The Grandest Oriental Hotel

As Sri Lanka's international airport is at Colombo, we landed there and covered Edward's route in a different direction to him. He landed at Galle, travelled north to Colombo, inland to Kandy and then back by the same route to Galle whereas we went from Colombo to Galle, up through the mountains by bus and train to Kandy and then back on the train to Colombo.

In Colombo, Edward stayed at the Royal Hotel which as far as I can ascertain was replaced by the GPO in the 1890s. A photo showing the mail coach, by which Edward travelled up from Galle, can be found on a pinterest site called NILAN's Beautiful Sri Lanka. Thanks to my abysmal technical skills I failed to upload the photo but if you're interested you can google it yourself.

We had booked a room in the Grand Oriental Hotel which is also in Colombo Fort and claims to be the first European style hotel in Sri Lanka.The site was originally the Dutch Governors residence which was extended in 1837 to become barracks for the British military. In 1875 it was further rebuilt and opened as the Grand Oriental Hotel with 154 rooms. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the place to stay in Colombo and claims a number of Asian leaders and other celebrities such as Anton Chekov, as former guests.Today other more modern hotels have taken the mantle of Colombo's finest but the Grand Oriental is still a nice place to stay with an air of the faded Raj and thus ideal for us to get a feel of Edward's experience.

The Grand Oriental Hotel 

In Edward's day it appears that Colombo was essentially Fort, based on the old Dutch fort and where all the Europeans lived, and the adjoining area of Pettah which was where the Sri Lankans lived. Once outside of those areas you were into the hinterlands, whereas today, Fort and Pettah are just the downtown centre of a huge, sprawling metropolis. Edward visited cinnamon gardens in Colombo which were presumably where the suburb of Cinnamon Gardens are today, a couple of kilometers from the centre of town. We took a tuk tuk, 3 wheeler down to the National Museum there which is located at the edge of Colombo's largest parklands, Viharamahadevi Park. The museum was well set out with a huge range of relics from all periods of Sri Lankan history and a good place to get an overview of that history.

We walked back from the Museum up along the coast and through Galle Face Green, built like an English beachfront promenade, in 1859, just after Edward was here. Colombo's appeal as a tourist destination is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Galle Face Green consistently appears in lists of "Things to do in Colombo" but it is a barren, shadeless, windswept area where the grass is struggling to survive. It was too sad for me even to take a photo.

In the evening, like Edward we ventured into Pettah but unlike him we didn't stumble on any local entertainments. He came across a performance, which continued till midnight, consisted of a sort of morris dance with sticks, but not involving any great display of skill or activity. The dance was accompanied with songs and music produced from a violin and a Malay drum beaten with the fingers. Edward found the music pleasing and the novelty of the whole scene...interesting and agreeable. For our part we just found streets and alleys full of the usual bustling commerce of Asia. Endless shops and stalls selling all kinds of food, household items, clothes, tools, bags etc etc. Edward mentions tasting mangoes which he thought had a flavour of turpentine and anything but nice whereas we had mangoes on several occasions which while smaller than Australian mangoes, were just as nice and considerably cheaper.