Into the Dark Colonial Past

After the long drive – in time if not in distance – I was eager to get to my fourth Sri Lankan hotel – the Closenberg. It was built on the site of an old Dutch fort – not as a hotel, but as the home of the Englishman Captain Francis Bailey and his wife. Captain Bailey was the agent of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, founded in the 19th century and still going strong under the name P&O. He and his wife lived there happily for 30 years until shipping shifted from Galle to Colombo with the building of a new port and they had to move. Their well-loved house was acquired in 1889 by a Sri Lankan family who still owns it today.
The hotel is white on the outside, but the inside is dark. The walls are paneled with teak and the massive furniture is made of the same wood. It looked gloomy, especially as it was nearly empty. They explained to me that a wedding had just finished. Most of the rooms were occupied by wedding guests who were now resting.
I was led through the echoing dining room, down some stone steps and along a stone passage. The bellboy opened the massive wooden and revealed my room – decorated in the same dark wood and white as the rest of the hotel.
He draped the mosquito netting over my bed and left.



It was dark outside by now. And dark inside. Was I still in Sri Lanka?
Eventually it was time to go to the still echoing dining room for dinner. There was one oriental couple, sitting with a Sri Lankan. Their guide? There was a young Sri Lankan couple. And me. Soon I was joined by Lankesh. This hotel did not have a separate dining room for guides.
He grinned as he asked me whether I liked the hotel. It wasn’t that I disliked it – but it was very unexpected. Lankesh said that the Closenberg is seldom used by Western tourists any more but Sri Lankans like to come here for weddings and other occasions because of the traditional atmosphere.
After a quick meal, I returned to my subdued room in a subdued frame of mind to read and then to sleep.
How much better I felt the next morning when I went out on my balcony. Sri Lanka was back!