12 Mahiyangana

Helen writes,
On Tuesday morning bright and early, before 7am, May and I set off from Kandy to visit her family’s home town, Mahiyangana .
We were excited because we wanted to see where her grandparents and sister had been living when May was born and we hoped to find information about them with the help of our guide, Neil.
He had been so helpful to us in finding Roshan’s family so we hoped that his detection skills could do the trick here, too.
The road was long and winding around the great reservoirs on the Mahawhelli River. We saw many monkeys and chipmunks along the way.
The road was busy with trucks carrying sand to Colombo from the east.
Neil had said it may take us 5 hours to get there but we arrived in 3.
The town was dusty, with a large Buddhist shrine at the entrance.
We stopped at a little local café to ask for advice as to where we might start to look.
The owner told us to enquire at the surgery of an old Ayurvedic doctor, as he might know people who were inhabitants of the town a long time ago.
In fact he wasn’t able to identify the family at all because we didn’t have an address but he suggested the family name came from a specific part of the region and that we might have more luck over there.
We traveled on into areas most tourists don’t ever visit and stopped at a place inhabited by the Veddhas, the aboriginal people of Sri Lanka.
A little old man grabbed both my hands and listened attentively to Neil’s explanation of our quest. He suggested yet another possible location.
This time it was a really remote place so a young man offered to come with us to show us the way.
Off we went again along bumpy little tracks around large tranquil lakes.
By the time we reached the end of the road we still hadn’t found the family so back we came.
As we returned feeling downcast, we saw an amazing sight.
A sea eagle swooped down in front of us and caught a fish from the lake. It flew up into a tree and laid the fish across the branch. A crow flew across to try and steal it but the eagle took off with its prize before it had the chance to make a grab.
We went back to the town and looked around once more until we found an old lady and asked if she knew any details of May’s birth family.
Like everyone else we had asked she was so keen to help and directed us to the Social services office in town.
There the officials were really keen to help us track down her family.
They said that May was "one of their nation" and would get help from them even though the paperwork we had was so sketchy.
We left all the details we had got with them and said we would send more photos later to help in their searches.
A disappointing result on the day …… but you never know what the future might hold.
We came back along the same windy road and saw the same monkeys we had seen on the outward journey!
We had traveled for 10 hours and a distance of over 300 kilometres.
The scenery had been spectacular and all the people we had met, so kind.