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WONDERS OF NATURE
Sri Lanka island. Nature miracle
Blue sky, dark turquoise sea and green fringe of coconut trees over the yellow stripe of the beach - this is how the coast of Sri Lanka opens up to the eye of the traveler.
To Europeans, this island has always seemed like an earthly paradise. It is no coincidence that the chain of islands that crosses the Polk Strait and connects Sri Lanka with India was called the Adam's Bridge. According to him, as the legend says, the forefather of mankind, expelled from paradise, came to earth. By the way, one of the highest mountain peaks in Sri Lanka is also called Adam's Peak. It even has a rock with a dent that looks like a human foot - as they say, the imprint of Adam's foot. During religious holidays, thousands of pilgrims climb the narrow path to the top of the peak, eager to touch the shrine. The island of Sri Lanka was known as early as the XNUMXst millennium BC. In the ancient Indian legend about Rama and Sita, better known to us under the name "Ramayana", there is an episode when the wife of Prince Rama, Sita, is kidnapped by the evil Ravana, the king of Sri Lanka. But, although the Sri Lankan ruler took refuge on his island under the protection of a huge army, the brave Rama, with the help of the mighty monkey king Hanuman, who helped him, managed to defeat the army of Ravana and regain Sita. They also say that, having returned home along the Adam's bridge. Rama asked Hanuman how he could thank him. And the far-sighted monkey king replied that he would like to live as long as people remember the exploits of the prince. Thus Hanuman became immortal, for the memory of the divine Rama and his victories is passed down in India from generation to generation. During its long history, the island has changed many names, but all of them invariably expressed admiration. The Arabs called it Serendib ("Blessed Island"). The ancient Greeks called it Taprobana (meaning "Coast of Bronze Palms"). The British gave the island the name Ceylon. This word comes from the distorted "Singala-dvina" - "Lion Island" - this is how the Sinhalese Indians who settled here in ancient times called this country. The current name of the island and the country in Sanskrit means "Blessed Land". The great poet of India, Rabindranath Tagore, once called Sri Lanka "the pearl in the Indian Ocean." Since then, many wonderful writers have visited the island - from Zweig and Kipling to the classic of modern fiction Arthur C. Clarke, and everyone admired him in their own way. There were also Russian writers here: Goncharov and Chekhov, Garin and Bunin. Not to list the enthusiastic epithets that they awarded Sri Lanka "Emerald drop in the warm sea", "Treasure Island", "Paradise", "Pearl Treasury of the East", "Land of Eternal Summer", etc. I must say that there is no exaggeration in the last name: the country's climate is indeed even and warm throughout the year. Both in summer and winter the temperature here is about plus 27, and in the mountains - 20-25 degrees. From May to August, moist sea winds - monsoons bring heavy rains to the island. At this time, the clouds over the earth thicken so much that everything plunges into dusk, as if a solar eclipse has come, and whole streams of water fall from the sky, so dense that nothing can be seen twenty paces away. Rivers overflow their banks, and flash floods sometimes destroy entire villages. So, in 1957, due to floods caused by monsoon rains, almost three hundred thousand inhabitants of the country were left homeless. But the rest of the time the sun shines brightly over Sri Lanka. The forests of the island amaze with their power and diversity. Here you can find giant trees reaching 50 meters in height, and small, but beautiful flowering plants, and numerous creepers wrapping around the trunks and branches of other trees. Among them are many valuable, unique species: sandalwood with gently fragrant branches, ebony, also called "black" for the color of the wood, rosewood - teak, breadfruit with edible fruits, tree ferns, papaya, mango and many others. But most of all in the forests of various palm trees, of which, of course, coconut ones are in the first place. Their slender silhouettes, sometimes rising up to 30-35 meters, are found everywhere on the island. Since ancient times, this plant has served man in tropical countries. Its nuts are used as food and provide an oil used in the manufacture of soap and candles. Huts are covered with palm leaves, baskets, mats and brushes are made from them, wood is used for buildings, and dishes are made from walnut shells. Palm fiber is used to make ropes and fabrics. From other types of palms, sweet juice is obtained, which after fermentation becomes an intoxicating drink, starch, sugar, wax and other substances. In the old days, paper similar to parchment was made from the leaves of the talipot palm tree. Ancient manuscripts written on it have survived to this day - more than a thousand years! And the fruits of the cabbage palm are now included in the menu of the inhabitants of the island. Near Buddhist monasteries, banyan groves always grow - the sacred tree of India and Sri Lanka. After all, it was under the banyan tree two and a half thousand years ago that he experienced "enlightenment", that is, he understood the cause of human suffering and the way to get rid of them, the founder of Buddhism, Prince Gautama. It happened in one of the cities of Northern India. Since then, Gautama took the name Buddha ("Enlightened One"). Millions of pilgrims come to bow to the tree, which has survived to this day. And in 245 BC, the envoys of Sri Lanka turned to the priests who guarded the sacred Indian tree with a request to allow them to take one branch of a banyan tree to their island so that they would also grow a symbol of the true faith. Permission was granted, and the stalk of the tree in a golden vessel went down the Ganges River, and then across the sea to Sri Lanka, where it was planted on a hill in the ancient capital of the country - Anuradhapura and poured with sacred water from the Ganges. And the tree has taken root in a new place and has been flowering and bearing fruit for more than two thousand years. The monks carried its fruits all over the island, and now there is no Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, near which the banyan tree would not grow. By the way, this tree is a close relative of the well-known indoor ficus. Incidentally, the fig tree, which is widespread in the Mediterranean, or the fig tree, as the Bible calls it, also belongs to the same ficus family. An amazing feature of the banyan tree is its ability to form numerous aerial roots hanging from the branches to the ground. Rooted in the soil, these roots begin to thicken, turning into powerful additional trunks, reaching a meter in diameter. (The main trunk is sometimes up to ten meters in diameter.) Gradually, the tree turns into a real forest, sometimes occupying a whole hectare and consisting of 600-800 trunks! The largest banyan tree is considered to be a five-hundred-year-old tree in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, resembling a huge green hill with an area of two hectares. It is even listed in the Guinness Book of Records. True, such giants have not been recorded in Sri Lanka. There is a real abundance of animals in the forests of the island: there are wild elephants and buffaloes, black sloth bears and leopards, jackals and meter-sized bats - flying foxes, as well as many monkeys, flocks of which regularly devastate the fields and gardens of local residents. There are five species of deer in Sri Lanka, including the largest axis deer with a spotted skin and a mouse deer the size of a hare. The jungles of Sri Lanka also abound with birds, many of which fly here in winter from the north. But there are also permanent residents among them - these are peacocks, weavers, partridges and amazingly beautiful Ceylon kingfishers, whose feathers on their backs shimmer with all shades of blue. Dangerous animals are also found here, such as poisonous snakes (including cobra), crocodiles, sometimes growing up to five meters in length, and sharks in coastal sea waters. A rare fish lives in the rivers, similar to a huge, up to a meter long, eel. In the dry season, she is able to crawl overland from one reservoir to another, which has not yet dried up. And residents of Sri Lanka tame gecko lizards and keep them in their homes to fight flies, mosquitoes and mosquitoes. In the fertile climate of the island, conditions are excellent for the cultivation of many cultivated plants, and therefore most of the plains of Sri Lanka (and they occupy four-fifths of the country) have been turned into plantations. They grow rubber tree-hevea and cocoa, coconut palms and coffee trees, bananas and citrus fruits. But the main asset of Sri Lanka is its famous tea, which we call Ceylon tea from old memory. A third of all the tea harvested in the world is grown here, and it provides the lion's share of the income of the state treasury. But not only the richness of the flora is famous for the nature of the island. In its mountains On the roads of Sri Lanka, the richest reserves of the best graphite in the world were found, "black sands" - the most valuable ore of titanium and zirconium - are mined off the coast. However, first of all, Sri Lanka is known to the whole world for its precious stones. More than forty different types of gems hide its bowels: rubies and topazes, amethysts and garnets, tourmalines and alexandrites. The deposits of the latter are known, by the way, only in two places in the world: in Sri Lanka and here in the Urals. The "cat's eye" is also mined here - a stone that, according to legend, protects against assassination attempts and poisoning. They say that in the Middle Ages a ring with this stone; seven times he saved the life of the crown prince - the son of the ruler of the Sinhalese, whom the enemies tried to kill either with a dagger, or with poison, or by sawing a bridge across the abyss on his way. But the magic talisman protected its owner every time, and the prince eventually became the ruler of the island. Sapphire is rightly considered the most valuable gem of Sri Lanka. This blue stone is highly rated by connoisseurs. For one carat of it (0,2 grams) they pay up to two thousand dollars! In the East, there is an ancient legend about the origin of this wonderful gem. It is said that the supreme deity of the Hindus - Brahma, people turned to with a request to show them the most precious of all the seven wonders of the universe. Brahma climbed the sacred mountain Kailash, filled the bowl with the magic drink of immortality - amrita and splashed it out on a grand scale on the surroundings. Splashes of amrita scattered all over the world and, falling to the ground, turned into precious stones. These were the sapphires. The mountains of Sri Lanka, as already mentioned, occupy only a fifth of the island's area. But these are steep, rocky ridges and plateaus, sometimes towering two and a half kilometers above the plain. The rivers flowing from the mountains abound with waterfalls. According to their number, Sri Lanka can be compared with the most "waterfall" country in the world - the South African kingdom of Lesotho. There are more than a hundred large waterfalls, of which a dozen are more than a hundred meters high. In the central part of the island, south of the ancient capital of the country - Kandy, on an area of fifty by fifty kilometers there are seven such waterfalls and cascades at once, including the 210-meter Kurundu and the 190-meter Diyaluma. The city of Kandy itself, known since the 700th century, is located at an altitude of 1592 meters at the foot of the Piduru ridge and has a temperate climate. It is considered the coolest city in the country. City buildings are encircled by the longest river of Sri Lanka - Mahaweli. The main attraction of Kandy is an ancient temple, where one of the main Buddhist shrines - the Tooth of the Buddha is kept. This sacred relic was first kept in one of the temples of India, but when the Muslims took over the Buddhists in the principality where the temple was located, the daughter of the ruler, hiding the Tooth in her high hair, managed to get out of the city and reached Sri Lanka by ship. Here the Buddhist shrine was handed over to the king of the island, who built a special temple for it in 200, which became a place of pilgrimage for Buddhists from all over the world. The most important holiday in Sri Lanka, Perahera, is dedicated to the sacred tooth of the Buddha. On this day, a solemn procession is held in Kandy, in which XNUMX festively dressed up elephants take part, one of which carries on its back a golden copy of the casket - the vault of the Tooth. And not far from the ancient capital is another pearl of Sri Lanka - Sigiriya Rock ("Lion Mountain"). With its outlines, it really looks like a mighty predator preparing to jump. Back in the XNUMXth century, a palace city was built on an unusual rock, which at that time served as the residence of the king, and later served as a dwelling for Buddhist monks. A huge rock mass, towering above the green wall of the forest, was visible from afar. To further highlight it, the sheer walls of the mountain were whitewashed and polished to a mirror finish. A marble palace with a luxurious garden and fountains was erected on the flat top of Sigiriya. Only one hard-to-reach path led to it from the foot of the cliff, ending at the walls of the residence. The gates in them were arranged in the form of a giant lion's head. To get into the palace, one had to pass through the fierce, grinning mouth of the beast. According to legend, a fabulous building on an impregnable peak was built by the evil and treacherous prince Kasiyapa. To seize power in the country, he killed his father and sent his younger brother into exile. After that, fearing revenge, he ordered the construction of a palace on a rock and took refuge there. But eighteen years later, the villain still suffered a well-deserved retribution. His brother, Moggolana, gathered an army, took Sigiriya by storm and executed the criminal. A Buddhist monastery was built in the deserted palace. A few centuries later, the monastery was empty, and soon the green wall of the jungle hid this unique masterpiece of architecture from people. And only at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, using fragmentary information preserved in ancient manuscripts, archaeologists were able to find and clear the ancient ruins. Now Sigiriya is included in the list of the most valuable historical monuments of the world and is under the auspices of UNESCO. Such is this amazing island, endowing the traveler with a precious bouquet of the most exquisite and diverse experiences: amazing trees and unique animals, warm sea beaches and shady groves of coconut palms, placers of precious stones and foamy streams of waterfalls, white marble palaces and mysterious ancient rituals, fruits worthy of gourmets, and legends that have survived millennia ... And it is no coincidence that one of the wise and experienced thinkers of our time, the American science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, having visited Sri Lanka, was so subdued by it that he stayed here to live forever. And when asked about the reasons for such an act, he answered briefly and simply: "I do not know a better place on our planet!" Author: B.Wagner
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