Our Vacation in Sri Lanka: What was Different?

A month before Diwali, we were considering options for a vacation. The travel agent convinced us to go to Sri Lanka and we also thought that on the occasion of Diwali, let us go to the place where it all started.

It was an extremely hectic trip covering a different city every single day. We went to Kandy, Sigiriya/Dambulla, Nuwara Eliya, Ella, Galle, Bentota, and Colombo. We had taken a car for the week but we also took a train from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya. We went into mountains as well as beaches. Fantastic sites. But I am not writing this block to talk about the places we visited. I am sure there are enough sites to describe those sites. I had also published photographs and descriptions on my Instagram page.

There were aspects of this vacation other than the sites themselves which made it special and that is what I want to focus on. Perhaps in the hope that one day traveling within India would be as enjoyable.

First, everyone we met, we could instantly felt that we could trust them. In most tourist places, whether in India or abroad, one is always worrying about someone stealing your money/documents, or trying to cheat you. In Sri Lanka, there were multiple occasions where we trusted complete strangers (because we felt we could) and it worked. There was a place where we climbed the hill only to be told that we needed to buy the ticket at the bottom of the hill. A young boy offered to help by going down the hill, buy the tickets and come back and hand them over to us. We later tipped him for the service. But he could have run away with our money. (Of course, we understand that others may have had a different experience. Maybe we were being naive and stupid and just got lucky. But whatever it is, I am describing my experience there.)

The second aspect that we really liked was how most people were law abiding. Imagine a 2-lane road. There is a slow moving vehicle in front of you and our driver is slowly driving behind it. When we asked our driver why he doesn't overtake the vehicle, he pointed out that there was solid line in the middle and he will overtake when there is broken line in the middle. And it wasn't just him. Most vehicles were following the traffic rules to the last dot. Only in Colombo we found a bit of chaos but even there it was much less than the traffic chaos anywhere in India. In various sites we visited, we never saw anyone breaking the queue.

Third, there was really no fights or loud arguments that we experienced throughout this week. In fact, we had a minor accident where a vehicle hit our car from behind. It was just a touch which broke one of the lights and there was a small dent. The two drivers shook hands, and agreed that our driver would get the car repaired in one of the repair shop in Colombo and he will pay for the bill. They called up the garage and confirmed the deal with him. They also exchanged photographs of all the documents, etc. But no raising of voice. Extremely polite conversations.

Fourth, once a deal has been finalized, they wouldn't demand extra, any tips, or come up with any excuse to charge more. When we were at Galle Fort area, we hired an auto to take us all over the Fort area. The deal was that he will spend one hour with us and show us all the places. But, of course, as typical tourists, we needed to click lots of pictures at every point, and that took longer than expected. Finally, when he dropped us back to our car, I asked him if we had gone to the entry point. He said that was the point where we had started, but if I forgot to take the pictures, he would take us there again. So went again, took pictures and came back. So overall, almost 2 hours and more travel than agreed upon. But when we asked him how much extra we could pay him, his answer was, "zero." He was like a bit extra time and a bit extra distance does not mean that he should charge more from the tourists.

Fifth, the number of people who thanked us for visiting "Sri Lanka" was fairly high. Yes, there were usual thanks for staying in a hotel, or eating in a restaurant, but an unusually large number of people thanked not just for providing business to them, but for visiting their country. It showed how much pride they took in their country and how much they value tourism.

Sixth, when we traveled through the hills, we never felt that there was a haphazard development. In almost all hill stations I have been to in India, you find that they are a concrete jungle. But the hills we drove through had a completely green cover, no ugly unplanned buildings. Beautiful nature.

Seventh, the road infrastructure everywhere was excellent. We drove about 1000 KMs and never found a pothole or a broken road. (Colombo had a few rough patches.) The hotels even in small towns were excellent.

Eighth ,the country is very clean. We stopped by at several beaches between Galle and Colombo, and we never found any trash on the sand. There was no graffiti on any building. No Gutka peaks.

After the trip, I realized one thing. We have higher mountains, we have grand temples, we have better of everything that we could see in Sri Lanka. And yet, the tourism is not just about sight-seeing. It is about the overall experience, it is about stay, travel, interaction with locals, shopping and everything else combined. And in this overall sense, the experience in Sri Lanka was absolutely amazing. And it came at the same cost that we would have borne for a one week vacation in India (the places we were considering).

And frankly, this was unexpected. In the last one year, I have been to Singapore and Hong Kong as well. But I didn't write such a blog. Because it is expected that a "rich"country or a small city-state can manage to maintain much higher standards. But Sri Lanka is just like us, and they have gone through a very rough patch in recent times. I was certainly expecting it to be more like India.

If we want tourism to flourish in India, we need to focus on "Ease of tourists" just like we earlier focused on "Ease of doing business." In many parts of India, even the simple act of hiring a taxi can be so difficult.

While I certainly want to fulfill my desire to visit each state and union territory in India (Six remaining: Laddakh, Lakshdweep, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Mizoram) and I have a few more places in my bucket list, this trip to Sri Lanka has made me consider countries in 4-6 hour flight distance for my future vacations.

 

Good bye, Ajai Banerji

 Ajai was 9 years my senior in IIT Kanpur. So obviously, I didn't know him as a student. I interacted with him online during my graduate student days in US. There were these online discussion forums called newsgroups those days. One of them was named as "soc.culture.indian." On this forum, we discussed everything related to India. Whenever something related to trains would come up, a few of us would have to comment on it.

One of them was Ajai Banerji who was studying at Stanford University at that time. Soon we created a separate mailing list whom we named IRFCA (Indian Railway Fan Club of America, once the Internet spread to India, we stopped expanding 'A'). In 1991, we decided to have a physical meet of the founders at New Jersey in which Ajai showed up. Here is how we all looked 35 years ago. We, of course, had a lot of fun discussing railways, and Ajai was inarguably the most knowledgeable about the Indian Railways in terms of history. Particularly, he delighted us with his knowledge of Railway lines between India and Pakistan/Bangladesh, and the story of how the rail routes to North-East went through Bangladesh and how we created the new rail routes through Chicken's Neck immediately after independence.

We both returned to India in due course. He joined Doon School and I joined IIT Kanpur. The IRFCA kept getting bigger. More discussions and it was always a treat to read his posts. But he was not just a railbuff or an expert only in the history of Indian Railways. He had vast knowledge about several domains, cricket being one of them. Another one would be wars. In 1999, he became world famous by becoming the winner of BBC Mastermind India. In this competition, he chose "History of Indian Railways" as topic in the zonal final, and "World Cup Cricket" as the topic in the national finals. Here is the link to the finals of that competition.

BBC Mastermind India 1999 - Finals

In 2006, we started organizing the annual conventions of IRFCA. As a co-founder, he attended many of the initial conventions, though he stopped attending them for the last few years. Here are the photographs from 2014 convention held in Ooty.

The convention was attended by the DRM of the division Mr. Shubhranshu and the GM of Southern Railways, Mr. Rakesh Mishra as well.

He gave a presentation on Railway Safety. Here is the link to the safety presentation by Ajai Banerji.

 

 

 

 

Here is another picture of his attending the IRFCA convention in Delhi in 2010. It was held in National Railway Museum.

 

His knowledge of history of Indian Railways was really fabulous. When I joined Punjab Engineering College in 2019, I posted a picture of a plinthed loco on the campus. Not many colleges would have a plinthed loco, and this was really cool. But I had no clue about the history of the loco and one day I asked Ajai to find out more about it. And within a very short period, he wrote a blog about this loco. Here is the link to the blog full of information about the loco.

He was an avid blogger and he blogged about his two passions: History of Indian Railways and Cricket. (Though he was a multi-faceted personality and had other deep interests.) Here is the link to his blog.

My last meeting with him was in 2023 when one of our common railfan friend (and IITK alum), Praveen Tripathi, came to Jaipur. It is really sad that even though both of us lived in the same city, we could not meet for so long and now, there is no more possibility of meeting.

He breathed his last on 15th February, 2025 in Jaipur. The entire fraternity of Rail fans is deeply saddened by his departure. But may be God wanted to win some quiz and he couldn't find a better person to represent Him. He has left us with a lot of memories whom we will always cherish. But we will miss interaction with him and learning from him. We pray to God to give all of us - his family and friends - strength to withstand this irreparable loss.

Goodbye, my friend. And I hope you are winning all the quizzes up there.