there is something mysterious about travelling......
maybe is because we travel to places which are outside our usual environment or comfort zone....
maybe its the people we meet...unique people with stories to tell and amaze..
maybe its the journey....the time we spend on the road...the singing, the food, the people we travel with....
or maybe its all of this put together.....
Quite recently, maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago, some of friends from work and I went on a outing to Galle.
Galle is about 119 kilometers away from Colombo. It quite a unique city with a lot 16th Century dutch architecture thrown in...
Coming back to the story.., There were about 30 or so people (in one huge bus capable of seating around 60 people comfortably..) with me....and the best bits of the trip was not actually in our final destination, but on a few places we stooped on the way...
first...after leaving Colombo at around 7.30am...( 1 hour later than the planned time..) and 1 1/2 hours on the road with light traffic, i got up asked the driver to turn right on to a very narrow road leading in the direction of the beach. The people on board were all confused, but i asked them to savor the suspense... and then, just 2 or 3 mins of driving brought us to a big sign board which read: "Kosgoda Turtle Hatchery"..
Yup...a turtle hatchery...and surprisingly, most of the people had never been here....so it was my time to shine. I took tickets to everyone there ( for locals its just 25 rupees per head). And then we met up with the guide they had provided for us. And let me tell you, its an experience....the hatchery does quite a job according to our guide. According to him, the female turtles leaves the eggs after burring the eggs she laid in the beach. and most of the time either because of fishing boats docked in the shore or because of natural predators, only 1 or 2 survive to grow old ( and very very old at that).
so what the hatchery does is that it pays fisherman if they bring in eggs of turtles they find on the beach. This may sound like a bad idea. But its a idea which works. When the eggs are brought in, the eggs are taken care of from hatching to releasing to long-term care. The hatchery releases the baby turtles when they reach an age of 3 days....this pattern is only different when an albino turtle is concerned. As the turtle is purely white in color, therefore makes easy bait to sharks....
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| An albino turtle. They are long-term residents of the hatchery as in the wild they become easy targets... |
(Part 1 complete..).
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