts (not to mention the oxen), were of
formidable size, necessarily dictating which gave way to the other. But this gave
us the opportunity to see a good deal more of the people and the island, which
we quickly realised was, in fact, a country of unsurpassed beauty. The road was
mostly uphill to Kandy and we ascended into lush tropical forest and primitive
but picturesque villages and were able to stop at a tea plantation. Tea being one
of the country’s main exports, there was a good number of these plantations to
see, but watching the pickers (all women) one also became aware of the fact that
tea-picking is a thankless and back-breaking task; one observation, however, was
that the air was much cooler at these heights than in the foetid streets of Colom-
bo, so physical work could be much less unpleasant than on the coast. In fact,
one was likely to change one’s whole opinion of Ceylon by this day’s outing; the
climate was much more equable, the people looked more prosperous, we saw
no beggars, the population numbers seemed much more attuned to available re-
sources, and the plantations added an air of industry to the ambiance. The crown-
ing glory was, however, Kandy itself.

The country’s second city and ancient capital, its main claim to fame is that
it is home to the Temple of the Tooth. Ceylon being largely Buddhist (though
with the north being largely Hindu, and the west coast the domain of the
descendants of the Portuguese, Dutch and British colonists, it is in reality a
multi-cultural community), being the repository of Buddha’s tooth gives the
nation a cachet that it would probably not otherwise enjoy. The relic is taken
out of the temple once each year on the back of a special elephant in a splendid
parade, at which time the city’s population, needless to say, explodes. And far
from Colombo’s ill-repair, Kandy was in perfect condition, paint apparently

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