We visited Trincomalee, on the north eastern coast of Sri Lanka, in December 2009. 27 years had passed since my last visit and I was really looking forward to the trip. I was a toddler when we were up there last and, as a result, can't remember anything of the trip. These areas were inaccessible for a number of years due to the civil war which prevailed on the island. The war came to a bloody end in May of 2009 and since then, tourists have started traveling to these areas. Read on for more info and images.
While we were in Trincomalee, we decided to drive down towards Koddiyar Bay which was around 12 km south of Trincomalee town. The Mahaveli, which is the longest river in Sri Lanka, flows out into the Indian Ocean at Koddiyar bay. We had no specific destination and just wanted to drive as far south as we possibly could. The road along the coast is pretty rough and progress was quite slow.
The Mahaveli flows into the Indian Ocean at 5 or 6 different points. The only bridge in the area is the Kinniya Bridge. Ferries have to be used to cross the other bodies of water. This adds a significant amount of time to the trip as the wait for a ferry could be hours long.
Unfortunately we didn't get too far after we crossed the Kinniya bridge, as the roads had been washed away by the recent rain. We came to a small fishing village and saw that the fishermen were in the process of pulling the nets in. They told us that the road ahead was unusable so we got out of the car and walked over to watch them drag the nets in.
Communicating with them was a bit of a problem as we knew English and Sinhalese and most of them knew only Tamil. The three men in the first photograph weren't too friendly and didn't say much as they sat mending their nets. However, they were all smiles as soon as they saw the camera. The guys in the image above had come down to the beach to purchase the catch and take it into town for sale. They were quite chatty and we were able to speak to them for sometime.
All the images on this post were captured on the beach at Koddiyar Bay. They were captured using Canon 7D and a 400D cameras. The 7D had the 100-400mm lens on it while the 400D had 50mm f1.8 lens mounted on it. I decided to convert some of these images to black and white as I felt colour didn't really add anything to the images. The boat in the first image was a dark orange and I felt that it was drawing the viewers attention away from the fishermen.
