• The Wicked Monarchs of Sri Lanka: Part 1
    Jul 1 2025
    The awful thing about wickedness is just how interesting it is. Kind and benevolent rulers; admirable warrior kings; even the fumbling but kindly nice ones who build hospitals and live blameless lives – they all pale into guilt-wrenching insignificance when set before a list saturated by the sinful, iniquitous, and depraved. And in this respect, Sri Lanka is spoilt for choice, simply by virtue of its statistics. Around 200 kings, with the odd queen, ruled over the island from its first recorded beginnings in 543 BCE to its last king, packed off into exile by the invading British in 1815. From island wide kingdoms to ones circumscribed by covetous foreign occupiers, the 2358 years of royal rule the country enjoyed was a big dipper experience. It was just as Longfellow had once said of a little girl: “when she was good, she was very, very good/ But when she was bad, she was horrid.” The country’s monarchs averaged little over 11 years a reign, but with massive variances. Most lapped up a rule of just a few years; sometimes only a few hours. A happy few enjoyed reigns that must have seemed an eternity to their fortitudinous subjects. Buit if the ancient chronicles are to be believed, almost half of them died well ahead of their divinely allocated time – at the hands of their own successors, often, sons, sometimes bothers, uncles or even wives or occasionally an invading Indian emperor or edgy Tamil warlord. No known studies have been done to precisely identify which county can claim to be the most regicidally minded, but in any future list only a fool would put money on Sri Lanka not scoring somewhere around the top 5. From this long bloody start, regicide took a modest back seat during the rule of the Dutch and the British. But things picked up after independence in 1948. Assassination, often but not always fostered by civil war, promoted the killing of a sitting president, a prime minister, and leading presidential candidate, Vijaya Kumaratunga, whilst another almost killed his own wife, the then president, Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1999. It was but one of many other fortunately failed attempts at regicide that the independent republic had to face, a trait that reduced, at times, its own leaders to accusing one another of hatching yet more malodorously mortal plots. But selecting just 6 of the country’s most egregious baddies – barely 7% of the total of potential scoundrels - is as difficult as selecting which chocolate to take from an Anton Berg’s Heart Box. The box has an impossibly delicious mix of pralines, marzipan, nougat, soft caramel, coconut, sea salt, orange, Chocolate Liqueur, Nut Truffle, hazelnut, cherry, and apricot. To make it to this list a Sri Lankan monarch had to be very bad indeed, a real and indisputable villein. The list begins, quite neatly, with the county’s first recorded king. Embodying a prescient creation myth, which, like all many of their type, mix horror and achievement in as much equal measure as going into labour, Prince Vijaya fits the bill perfectly. As Romulus and Remus had earlier demonstrated in faraway Rome, being a founding father often necessitated random acts of abomination and cruelty. And so it was with Prince Vijaya. Even his father heartily disapproved of him. Coming from a royal Indian family said to have been descended from lions, psychologists might argue that the prince never had a chance. Violence was in his nature. But the Mahavamsa, the great ancient Chronicle of Sri Lanka that is rarely modest in praising anything remotely proto nationalistic, pulls no punches when it comes to its paterfamilias. Given its mission (“compiled for the serene joy and emotion of the pious,”) the Mahavamsa had little other choice but to call a spade a spade. “Vijaya,” it begins, as it meant to go on, “was of evil conduct and his followers were even (like himself), and many intolerable deeds of violence were done by them. Angered by this the people told the matter to the king; the king, speaking persuasively to them, severely blamed his son. But all fell out again as before, the second and yet the third time; and the angered people said to the king: `Kill thy son.’” For the king, this helpful request enabled him kill two birds with a single stone. He chose to rid himself of not just his own son, but of most of his kingdom’s rogues, whilst demonstrating, like the consummate politician he was, blameless clemency. The Mahavaṃsa records how “then did the king cause Vijaya and his followers, seven hundred men, to be shaven over half the head and put them on a ship and sent them forth upon the sea, and their wives and children also.” The problem was exported. The prince sailed away from India and “landed in Lanka, in the region called Tambapanni on the day that the Tathagata lay down between the two twinlike sala-trees to pass into nibbana.” This time reference (“Tathagata”) to Lord Buddha non withstanding, ...
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    21 mins
  • Encounters At The Jungle Hotel
    Jun 30 2025
    Encounters at the Jungle Hotel is a behind the scenes look at Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. It starts, of course with a welcome. And a thanks, for coming our way, for most of the readers of this guide will no doubt be our guests. Whatever else is happening in the world, here at least there is a cake for tea; birdsong from dawn to dusk; and from everywhere the sound of civets, bickering monkeys that look a lot like Mr Trump; and squirrels bouncing on roofs like Keith Moon. To have made it this far, your car will have managed our driveway of buffalo high grasses and untamed forest. Guerrilla gardening, we call it – it keeps at bay, if only metaphorically, what’s best avoided to safeguard a long and happy life: televisions for example, or processed food, or terrorist warlords. We enjoy being a secret to most and a companion to some. Our sophisticated friends in Colombo call this Village Country, all jungle; tiny hamlets, simple living, feral nature. But really, the jungle is far from feral. What looks so random – is ordered, artful, and immeasurably peaceful. Its discreet hills and valleys keep safe a rare seclusion. Nightclubs, branded food concessions, still less a shop selling extra virgin olive oil – all have yet to open here. Somehow, we cope. Nature, good food, schnauzers, art, walks, music, books, yoga, swimming, massage, few rules, bird watching, tree hugging, meditating, and that most lost of all life’s activities – just being: that’s what this tiny jungle principality is all about. That and the odd trip to a few places well off the beaten track. This little guide will try to give you a glimpse of what makes things tick. And how on earth we got here in the first place. Geographically, we are neither part of the Rajarata, the oldest kingdom that reached from Jaffa to the edge of the hill country; nor the hill country itself. We lie between the two, on the first high hills that rise from the dry northern plains to eventually reach Mount Pedro near Nuwara Eliya at 8,000 feet. The hotel sits, belly button like, in the middle of 25-acres of plantations and jungle that dip down to paddy and up to hills of 1,000 ft, all of it surrounded by yet more hills and valleys, almost all given over to forest. Until family wills and the 1960s land reform acts intervened, this estate was much bigger; a place where coffee, cocoa, and coconuts grew. They grow on still, fortified by newer plantations of cinnamon and cloves; and rarer trees. Now almost 100 years old, the main hotel block, Mudunahena Walawwa, was built by the Mayor of Kandy. Walawwas, or manor houses, pepper the island, exuberant disintegrating architectural marvels, now too often left to meet their ultimate maker. In size and style, they range from palaces to this, a modest and typical plantation Walawwa with metal roofs, inner courtyards, verandas, and stout columns arranged around it like retired members of the Household Calvary. But it was not always thus. This walawwa – like a caravan - moved to its present site when the water ran dry at its earlier location. The foundations of this first abode, on the estate’s eastern boundary, can still be seen. It overlooks the Galagedera Pass, which found its 15 minutes of fame in 1765 when villagers - fortified by the Kandyan king’s army - rained rocks down on an invading Dutch army that melted back to Colombo: fever, and early death. From that moment to much later, little happened. In the jungle that is. Elsewhere America declared itself independent, the Holy Roman Empire got itself dissolved. Europe was beset by wars, the Napoleonic, the First, the Second, the Cold. Asia threw off its colonial masters. Not even the LTTE civil war that so rocked the rest of Sri Lanka made much of an impression here. In fact, it wasn’t until 1988 that the outside world caught up with the estate when a Marxist-Leninist insurrection crippled the country for three years in a blizzard of bombings, assassinations, riots and military strikes. Entrusting the Walawwa keys to three old retainers, the family left the estate; and for 20 years, weather and nature took turns budging it into a Babylonian wilderness. Landslides embraced it. Buildings tumbled. Termites struck. Trees rooted - indoors. Later, we arrived on a holiday; and bought it – a sort of vacation souvenir that could only be enjoyed in situ. No excel spreadsheet; no SWOT or PESTLE analyses were manhandled into service to help escape the inevitable conclusion – which was, of course, to buy it. The estate, the buildings were lovely; and only needed some love back. The love restoration programme that followed often felt like the unravelling of Denisovan DNA. Expect the unexpected, said Oscar Wilde. Prescient advice in the jungle as much as in Victorian London. There were monks, of course. They arrived to be fed, to bless and leave, their umbrella bearers running behind them. And five or six builders, not...
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    27 mins
  • Restore, Recover, Reboot
    Jun 30 2025
    This episode is especially for visitors to The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel. To borrow, at least a small part of Emma Lazarus’s famous poem: “Give me your tired, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free -" and we will do our best to help put things right, for it is a comfort to know that it is of little matter whether the glass is half full or half empty. Thankfully, the glass is refillable. And fill it we do at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. For should you want to do any restoring, resetting, rebooting or rebalancing of your mind or body, we are fortunate to have on hand five of the very best therapists in Kandy to help out. All can be booked in advance through the Hotel office to come to treat you here at the Hotel, either in your room or in Coco’s Pavillion, our therapy treatment centre built into a private amphitheatre with gorgeous views across the secluded jungle hills and valleys that surrounds the hotel. In particularly, we have exceptionally good physiotherapy, courtesy of Roshan Silva, our on-call and certified physiotherapist. Accredited by the Sri Lanka Foundation and the American Safety And Health Institute, Rohan works with many different types of clients, including athletes recovering from injuries. His work focuses on injury prevention, recovery and rehabilitation, and performance enhancement. One of his main clients is the Kandy Sports Club founded back in 1874 and today the leading multi discipline sports club in the country, known especially for its rugby. Rohan will begin the 60 minute session with a 5 minute consultation to identify any special areas of treatment that are necessary, previous treatments and specific vulnerabilities to be mindful of. The physiotherapy massage that lies at the heart of the session is done by hands-on treatment methods. It will first address pain, stiffness, muscular tension and any limited range of motion in the joints, muscles, and soft tissues. It will also focus on longer seated pains in the spine and joints, shoulders, knees, elbows that are typically caused by strains or injuries to the muscles and soft tissue; and by postural imbalances. The session may also include, as appropriate, two other classic therapies that are commonly used by trained physiotherapists: Dry Cupping, to help improve drainage for inflamed areas of the body by encouraging the better drainage of excess blood and water to away from inflamed areas. And K-Taping, to assist with musculoskeletal system damage by using thin, elastic tape to support muscles, joints, and tissues. The full session lasts 60 minutes but its shape can be determined in advance at the consultation – for Rohan is also experienced in determining and teaching exercises based on aerobics, and yoga to help further strengthen areas of vulnerability that you can practice regularly in your own time. If you would like to make time for him to determine and teach you a bespoke set of exercises to best suit your specific needs, this can be either added to an extended session or included within a shortened physiotherapy massage treatment. A more traditional island massage is also available courtesy of our two fully qualified Ayurveda masseuse: Udaya Rajapaksha; and Yamuna Jayawickrama. Both are trained in a full range of Ayurveda practices including Panchakarma and Abhyanga; as well as Reflexology; and have been practicing for over 14 years each. The classic ayurvedic abhyanga oil massage that they offer is focused on manipulating energy fields by applying itself more to the skin, rather than just to the underlying muscles. It helps detox the body, improve circulation, release muscle tension and reduce stress; and is especially good in nourishing the skin from head to toe as well. Unlike a sport massage which primarily kneads the muscles and skin, the ayurvedic abhyanga oil massage involves long, gliding strokes. It can also involve rhythmic tapping, using the fingers or hands, to stimulates nerve endings and rejuvenate the skin; quicker back-and-forth movements to generate heat and enhance blood flow; and specific pressure movements to target muscles and joints. Our fifth therapist is Noel Dharmajith – our on-call yoga teacher who for many years has run some of the most popular yoga classes in Kandy. He has been practicing yoga since he was eleven, training continually with yogic masters both in Sri Lanka and in India. The Hatha Yoga that Noel offers is the sort of workout that nurtures both body and soul, stretching and rebalancing the muscles as much as it de-stresses the mind. It is much loved for its mellow and measured pace. It gains its name for its unification of all that the sun (“Ha”) as well as the moon (“tha”) embodies - active and passive, warming and cooling. It dates back to ancient and later medieval Indian traditions. Two practices lie at its heart. The first, the Asana physical postures, comprise a set of exercises that build ...
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    8 mins
  • Hidden Trails
    Jun 30 2025
    Hidden Trails is the subject of this podcast, which steps off the tourist path to give you a glimpse of the things that really make Sri Lanka tick. Sacred temples, royal palaces, leopards, tea tasting, ancient frescos, sandy beaches, gourmet curries, tamarind martinis, whale watching, trekking, turtle fostering – these are the things that most visitors to Sri Lanka typically get up to. And they are lovely: very lovely. Well worth doing. But there’s more. Much more. “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good,” noted Moses with satisfaction in Genesis; and he must surely have had Sri Lanka in mind. Because what is special – most beautiful of all – is its ordinary life. The life you notice driving its roads or walking its streets. And it is all that enables this life that is the subject of this little most local of tours, a tuk tuk drive from Sri Lanka’s jungle retreat, The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. This journey will take you behind the door of what makes Sri Lanka Sri Lanka – those aspects of life that matter most to most people: god, food, water, culture, education, crafts, and local lords. These are the things that motor this little Sri Lankan community, perched in jungle and paddy on the edge of the highlands. As it does most others. For as Bad Bunny, the rapper said, “Simple goes a long way.” Especially here, far from the busy busy world. History has the hardest of times being heard in a tropical climate, which is no respecter of artefacts. Much has been lost. The haunting story Dingiri Menika in Galagedera exemplifies this. The fate of this renowned local beauty entwined with the story of Kandy’s last king. Selected to stimulate the moribund fertility of the last King of Kandy queen, Dingiri Menika was kidnapped by his soldiers, garlanded with jasmine, and propelled with elephants, drummers, and banner-bearers to a stake atop Bahirawa Kanda, or Gnome Mountain, now home to one of the tallest statues of Lord Buddha. Bound to a stake, she was meant to be a human sacrifice though quite why anyone thought a feast such as this might make the despondent queen procreate is a mystery. Fortunately, the king’s elephant keeper got to Dingiri Menika first; rescued her, married her, in fact - and set up home with her in Welligalle Maya, in Cross Street, close to Kandy Super Phone, Ltd, a present-day mobile phone supplier. But although the king chose to terminate all future human sacrifice, his late-burgeoning liberal values were not destined to bring him any greater luck. Within a few years he had been exiled to India, along with at least two of his four wives, the third of which was to use her exile for bankrupting shopping sprees. Traces of the king remain in the museum in Kandy but of the Galagedera home that housed his beautiful would-be sacrifice, there is no trace. Yet the world she inhabited is not yet all gone, and this tour will try to pick up what aspects of it still live on. We will visit Mrs Liyange and the tiny preschool class of tiny singing children at the ancient monastic school of Galayawe Sri Suvi Suddharamaya. And Manju and his family beside their paddy fields and figure out all that happens to our sticky rice pudding before it gets to be anything of the sort. We will finger inscriptions so ancient they predate recorded Sri Lankan history with a script that fell out of use nearly two thousand years ago when we call in on Gunadaha Rajamaha, a cave altar that was the refuge of a king who symbolised the enduring and unique culture of the Sinhala nation that is Sri Lanka today; and who rescued the young Anuradhapura Kingdom. On route too is a handloom workshop; and a wood carver, part of a great artistic tradition for which the Kandyan kingdom is famed. And an abandoned manor house dating back to the first years of British occupation. 2THE KING’S HIDING PLACE Hidden down tiny roads very close to the hotel is the ancient cave temple of Gunadaha Rajamaha, its lofty views and deep forest hinterland once home to one of Sri Lanka's most unlucky kings. Valagamba became King of Anuradhapura in 103 BCE; but had first to kill Kammaharattaka, his sibling’s murderer and chief general, before gaining what he regarded as his birthright - the crown. This he did, but little good came of it. Decades of earlier royal misrule had set up the grand old kingdom of Anuradhapura for utter disaster. Within months of taking power, a rebellion broke out in Rohana. A devastating drought. The kingdom’s preeminent port, Mantota, opposite Mannar, fell to Dravidian Tamil invaders. And at a battle at Kolambalaka, the hapless King Valagamba was defeated, racing from the battlefield in a chariot lightened by the (accidental?) exit of his wife, Queen Somadevi. The king went into continual hiding - including here in Galagedera as he sought to build a guerrilla resistance to the invaders. His kingdom was now ruled by a series of Tamil kings who, between...
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    31 mins
  • Shop: Retail Therapy in a Tuk Tuk
    Jun 30 2025
    Retail Therapy in a Tuk Tuk, the subject of this episode, will take you down the one of the world’s busiest high streets. And if you wonder about the example chosen – which you may, at first glance, consider eccentric, situated as it is in small village in the middle of an island of barely 20 million people in one of the least visited countries in the world; marvel instead - because, yes, you have come to Galagedera, the first highland village you encounter as you drive from the immense dry plains of northern Sri Lankan into the Central Highlands. Here, at 1,000 feet, the Galagedera Gap stretches out , where in 1765 the Dutch Army were defeated by soldiers of the Kandyan king. Stones rolled down onto the army from the adjacent hill. The Dutch sued for peace and returned to Colombo and defeat. Despite its obscurity, Galagedera’s high street, like those of most Sri Lankan towns and villages, is booming. As retail apocalypse decimates the high streets of the developed world, here the drive to digital, globalization and changing consumer habits have made only the most modest of footprints. Within the next 30 years this will surely change - but for now, to travel down its length in a tuk tuk is like time traveling in Tardis. Once upon as time, your village looked a little like this. The tour may may shortchange you on art galleries, artisan food outlets or Jimmy Choo footwear wear; and there is little to no change of breaking for martini, still less an almond croissant – but no matter. Behind Galagedera’s busy frontages are nearly all the things that most people need most of the time: on their doorstep and not concealed behind knotty road networks in gloomy retail park. Galagedera high street really is that - a long ribbon of a road, with almost 200 shops and business on either side, beginning on the left as you slip out of the gates of the Flame Tree Estate & Hotel and set off down the Rambukkana road. At almost any time of the day it brims with pedestrians and traffic – especially other tuk tuks. Pause and watch. People talk. They pause and gossip, trade news, they know one another. In amidst innumerable clothes shops, tiny cafes, photographers with technicolour backdrops, fish mongers, and butchers, wood carvers and timber yards, small shops selling plastic chairs from China, water tanks, clothes, fruit and vegetables, and basic household goods, are a wide range of businesses and services. LEFT OUT OF THE GATES of the Flame Tree Estate & Hotel and it is the hospital you arrive at first, an agreeable, if challanged, village example of the free and universal health care system enjoyed right across the country. Sri Lanka’s health system has had a seismic impact on national life, improving life expectancy and dramatically reducing maternal and infant death. It runs parallel with paid-for private health care with its faster and sometimes more advanced treatment. And it co-exists with an indigenous medicine system that is supported by its own network of doctors and nurses, pharmacies, hospitals, teaching collages and a bespoke government ministry., Galagedera’s cottage hospital treats around 300 outpatients a day and around 20 who are admitted to its wards, cared for by around 5 doctors and 40 nurses. Dental care, basic health care, basic mental health care and maternity care are all provided for, but the more complicated cases and conditions are referred to the main state hospital in Kandy. This includes – on average – 10 snake bites it encounters annually but not the scorpion bites which can be treated locally. Colds, flu, road accidents are all typical of its challenges – but so too are people injured by falling off trees or being hit by falling coconuts. Next up is the village’s central bus station which receives buses to and from Kandy or Kurunegala all through the day. Notaries have their offices here, close to the village Magistrate Court, one of over 5,000 such government offices nationwide and a short walk away from the village’s large police office, one of 600 nationwide. Close at hand, and convenient for a tidy court appearance, is the village’s tiny handloom workshop: real looms being worked by real people to produce lovely, patterned fabric. Further along is the Galagedera Primary School and the Sujatha Girls School. Founded in 1906 this is the only girls school in the area, teaching around 1,000 pupils from first grade on. The village’s main school, Galagedera Central College, is tucked away behind the village. Founded over 120 years ago, this large state school takes in students from ten to eighteen years, with about 70 staff members to educate 1,000 students. For hardcore consumers, a retail treat offers itself next with The Global Electrics and Paint Shop, owned by one of 3 bothers, the hardware tycoons of the village. The second brother trades in such item as cement, plumbing and electrics ...
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    19 mins
  • Rambling in the Outer Gardens
    Jun 29 2025
    This episode is dedicated to the sprawling plantation gardens that disappear off into the jungle around Sri Lanka’s Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. This longer of two walks, which we call THE ESTATE WALK, starts at THE PODI PATH just outside the front porch that leads into the hotel. A traditional kitchen constructed of mud and bamboo once stood on this path, managed by Podemenike whose life roughly and remarkably followed that of independent Sri Lanka. Around 1950 she began work on the estate as a lady’s maid. It was just a few years after independence – and she stayed on to help protect the estate once the family fled after the 1987 JVP Uprising. This violent Marxist-Leninist insurrection almost toppled the then government of President Premadasa. For over two years a state of near anarchy dominated life, with militant riots, mass executions, and assassinations affecting most areas of the island. Pro and anti-government militias added to the battle, the causalities of which, Human Rights Watch eventually estimated at 35,000 – a figure no sides yet agree on. It wasn’t the first such uprising. In 1971 a similar insurrection occurred, this time against the Bandaranaike government, though its fatalities were considered to be less. But the 1987 rebellion was the first truly island wide event that deeply affected the estate, causing it to be abandoned by all except Podemenike and two elderly croppers, understandably fond of arrack. It was a terrible time for the country and although Podemenike’s kitchen has long since gone, as you walk down this little path, you may, at least in your imagination, still catch the smell of real village cooking - warm spices and buttery rice. THE PODI PATH cuts through a pepper plantation, arriving soon at a flight of steps on the left just before THE SPICE KITCHEN. Herein lies the entrance to THE KITCHEN GARDEN, with two special trees coming into touch on the right. The first of these is a Cannonball Tree or Sal Tree. This is a mighty and magnificent wonder, with pink white architectural flowers like half open lids that give off one of the most perfumed and refined scents you are ever lightly to encounter on this good earth. It grows to over one hundred feet and the flowers eventually turn into seeds the size of cannonballs that hang off the main stems of the tree like a wayward artillery store. The tree comes from South America and is the source of adamantly held confusions. Buddhists believe that Lord Buddha was born in a garden of sal trees in Lumbini in distant Nepal. But the Cannonball or Sal tree growing in Sri Lanka only arrived in South Asia in the 1880s. The first one to have a detailed record is that in the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, planted in on the 14th of April 1901 by Geroge V and his alarming wife, Queen Mary. Given the extreme botanical spectacle that this tree is, it is no surprise that it has come to be conflated with the sal Lord Buddha would have known – shorea robusta, a smaller tree with little flowers and no fragrance. I hesitate to boast and brag, but the inventible conclusion from comparing our Cannonball Tree with King George’s is that our, being much larger, must predate 1901. Beside it is what looks like Breadfruit tree. Or possibly a jacktree? Actually, it is both – a rare hybridising that occurred entirely naturally between these related species. The relationship coach, Laura Doyle, famed, at least in California for her trademarked “Six Intimacy Skills,” remarked that “Only God is perfect. For the rest of us, there are apologies.” And so it is for our Kitchen Garden. Invaded nightly by hungry porcupines; several times by a small herd of 20 wild boar, and often at the mercy of deer, squirrels, and monkeys, it is a wonder it ever produces any herbs or vegetables. Even so, we limp on, brave as Obi-Wan Kenobi, planting organic wonders that will flourish all the better once we finally get around to fencing in the entire acre. The happier plants grow in a large greenhouse, mostly soft vegetables, and herbs. The area is surrounded by shade nurseries, home to hundreds of hand reared trees, destined for timber plantations or our rare trees arboretum. Returning back to the steps up which you first came to enter the kitchen garden you then pass, on your left THE SPICE KITCHEN. This modest building was made in the traditional way as a Pandemic project in 2021 by our whole team, using bamboo, mud, and leftovers. It is the place for staff teas and lunches, and a creche. Part of the building is used to process latex, the raw white juice extracted from the estate rubber trees that is then half dried and rolled on machinery made in Wolverhampton in the 1940s. At the building’s end is another flight of steps, this one leading up into THE HOCKIN’S SPICE GARADEN. The path through the spice garden is circular, eventually returning you back to this point. And now you are in the Estate’s ...
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    20 mins
  • Ambling in the Inner Gardens
    Jun 29 2025
    This episode is dedicated to the home garden that is wrapped around Sri Lanka’s The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. “Once, when I was young and true,” wrote Dorothy Parker in 1926, “Someone left me sad; Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad.” Fortunately, an early broken heart was not to be my fate. Gardens were. Plants. And especially trees. For it was gardens, not love, occupied my childish imaginings. Gardens, I concluded were all variants of a single standard – the best example to be found amidst the faultless flower beds of the governor’s house, in Madras, the Raj Bhavan. This was a proper garden. Built in the 1670s, its regimented perfection even stretched out into a deer park, whose trees were as disciplined as they were well mannered. Of course, it helped that they were tended by armies of gardeners, but of these unsung heroes, little was ever said. Later when I saw Versailles, it all came together. Gardens were actually houses albeit with green bits. Over the years I tested this theory: in window baskets overlooking Scotch House Corner; on Bayswater balconies, Welsh seaside cottages, Oxfordshire villages. It seemed to hold. Until, that is, we set about gardening in the jungle. We had bought, incautious and without any help whatsoever from Excel, a 25-acre Plantation north of Kandy in central Sri Lanka. It had been abandoned during the JVP uprisings. Its 1,000 high rocky hills stalled a Dutch army in 1765; and until the civil war the estate stretched over 100 acres with 3 working elephants. When the estate agent had closed the deal, the estate had reduced to 25 acres and a bewildering number of buildings, all of them as unstable as a Sunday morning drunk. Trees grew in rooms; animals lived on shelves. And rapidly, I realised that the real world was precisely like my childhood definition of a garden, only the other way around. Limitless green forest with the odd house attached – and forever fighting an unsuccessful campaign to keep nature at bay. Earth Org, the environmental news website, agrees, stating that despite the interminable assaults made upon it, nature is still the boss. Just 20% of Earth's land surface is either urban or farmed. So our jungle gardening is undertaken modestly, with the lightest of hearts, the boundary between wild and tamed conveniently blurred so that excesses on either side are easily tolerated. It’s a green version of the balance of power and an opportunity to see Nudge Theory in practice. Even so, this estate, having been abandoned for twenty years before we bought it, had sided a little too firmly with the jungle. The balance of power was extravagantly unbalanced. The estate road was undrivable; the plantations had become savage forests, and trees grew in its courtyards and buildings, guests occupying superior VIP suites. Pushing these boundaries back was like sailing down the Nile: a slow voyage, with plenty of opportunities to become distracted by everything that happens when you blink. But slowly slowly our gardening team reclaimed parts of the interior and created 4 different walks to take you around most of it. Some areas remain wild, unvisited for a decade at least, cherished no-go zones left to shy lorises and civets. Of these 4 walks, the gentlest of perambulations is The Home Garden Walk. This stroll begins just outside the main hotel office and porch, with both buildings shaded by THE PARROT DAKOTA, a tree named after New York’s towering Dakota Apartments. This Sri Lankan Dakota version is no less a Renaissance creation – a Java Cassia, or to give it its common name, The Pink Shower Tree. Flowering with puffs of Barbie pink clouds in April and May, it fruits and sheds its leaves in December. Our specimen is over 120 years old; its hollows and defensive height making it our leading parrot apartment block. Amongst its many tenants are rose-ringed, plum-headed and Layard’s parakeets – three of the world’s 353 parrot species. Layard’s parakeet is an easy one to spot for it has a long light blue tail, a grey head, and a fondness of sudden, prolonged screeching. The green-all-over rose-ringed parakeet is a giveaway too - with a bright red beak and the slimmest of head rings. But the most striking is the male plum-headed parakeet. He is a stunner, his proud red head offset with purple and blue feathers. He would turn heads in any nightclub. Two other parrot species live on the island but have yet to be spotted here: The Alexandrine parakeet is similar to the rose-ringed parakeet – only much larger. It’s a bit of a city dweller. The other, the sparrow-small, endemic Sri Lankan hanging parrot or lorikeet is a rare creature: a twitcher’s crowning glory. All these birds can be found in G. M. Henry’s celebrated 1958 Guide to The Birds of Ceylon, which sits in the hotel library, together with some of his original watercolours. Henry was one of the last great ornithologists ...
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    22 mins