A love letter to the wild and beautiful island of my boyhood

Growing up in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in the Fifties and Sixties, I was surrounded by wildlife. The Colombo of my boyhood – a garden city – teemed with birds: mynas, parrots, sparrows and orioles. I’d see snakes and lizards hide in the greenery. My father was not an outdoor man – a bookshelf was his preferred field of exploration – but he had close friends who spent all their spare time in the wild (“outstation” as it was called): bird watchers, trekkers, hunters. My childhood friend was a wizard with animals and appeared to talk to them like a Tarzan, or a budding Dr Dolittle. I was fascinated.

Every few weeks, I’d be out in the countryside looking for more flamboyant birds – birds-of-paradise, hornbills – or big wild mammals, monkeys or bears, on remote jungle roads. Sometimes riding in a jeep with my father and one of his outdoor male friends, sometimes out with my mother and her adventurous female friend in her much speedier Wolseley. 

My memories of those days are a tangle of tours in the wildlife reserves of Yala and Wilpattu, expeditions into rainforests, and meandering through coconut plantations and paddy fields. We’d stay overnight in forest cabins, or government “circuit bungalows” that District Officers use on their inspections, or a cottage made of mud and thatch. I’d dream of spotting a leopard or a wild elephant, but it was usually enough to find a paw print or a dung trail, to glimpse a gibbon or a python on the road, or follow the blue flash of a kingfisher and let my imagination soar. 

My two most thrilling sightings came later – 21st century encounters. In 2002, during a lull in the long war that Sri Lanka suffered, I travelled to the north-eastern part of the island, beyond the Unesco-branded cultural triangle that is now a major tourist destination, and here I witnessed one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles I could have imagined. Being in a recent conflict zone, it was not an easy area to visit but we had heard rumours that wild elephants congregated by the edge of Minneriya lake – a dry zone reservoir – during the drought months. My friend had a jeep and we made our way, with a man who moonlighted as a tracker, through a scrubland of woodapple and thorn trees. At the lake the water had receded, leaving a green glow of tentative grass. In the clearing, we saw two wild elephants. Then, further on, a small herd of about 20, paddling. I had never seen so many wild elephants together before. My biggest sighting until that day had been a family of four on the roadside, at dusk, nibbling at saplings. But that excitement was nothing compared to what I felt when we drove on and saw the other side of the lake. Herds upon herds of elephants had come to the water. We counted at least 300 animals that evening. Years later, I put them in a book. 

“The Gathering”, as this spectacle is called, is now often listed as one of the top wildlife events in the world. Today, there are roads and ticket booths and the infrastructure for properly managed tours: certificated safari operators controlled by trained rangers. This is all to the good. Visitors see something remarkable, local people gain an alternative source of income and the elephants become valued by all – important because as the elephant habitat decreases, the tension between agriculture and the wild animals grows. About 80 wild elephants die every year due to accidents or, sadly, deliberately as people try to prevent them damaging crops and livelihoods. 

My second encounter was in the sea with the other great mammal of Sri Lanka: the blue whale. As children, swimming in the ocean, we never imagined whales nearby even though legend has it that Sinbad mistook the whole island for one. There had been deep sea divers in the ‘50s who’d talk about sunken wrecks and whales they’d seen lurking beyond the reef, but no one took much notice. Early in 2009, on another visit to Sri Lanka, I read an article about the sighting of blue whales – the largest creatures in the world – off the south coast. I went to Mirissa, near Galle, and hired a boat and a local boatman who knew where the whales surfaced: about an hour and half’s journey from the marina. We set off at dawn. Our boat was a flimsy catamaran that seemed little more than a couple of sticks with an outboard motor. I began to see just how foolhardy my expedition was only when we were out of sight of land and the sea began to heave. I had visions of Moby Dick rising under my feet. Flying fish and dozens of porpoises circled the boat. Then, when we got close to the container ships chugging along the deep sea-lanes, I spotted the telltale spout that Sinbad might have done once. A moment later, a blue whale broke the surface. The boulder-like back rising, and the great dive with the flukes up. Then several sperm whales appeared for an exhilarating display. 

The wildlife enthusiast Gehan de Silva Wijeratne, who broke the blue whale story, says whale watching is responsibly managed now, with trained guides and regulations. Sri Lanka is recognised as the best place on the planet to see blue whales. It would be even better, he adds, if the lobby to shift the southern shipping lanes just a mile or two further out is successful, leaving both the whales and the fisherman who fish in those deep waters safe from accidental collisions.

Since 1960, Colombo has grown into a metropolis. Old gardens have been built over, tall towers form a modern skyline. Urban birds seem fewer. The human population of the island has doubled. Add to that the damage of the war years, the 2004 tsunami, the political quagmire that comes and goes, the grim repercussions of terrorism and the demands of fast economic development: even without climate change, the consequences on the natural habitat are severe.

Yet, there are encouraging signs as increasingly people begin to appreciate the fragility of the island’s bio diversity. We now know that when we protect a reef, we also protect ourselves. Since the 2004 tsunami and the havoc it wreaked, more national parks and protected marine zones have been established. Although many more vehicles and tourists comb through the nature reserves, there are admirable initiatives in ecotourism and conservation. Many of the hotels outside the urban areas have been ahead of the curve and combine luxury with environmental sustainability. Green eco-friendly tours, sustainable glamping, nature tourism specialising on mammals, birds, butterflies and dragonflies are growing. And the birds are still amazing: the island has over 450 bird species including more than 30 endemic ones ranging from the Ashy-Headed Laughing Thrush to the Green-Billed Coucal that peeks into my latest novel Suncatcher. Even if you are not a birder revelling in this bird land, and never spot an oriole or an emerald dove, you’d find the birdsong magical.

The natural environment has been central to my fiction since my first novel Reef in which the main character, a marine biologist, presciently warns of the dangers of coral mining and reef-damage. In Suncatcher, I wanted to recreate that abundant world I grew up in before it vanished completely into a specialist conservation zone. So, in the last few years, as I was writing the novel, I went back to Sri Lanka looking for those birds, those rivers and streams I remembered. I’d spend days in the districts I once knew so well, and yet was not able to locate the patch of land I had run around in. In Colombo, I searched the skies every evening for the flight paths of fruit bats that remain so vividly in my mind, but those flight paths are no longer followed. Yet on the east coast, the south coast and in the hill country, I have been enthralled and renewed by the jungle symphony, and the brilliant colours of bee-eaters, minivets and barbets, the fantastic flights of barn swallows – all of which I have tried to bring into the world of my novel.

If Jay, the charismatic boy in Suncatcher who loves the natural world and fears for its future, was around today, I imagine he’d be out there in the wild castigating the grown-ups for messing up his Eden; he’d berate the careless and the negligent, the malicious and the misguided. Those who bomb, and maim, and destroy. But he’d also be urging us, all around the world, to wake up to the needs of the wild whatever the politics we have to contend with. He’d be helping us to recognise the value of our birds, our insects, our porcupines, our leopards, our elephants and whales and encouraging us to observe them – and in so doing, learn to love them and protect them.

Suncatcher by Romesh Gunesekera is out now, published by Bloomsbury, RRP £16.99.