When I asked the tour company to put Trincomalee on the itinerary they assumed that our interest lay in the beach resorts, since this is why most tourists apparently visit the area. When I realised that the Nilaveli Beach Resort was, in fact, some distance from the town (16 kilometres of poor road) I was none too happy. However, once we’d visited the town, it was obvious that we would have been hard-pushed to find a decent hotel there. So I think we had the best of both worlds. Or would have had, if the weather had been more cooperative.

We set out for Trinco from the resort at 8 am.  This had not suited me initially at all. I would have preferred another half-hour’s sleep after the long journey of the previous day, but I was outvoted by more dogged group members…

In the end it was a good thing, because, by lunch-time, any sight-seeing would have been rendered impossible by the return of the RAIN.

First stop in Trinco was at a supermarket. We all had different pressing needs. Two of the group were hankering after Arrack, having been introduced to it and promptly fallen in love with it in Negombo, thereafter feeling a meal was incomplete without a glass of this excellent coconut-flower spirit to round it off. Now they wanted to extend the experience to a night cap in their room. The other member of our party, who cannily travels with a suitcase full of English biscuits in case the local food is too challenging, or simply to supplement the meals with something comfortingly familiar, felt a pressing need to replenish her rapidly depleting stock.

My own shopping needs involved a request from a friend back home and a chain for my sunglasses, as my chain had fallen to pieces. It’s quite impossible to take photographs wearing sunglasses and it’s much easier to rid yourself of them if you can dangle them round your neck.  The friend had requested something called Samahan Herbal Tea, which she swears wards of colds and flu if you take it at the first sign.

Our shopping spree was only marginally successful – the supermarket had a pleasing range of biscuits but no arrack, never heard of the tea, and -surprise, surprise – no spectacle chains. However, a little further along the road as we headed out to Fort Frederick, we came across a rather smart optical centre. Not only did they have a nice choice of chains at very low prices but they also had a clean, western style toilet... 

Fort Frederick was built by the Portuguese, taken over and extended by the Dutch (is this beginning to sound familiar?) and eventually captured permanently (until independence in 1948) by the British in 1795. Thus Trincomalee became England's first ‘possession’ in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon.

 The importance of Trinco lies in its deep water harbour, one of the biggest in the world. It has seen a succession of overlords including the Cholas, the Danes and of course those ubiquitous colonialists, the Portuguese, Dutch and British. It was an important port for trading throughout the centuries and even Marco Polo paid a visit. After the fall of Singapore in the Second World War, Trincomalee became the base of the Royal Navy’s  Eastern Fleet.

Now it houses the Sri Lankan navy, so we weren’t allowed anywhere near it. That’s what we were told by Upali  after he had consulted local wisdom while we were in the supermarket. We had to accept this, though if the weather had been more accommodating later on, I might have asked him to test out this information by seeing how close we could get, though I sensed some reluctance to put himself in the firing line, so to speak.  As it was it was a great disappointment.

We headed out to the other reason for Trinco’s fame.  On a small peninsula between the inner and outer harbours, at the end of a causeway known as ‘Dockyard Road’ lies 130m high Swami Rock.  The views across the bay and down the coastline were quite spectacular.

It is undoubtedly on account of this area that Trincomalee features large in ancient Sri Lankan history and lore.

First mentioned in the Sri Lankan epic poem the Mahavamsa, the rock houses a Shiva temple which reaches into antiquity. Naturally the Portuguese destroyed it in 1624 and all the sacred icons were rapidly buried out of harm’s way. In 1950 seven of the icons were recovered by archaeologists and others, including the sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, who spent most of his life in Sri Lanka.  Subsequently a new temple arose on the site to house the icons.  Worshippers sacrifice burning coconuts or hang tiny cradles into the sacred tree overlooking the sea.

A hill opposte the temple, currently sporting three radio masts, is, according to legend, the hill where once stood the palace of Ravanna, the many-armed, many-headed demon king of Lanka, who abducted Sita in the Hindu epic  Ramayana.

We managed to squeeze in one more visit in Trinco before the rain began to bucket down again and we took shelter in a restaurant.  According to my German companions’ guidebook, one Charles Austen, brother of the author Jane Austen, was buried in St Stephan’s cemetery on Dockyard Road.  My friend and fellow writer Jennifer (Jay) Margrave has just written a novel based on Jane Austen's life, in which Charles also figures. So I decided to drag my companions through the first drops of the impending deluge and look for his grave. But we were out of luck. No sign of any memorial stone to Captain Austen. Only a herd of friendly chital deer, sheltering between the tombstones. Other sources say he was buried in the graveyard on Esplanade Road. No sign of this so I  assume it’s the same thing but if you know better, do please let me know.

Then the rains came, and, after a tasty local lunch, we swam back to the van beneath a forest of umbrellas, and made our slow way back to the Nilaveli Beach Resort  praying that the road would not be swept away before we got there. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the rain and drinking coffee. Oh yes, that insoluble coffee in Jaffna?  Not instant coffee at all, but Sri Lankan finely ground coffee, which we discovered was far from undrinkable. You are supposed to treat it like espresso and simply let it sink to the bottom of the cup. It is, in fact delicious and just what the doctor ordered to mollify rain-dampened moodiness. From now on we would all only drink ‘Sri Lankan coffee’.

(Left Jaffna with mixed feelings. Would have liked to have stayed longer to explore the peninsula, but The President had scuppered that plan. All is probably for the best though, as some of us needed our spirits lifting…)

Breakfast at the Jaffna Tilko, as I’ve previously mentioned, was dire. Apart from the leathery dosas and atrocious bread (so my companions informed me) there was the coffee.  A small pot of coffee powder was left on the ‘buffet’ table with a kettle of hot water. Now I hate instant coffee at the best of times and this took the biscuit. The coffee simply would not dissolve in the water. I left it in disgust and did without, telling the bemused ‘waiter’ (they also serve…) it was undrinkable. As did my trustee trio of fellow travellers. However all is often not what it seems, and later, though we had not drunk our coffee, we had cause to eat our words.  For now though we put up with rumbling stomachs and dry throats as we clambered into the van at 8 am for the long drive to Trincomalee.

The first couple of hours of our journey retraced our tyre-treads southwards as far as Vavuniya – that’s another blast from the past, and not only the past. Vavuniya was the front line during the civil war and even now is a volatile town: Tamil militant insurrections still erupt here from time to time.  Non-locals avoid the place. All except us, of course. Ah, the joy of being innocents abroad. We sailed through the town for a second time without incident.

Looking for positive signs as we trundled on through landmined countryside, I saw this on the side of the road. Was it a expression of peace between former enemies? For a moment I thought so. Now, on reflection and after a bit of research, I think it's simply the motto of one of the Sri Lankan Army regiments, who are probably stationed there. Still, it's a good motto, whoever put it there.

From Vavuniya we turned east along the main road to Trincomalee. In fact it was a diabolical stretch of highway, at times amounting to little more than a track. The distance between Vavuniya and Trinco is approximately two-thirds of that between Jaffna and Vavuniya, but took twice as long. Upali was not a happy bunny. He had wanted to follow the road south as far as Mihintale and then turn east along a better road. But the tour agency refused to pay him the extra mileage. Since the car belongs to Upali they had no interest in the potential wear and tear that would result, as long as they kept their costs down.  

On this road  also we encountered constant evidence of the past conflict: very few dwellings were whole, most had suffered war damage or been completely destroyed, though the occasional town was bustling. The landscape was less Spartan than further north. We passed paddy fields and many stretches of water.  

And talking of water, it started to rain. Did I say rain? I meant RAIN. It was quite timid at first, a few showers here and there. The others were worried. ‘It never rains all day,’ I assured them, based on my pre-monsoonal experience in South India. ‘It’ll stop in an hour or so.’

It didn’t. So much for Clever Clogs. The gods slowly opened the heavenly sluice-gates a little wider. By the time we got to our destination it was raining as if all Indra’s winged elephants were continually tipping up their water-pots to lustrate the earth. No more nice, gentle rain. A never-ending deluge.

It was 2pm when we turned into the Nilaveli Beach Resort that was to be our home for the next couple of nights. We couldn’t see a lot because of the rain but during a break (the only one) in the downpour we managed to get onto the beach, take a short walk and meet some of the locals on their way home before the gods got angry again.

 The sea was also angry. Huge white breakers lashed the shore. We looked over to Penguin Island where we had hoped to do a bit of snorkelling. ‘Not today,’ the owner of the Penguin Island boats told us. ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’ I thought he was being optimistic. In any case tomorrow was reserved for visiting Trincomalee, which was, after all, the reason for our long bumpy journey to this part of Sri Lanka.

The rain didn’t let up. All we could do was rest, watch the sodden monkey troop swing through the grounds, and wait for dinner, which, when it came, was magnificent. The buffet included freshly caught  grilled seafood, cooked on a barbecue in front of your eyes. 

Meanwhile I watched the angry sea, reflecting that on Boxing Day 2004 this whole resort had been swept away in an instant. This is an excerpt from an article in the Sri Lanka Daily News on 1^st January 2005:

‘For over 30 years, the Nilaveli Beach Resort, built on a pristine stretch of sun-drenched beach on Sri Lanka's eastern shore, was the only luxury hotel in this sparsely populated fishing village.

The 83-room resort operated during the "bad times", when the army launched sporadic attacks on nearby LTTE hideouts at the height of a two-decade old war. Miraculously, it never suffered damage in the crossfire.

While many hotels went bankrupt, the Nilaveli resort maintained an average occupancy rate of 72 percent. On many days the hotel gave rooms to the military to run an emergency field hospital that cared for soldiers injured in battle.

But what a war that claimed over 64,000 lives failed to destroy was swallowed up by the very surf that many visitors came here to enjoy.

 More than 300 people were staying at the Nilaveli Resort when the tsunami struck, and 15 of them - including eight unidentified foreign guests - drowned. Around 100 others are still missing.

Guests' vehicles were swept into ground-floor rooms while hotel furniture was found on the roadside 1 km away

As I stood watching the waves, the power of the sea, even during a ‘normal’ post-monsoonal storm, sent a chill through me as I reflected on what had happened here. I wondered why I could find no plaque or other means of commemorating those who had lost their lives. Maybe the owners are afraid of terrifying visitors, though the resort’s story is well-known.

Demonstrating the grit and ability to pick up and carry on with life that typifies countries prone to disaster, a new Nilaveli Beach Resort has risen from the ruins of the old, and now there seems to be a general air of looking forward rather than dwelling on what cannot be undone.