Travels in Sri Lanka

 

Mint condition. HB. 528pp. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia

Sri Lanka is a small island with a long, violent and enthralling history. Home to thousands of wild elephants, this is a place where natural beauty has endured, indifferent to human tragedy.
Journeying through its many regions - some haunted by war, many rarely seen by our eyes - award-winning travel writer John Gimlette interviews ex-presidents and cricketers, tea planters and terrorists, negotiating the complex relationships of Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim communities and the more sinister forms of tourism.

Each city raises the ghosts of old colonies: Portuguese, Dutch and British armies striving to claim the most significant ports in the southern seas; each site resurrects a civilization that preceded, and sometimes, outfaced them. The political families of Colombo lead Gimlette through recent years of turmoil, survivors of the tsunami tell of their recovery and, tale by tale, scrap by scrap, the thorny truths of the civil war emerge - a war whose wounds have yet to heal.

As he walks in the steps of old conquerors, follows the secret paths of elephants and marches alongside pilgrims, Gimlette seeks the soul of a country that is struggling to free itself from trauma and embody an identity to match its vitality, its power and its people.

SOLD Farming in Sri Lanka

 

SOLD

Excellent condition. PB. 295pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

BBC journalist and environmentalist Rory Spowers wanted to finally live his dream and abandon life in London for a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle.

Moving with his wife and two toddler sons to a 60-acre abandoned tea estate in Sri Lanka, Rory sets out to create a model organic farm there and earn his livelihood from the land.

The fascinating story begins with the tsunami and Rory's sudden involvement with the relief efforts, and charts the course of his adventures over 12 months culminating in the launch of his new business (making a living by selling the produce he grows).

It chronicles the highs and lows of this radical change, and reveals what it takes to live a sustainable life.

It will also include tips for those of you who wish to live a more environmentally friendly life.

Spowers' writing in 'Three Men on a Bike', which recounted his story of buying the Goodies' bicycle and riding it across Africa for charity, was compared with Bryson, Palin and Hawks' for his storytelling, humour and intrepid spirit.

Spowers' narrative brims with adventure, harrowing moments, and small triumphs as he comes to know the people and the land and works toward creating his dream of a sustainable, model forest garden.