12 April 2013

We had an early morning start to catch the 10:30am ferry that was taking us to Nainativu which is a 20 minute boat ride from Jaffna. We were going there to visit the Naga Pooshani Amabal Temple.

The original ancient temple was destroyed by the Portuguese in the 1620s. After defeating the army of the last King of Jaffna, Sankili, the Portuguese went on a rampage destroying many ancient temples, probably in their quest to spread Christianity to the ‘heathens’. The current temple dates from 1788 (the year the first fleet arrived with upstanding citizens to Australia) and the towering gopuram was built in 1935.

Our boat trip was in a traditional boat and was quite and experience. The boat had been previously arranged to pick us up. One of my cousin’s husband comes from Nainativu and we were going to experience the warm hospitality of his relatives.

We spent some time at the temple. It was fairly popular and people were coming from all over to attend services here. In the compound of the temple there were a few cows roaming freely. The devotees feed them bananas which the cows seem to devour with great pleasure. Dogs abound in numbers at this place too.

Our cousin’s people arranged auto rickshaws (tuk-tuks) to take us around the island. They picked us up for lunch at a relations place.

Lunch was incredible; it was easily one of the best meals we had. These relations really put on a good spread. Charles and I retired to the chairs in the yard to try and have an afternoon nap.

After a few hours (to allow Jeeva and Bala to have a nap on the bed that was in the lounge room), we bid our farewells and headed back to the jetty. It was a real hot day. My pores were spurting sweat. When we got to the mainland, we hopped on the van and were heading for Karainagar. This time we made the crossing by ferry. The ferry point was much nearer to us and to save time we decided to load the van on the ferry for the trip across. The ferries are well patronised, mostly by motorbikes.

We headed back to the hotel for a shower, clean-up and quick rest before heading to Jeeva’s relative’s house for dinner. Again we were thoroughly spoilt. The hospitality of the hosts was incredible. We all slept well on this day.