Paradise At The Doorstep

Paradise in a religious sense is a place with positive existence where life is harmonious and eternal. Generally, a place of contentment where peace and prosperity prevail. In a practical sense, a land of satisfaction but not necessarily a land of luxury and idleness. A tropical island where one feels as though everything is perfect and wonderful is also defined a paradise. 

Sri Lanka’s misty untouched mountains, the sun drenched sandy beaches bordering gyrating coconut palms; its National Parks in the lowland shrubs where elephant, deer and leopard roam; was once a specimen for paradise. This may sound an exaggeration today with the development taking place in the countryside not heeding to norms of nature. Yet though, there still exists places which qualify the criteria. 

Laxapana, in the central hills of Sri Lanka is a village, still remote in terms of accessibility. Located in the foothills of the magnificent Seven Virgins Range is famous for a water-fall…. and as a place of Sri Lanka’s hydro-power generation.

Waterfalls are a fascination to watch; a pure white thick strip of silk like liquid descending vertically to crash on the rocks below to dissipate the enormous kinetic energy.

 Result… a continuous spray of water vapour which turn the immediate atmosphere into a mild and wholesome one; while the sunlight changing its angle in the vapour create multiple rainbows throughout the day.

This is the typical picture that man tried to create through his imagination of paradise. 

Laxapana - Falls in the bygone days was a view from far; being inaccessible in a forest. Today one could get to its toe, a 300 m descend by foot from the motor road. Its immediate being opened for tea cultivation by small time farmers; some have their abodes in the midst of the tea. The surround may be different from what it may have looked then but the tea and the housing is not much of an eyesore as such spoiling nature.

The people living here are swayed to slumber every night to the continuous harmony of the falling water, and they open their doors every morning to a vista of a falling veil of water………..

 

Living off the three leaves and the bud; [the harvest of the tea leaves] which supplement their bare necessities are ignorant of the luxury of the location they dwell.

I was here recently……. and weren’t we in paradise lying on the rocks below gazing at the passing clouds above………. with the tingle of the water spray on your face with rainbows all around.

For a moment yes we were in paradise until we decided to ascend up to the road? Being so unfit lacking exercise……. our exhausted lungs in the rib cages giving out crippling pain while one could only hear your own heart beating so loud and fast from within in your ears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seven Virgin Hills a uniquely formed seven peaks on a continuous wall of granite act as a barrier to this enchanting vista….. as if blocking the evil eye of its spells on paradise as narrated in Greek Mythology.

 

It was onto this massif the ill-fated Martinair airline chartered by Garuda Indonesian Airways crashed killing all 262 passengers and crew en-route to Mecca on December 4, 1974, marking Sri Lanka's worst ever air tragedy.

A wheel of the airline from the crash site is displayed at the Norton-bridge Town as a monument to those who perished.