Discover Deniyaya

Where the wicked redeem themselves

Text and pics by Juliet Coombe

With a sudden boost in tourists’ numbers filling up every hotel, and boutique villas now costing boutique prices, how about going back to Sri Lanka’s roots and taking a holiday for a fraction of the price, in an old tea bungalow, in one of Sri Lanka’s lesser known provinces. Deniyaya, is “the gateway to the Sinharaja rain forest”, and one of Sri Lanka’s most interesting cow boy towns, 196 kilometres from the capital, Colombo.
Driving along the coastal road to the rain forest region, the tropical sun melted away as the beaches vanished and we hit the steep, windy roads that take you to the Sinharaja. The trees started to drip with water as an unrelenting downpour commenced and the streams and waterfalls filled up, thundering their way down the hills into the valleys, where tea pickers turned their plastic bags into imaginative rain wear. As the car drove on through giant puddles of muddy water, we arrived mid-morning in Deniyaya town in time for the bustling Sunday market on Pallegama road, selling everything from colourful bundi sweets to spices.
After stocking up with snacks, we went in search of accommodation, no easy task in a place where guidebooks claim none exists, and where many of the rest houses are of the sort your mother would never have approved of. That is, until you meet Piumal Lasith Siriwardhana, which literally means ‘water flower’. He is a charming and extremely smart 21-year-old, who studied advanced level mathematics at Matugama Central College and now runs his father’s hundred-year-old tea bungalow. Deniyaya Rest House is a young independent traveller’s no-frills ‘Tea Trails’ experience, with its out-of-this-world views of the rain forest. Piumal took a genuine interest in us, and displayed as much fascination for the history of this glorious old red and yellow building as we did. He explained that the original walls of this simply gorgeous old bungalow are one and a half feet thick, and are made of rock, plastered with lime and sand. Each room leads back onto the veranda that perches itself like a look out point over the Rakwana hills, an area that encompasses the Sinharaja tropical rain forest and tea country, with checkerboard paddy fields lying in the valleys below, filled with water like giant sized buckets.
Sinharaja was, in 1987, made a UNESCO World Heritage Site, because it is Sri Lanka’s prime bio- diversity hot spot, where new species are, quite literally, being discovered all the time. The place has held a fascination for the intrepid traveller for hundreds of years, because of its giant 135 foot trees and exotic birds, such as the green and yellow parrots with red necklaces, appropriately named Mala Girawa (‘bird with a necklace’) and yet the surrounding towns have relatively small numbers of visitors who stay on and enjoy the areas quite outstanding beauty and hospitality.

Rich and colourful history

On the surface, Deniyaya Rest House set in an old tea bungalow looks basic and simple, with it’s four rooms from Rs. 1200 per night for two people, but as we discover more about its rich and colourful history we soon forget all those usual creature comforts and I wonder why on earth you would need a hair dryer or ‘surround sound’ TV set, when all you would want to do is watch the ever-changing view. The back side of the property still has the old British bathtub in the garden, and the British white iron gate behind it looks across Diyadawa, the tea village area.
It is clear to us that Piumal is a hard act to follow. He loves meeting people from all over the world and his aim is to make this bungalow the most famous in Sri Lanka. “I want it to be a good facility for the rain forest by arranging in-depth walking tours and well informed guides, so I can make this the best place to stay in Deniyaya”. The delightful sounds of Emerald Doves cooing and flocks of green billed Hanging Parrots singing mix with the chanting monks from the local temples and mooing cows in the valley, with smells of his mother’s home-style cooking in the kitchen. So confident is he that I will return to this haven, he gives me a list of other places to check out. Piumal was right: after seeing all the other options, we returned to Deniyaya Rest House bungalow, where we discover more about the character of the place over a delicious home cooked rice and curry lunch. The Rest House, he tells us, has been a tea planter’s personal home, in colonial times, an army camp, a Sri Lankan family home and, since the 1960s, a place for people to stay.
The family can organise tours and if you are around on a Wednesday night he recommends going to the Planters’ Club to meet the local tea picking characters, as it is a focus of the area’s weekly social life and always abuzz with planter news and gossip.
Piumal is slowly restoring the place with his father, keeping much of its original layout as well as the British wooden columns at the front and the iron gates at the entrance. Even its original British bathtubs will be reused as flower troughs. Other features, such as the hand-painted peacock screen belonging to Nilantha, the old bungalow chef, only add to the old-world charm. The property’s most unusual element is the roof, which consists of eleven different parts and pours water into the Gin Ganga on one side and into the Nilwala Ganga on the other. Piumal’s 70-year-old father is P. P. Siriwardhana (PP), who has seen the area through many historic moments including the departure of the British and the loss of law and order in 1989, when local tea factories were set on fire and the government buses blown up, a time when Deniyaya was a JVP stronghold and only revolutionaries were welcome.
Sri Lanka’s legendary writer, Martin Wickramasinghe, also stayed in the Deniyaya Rest House and wrote a book, which incorporated the bungalow and the local area, in the room on the right hand side as you enter the front porch. Not surprising, since the views of the rain forest are so inspiring and strange places, such as the famous rock temple of King Walagambahu, make excellent writers material with their spooky legends. After all, at how many temples can you curse your enemies, whilst also looking for redemption?

Flickering candles

From the bottom of King Walagambahu temple steps there is a strange feel about the place reinforced by the smell of burning incense filling the air. Naughty monkeys are notorious for snatching food off you, so keep it under wraps and giant black squirrels shake the trees overhead. Weirder still is that butterflies change their patterns and colours and it’s not just a trick of the eerie light that the temple stones and flickering candles give off.
In the main chamber, people queue up daily waiting to see the monk. Some pilgrims shake in trances as they are relieved of curses that have been put on them. If the vibe isn’t as light and spiritual compared to other holy sites, it is because the temple has become famous for cursing. On the top level of the temple in the inner sanctum coins covered in scraps of spotty and coloured material hanging around the Buddha shrines like washing lines, with bits of paper tied to them, and inside there are notes folded into tiny pieces wishing ill-fortune on others. If you are interested in the supernatural, then this place is sure to fascinate.
Not wanting to stay around and chance my luck I reluctantly leave this fascinating area after one of my best weekends away in Sri Lanka. As I drive home it is the cheeky Tamil boys, pushing their over-sized bicycles through the rain-swept tea plantations and paddy fields, who will remain forever etched in my memory for their kindness, acting as free local guides to the more remote places, making sure I did not slip on the treacherous hand cut paths to see yet more incredible views, and stopping me grabbing at a branch only to find it was a snake. The rain forest people leave one with a humbling sense of what is important in life, from fresh home-cooked food and friends gathering after work to exchange news over a delicious Deniyaya cuppa.