The Fabulous Bawa Boys

The Bawa boys were like Sri Lankan royalty. Geoffrey Bawa was a prolific and world famous architect and his older brother, Bevis Bawa (yes, that's right), a celebrated landscape architect, artist, social gadfly and bonvivant.
Geoffrey was known for his love of bringing the outdoors inside and vice-versa in his open plan designs His work was characterised by the creation of long vistas, breezeways and galleries - often flowing into open spaces or courtyards. Check this open air gallery/corridor at the Lighthouse Hotel in Galle.

He was unusually (for the time) sympathetic to the local environment, as seen in the Kandalama Hotel, Dambulla, at left, which he designed in the 1990.s. It looks like it grew out of the rock face.

His first hotel was the Bentota Beach Hotel, built in 1968. I loved the pool. It was a great idea to retain a lot of the natural rock, to form part of its walls and floor, as you can see in these two pictures. In fact he uses stone throughout the hotel.

This large courtyard pool is the central feature of the hotel, and all of the main public rooms are arranged around its perimeter.

Above right is the reception area, unremarkable except for the ceiling which showcases these stunning batik panels. Unfortunately the hotel is about to be "modernised" and the panels are going, for God's ake.

Below are two views of the courtyards which flank the main building, above the pool area. He's used an interesting trompe l'oeuil effect by elongating the far corner so that from a distance it looks like the floor is going uphill.

Bawa died in 2003 after a stroke. He left quite a legacy, including hotels, universities, private houses, parliament house in Colombo and other government buildings. Especially remarkable, given that he didn't start until he was 38 years of age.

His elder brother Bevis was an interesting character. Born in 1909 to a Sri Lankan father and a Dutch descended mother,at 6 foot 7 inches he stood out from the crowd, shall we say - especially amongst the diminutive Sri Lankans. His bolthole was "Brief Garden" about 10 miles inland from Geoffrey's Bentota Beach Hotel. Why "brief" ?? I expected something romantic from an artist - maybe brief love, brief life etc, but no...turns out his father was a very successful criminal lawyer and he bought the property with the income from one "brief" or case.

Bought as a rubber plantation, BB turned it into a lovely garden and built his house on top of the little hill at its centre. It became an ornament to Sri Lankan social life and a bit of a staging post for itinerant luminaries, such as his mates, the Duke of Windsor, Laurence Olivier and Vivienne Leigh. The Oliviers stayed there while "Bridge over the River Kwai" was filmed. Leigh was also there for a while during the filming of "Elephant Walk" but then had her famous nervous breakdown and was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor, I think.

Lots of artists passed through, including Oz artist Donald Friend, the one who lived in Bali all those years.

Friend is said to have come for 6 days and stayed 6 years. Bawa eventually built him a little cottage out the back (now since pulled down)

The current owners have stacks of art by Friend and other mates who would drop by for a month or three. Another buddie was Sri Lanks most famous painter - Laki Senanayake. Amongst other things, he did this mural in the dining room The garden is not huge, but cleverly broken up by stands of bamboo, hedges and trees into little gardenettes (I made that word up), nooks and crannies which afford privacy, and beautiful little areas for contemplation.

Below is the descent from the house to the gate. In the middle is a moss covered outdoor shower coutyard.

The gentleman above is the Duke of Windsor (just kidding)

Well, that's the Bawa Boys - intelligent, artistic, rich and successful.............and they never married; ..go figure.

Road Trip

Tea, Tea, ........TEA!!!!!!



Nuwara Eliya is the tea capital of Sri Lanka, so its an important agricultural, commercial and also tourist area.

The scenery is fab - especially if you're into tea covered hillsides.



The road is crap - a 4 hour bone shaker from Kandy, although its only 80 kms. A chinese company are busy putting in a new one, which has presented a bit of an engineering challenge, on account of the existing very narrow road is about as wide as it can be, and also cause the road rises 1400 metres, mainly in the last 40 kms.





This tunel will be 200 metres long.

















Here's the team: Take it easy boys!

















I've got a bit of a fetish for subcontinental advertising and signage. Here are some snaps I took on the way:




Let's see........4 vitamins- 4 weeks......That makes sense, right?



A popular bleach for ladies: Being pale is apparently the way to go on the subcontinent! The papers all have marriage proposal sections and being fair is a valuable commodity. A typical ad might start - 22 year old, very fair, MBBS (Harvard), generous dowry...........

A timely warning against slovenly housekeeping!

Victoria Gardens - Nuwara Eliya.

They take their horticulture very, very seriiously in Sri Lanka

Rail Trip

Train number 1029 pulled out of Colombo Fort railway station right on time at 3.15 pm bound for Kandy, Twenty minutes later, inexplicably it ground to a halt in a jungleoid area where the air was so gaggingly foetid it might have been the place where skunks go to die. It was a smell you only get in the tropics - think rotten pineapple and goronzola cheese. Thankfuly it hadn't broken down there and ten minutes later off we wwnt again. I had a seat in the "first class" observation saloon. It had large windows in the front through which we were observed by passing Sri Lankans. Other than that, it was the usual falling to bits subcontinental railway carriage. Still, it was doing better than its Indian counterpart, which would have been dirty and falling to bits.

We rattled along now, through villages and railway sidings - British built mostly, with painted park style benches, canteens, ladies and gentlemen's retiring rooms and charmingly decorated with hanging plants and fire buckets.

Coconut palms, bananas and paddy fields gradually gave way to pines and flowering trees and areas of cleared land; rich grazing for fat happy cows.
I saw a boy splashing through his paddy after a buffalo that had made a dash for freedom,or maybe it was just bored. A procession of sari-clad ladies holding umbrellas against the hot sun flashed smiles up at the train. Kids ran to the tracks to wave and yell. We zipped past markets
and monasteries and lakes full of lotus, jack fruit and mango trees, their branches laden with ripe fruit, telegraph poles covered in a twisted tangle of vine. One lonely sweeper in an acre of garbage slowly swinging a switch broom. Bougainvillea and frangipani everywhere.

















After 2 1/2 hours we reached Kandy, Sri Lanka's second city and at 500 metres, significantly cooler than steamy Colombo.