From theJournal

VIJournal

Field notes, kept by hand.

Dispatches from the road, longer reads, and the occasional letter from a hotel verandah at the wrong end of monsoon.

Most recent
No. XI
6 min

Notes from Jaffna.

The Dutch fort, the Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil at festival time, and a crab curry with no equivalent on the south coast — the case for taking the long road north.

Jaffna · northern Sri LankaRead this entry
The archive

Earlier entries, in the order they were written.

  1. No. X
    6 min

    The Perahera comes in July.

    What the Esala Perahera actually is, how to be positioned for it, and why the crowd on the final night is part of the occasion — not an obstacle to it.

  2. No. IX
    5 min

    Three hours in Pettah.

    A walk through Colombo's main market quarter before the heat arrives — and the case for treating the city as a destination rather than a transfer point.

  3. No. VIII
    6 min

    A verandah at six thousand feet.

    On planter's bungalows — what they are, what the best of them give you, and why a morning at six thousand feet above Hatton is unlike anything else.

  4. No. VII
    5 min

    The east coast, opening.

    A field note on the week in May when the main point at Arugam Bay begins working and Sri Lanka opens on a second coast — one that most visitors never reach.

  5. No. I
    6 min

    The southern monsoon, observed.

    A short note on the rains that close the south for half the year — and why the wettest week is often the one we send people for.

  6. No. II
    7 min

    The planter's pencil ledger.

    A tea estate kept by a man who counts in fingers, weighs in pounds, and has not raised his voice in forty-one years.

  7. No. III
    5 min

    One Sunday in Galle.

    The hour after the shutters close, the ramparts in low light, and a private supper that arrived in two clay pots and a covered basket.

  8. No. IV
    4 min

    Whales we did not see.

    An early sea morning that gave us, instead, an hour of dolphins, a flat horizon, and a captain who told us the sea would do better next week.

  9. No. V
    6 min

    The leopard's window.

    An hour of rain in Yala, a tracker who would not move the jeep, and the long pause that ended in a single quiet animal at the water's edge.

  10. No. VI
    5 min

    A letter from Bentota.

    On Ayurveda, on the rooms that smell of warm oil and old wood, and on the small grief of leaving them after a week.

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