After a long time of dreaming about it, the chance had finally come for me to say it. I can now say that I have been to Jaffna. Wow, thats something that I thought my 14 year old self would never say. Soo, yeah, for my last Week Without Walls, we went to the most northern part of the island, and came back visiting the central point of the island with ancient ruins and rocks as it started with a 2:3o a.m wakeup call in Colombo, ending with a 5 a.m wakeup call in the middle of the jungle. So, this is how day 1 of my visit to Jaffna (w/Pidurangala), went.
2:30 am: I wakeup, and I say to myself, “I’m going to Jaffna” With my body feeling slightly lazy but fit, I sip my tea, have breakfast, catch a quickies of “The Office” on Comedy Central, and then it’s time to get ready. I say bye to my grandparents, and take off on the empty streets of Colombo, which quite frankly have a such nice vibe and aura. As I arrived at school, I meet up with Zach from my grade, with Peter and Avinash from MYP 5. Slowly, everyone starts coming in and we are set to travel to the Mount Lavinia station to pick up our train. Once we arrived at the station, we all go up to the platform taking a look at the deserted area at around 4 in the morning. Then Mr. Lockwood shouts “Folks, we are at the wrong station, we have to go to the Fort Station.” All of us had dropped mouths and sighed aggressively and we all headed back to the bus. We had finally arrived at the Fort station at around 5:00, and we waited for roughly 45 minutes for our train to Anuradhapura. The station was hustling and bustling with people running to catch their trains. At around 5:40, we start to walk to our platform and we actually manage to catch a glimpse of a first class train, and we all immediately said that it will be a comfortable ride.
As we run to our train, we sit by the comfortable chairs and as the train starts to slowly move, majority of us fall asleep (not me though) as we pass through to the fields of Sri Lanka, covered with the mist transforming the land and experiencing it through a different view. When passing through the fields, it honestly looked like we were out of a horror movie. It had this eerie scene to it that made it look like a Stephen King novel. Anyway our train ride was roughly 5 hours long and we passed quite a number of towns including Kurunegala, my mother’s birthplace. Towards the end of our train journey, we got the chance to get up, and stretch our legs and enjoy the views of the ride.
After our long train journey, we had finally arrived at the Anuradhapura train station at around 9 We hopped on the bus with our trusty driver Anthoney, and made our way for brunch. Of course, I was in Anuradhapura a month before the trip, so I happened to recognise some of the places. In the end, we all got to have a nice traditional Sri Lankan brunch. aka string hoppers, pol sambol, roti and fish. Afterwards we started our journey to Point Pedro, the most northern point of the island.
With the journey by bus, it had started to rain once we entered the Vavuniya District. But once we passed by the border of the district, we all said to each other “this is the war zone.” In my mind, I visioned soldiers running across the grass, firing the weapons and tanks rolling along. We finally arrived at a place called “Elephant Pass,” the bridge like area from the main island to the Jaffna district, and common host for battle. We visited a memorial there with a huge bulldozer on display, battered and beaten. Then we got to know of the fellow soldier who was deemed as a hero, Lance Corporal Gamini Kularatne, who sacrificed his life to save an entire camp.
Finally we made our way to Point Pedro, the most northern point of the island. Now I have to be honest about something. When we arrived at the lighthouse of Point Pedro, I was thinking, “oh, its just another beach, how lovely” but then when I saw the map given at Sakkotei Cape of where we are, I realised that we are at the very tip of the island. We finally rested at the Thalsevana Army resort, had a swim, reflected with the sound of the waves, and settled in for our next trip to the Keerlamalai Springs.