Up to fifty fishers start at dawn and take four to six hours to bring in a purse net with its rich harvest of reef fish.

      Gustatory Geography

      The fruits of land and sea are in equal abundance on this paradise isle

      Douglas Bullis

      Sri Lanka's dry and wet seasons are reversed from one side of the island to the other by two monsoons. From May to August, the southwest monsoon, Yala, brings heavy rain to the southern, western, and central highland regions, leaving the other side dry. From October to January, the gentler northeast monsoon, Maha, brings rain to the north of the island. The coastal regions are hot and humid year round, while the hill country feels like perpetual spring.

      When Sri Lanka's first settlers arrived from India in about 500 BC, the coastal lowlands they found were no paradise. Undaunted, they set to work making them one. They had brought with them the techniques of turning a stream into a small pond, and of digging sluices with gates to let water into small fields on demand. What happened over the next ten centuries is one of the greatest irrigation feats in world history: Sri Lanka's system of reservoir “tanks" feeding a latticework of watercourses produced a rice surplus so large that it financed the island's architectural and sculptural splendors.

      The simple brown rice of those early times became the twenty-odd varieties grown today. The two monsoons translate to two harvests a year over much of the island. Low-country rice is mostly plain white rice that cooks easily and has no strong taste to distract from the curries. Somewhat upscale is a red rice that bursts as it cooks, yielding a fluffy white interior with reddish flecks on the surface—this is the festive suduru samba served when entertaining guests. The highest grade of rice is long-grained basmati, often used when aromatic dishes are desired. In between, many lesser varieties are grown, usually in small quantities for local use.

      However, paddy agriculture is far from the only kind of farming. Slash-and-burn, or chena farming, is the bane of the back country, as it produces only two or three harvests of millet and root vegetables before depleting the soils and forcing the farmer to move on. But for many poor people, it is the only choice.

      In a category all of its own is the island's enormous production of tea. The nuances of Sri Lankan tea are as complex and sophisticated as the nuances of fine wine. Small family plantations can be found even a few miles inland from the coast, but the higher the plantation the better the tea. The premium Dambula and other highland teas grow on tidily pruned plantations that undulate over the landscape as gracefully as slow-flowing water. The teas are processed in multi-story factories painted white or silver that stand out amid the landscape like ghosts on a green sea.

      A tapper collects sap from a kitul palm tree to he made into jaggery, the kitul palm sugar that sweetens so many Sri Lankan dishes.

      And of course one can't overlook the island's spice gardens. The gaily proclaimed ones along the highways to Kandy are for tourists. The serious spice plantations growing for export are found in moist valleys or hilly areas. Be they for tourist or export, the goods are the same: over here spindly, weedy bushes whose flower yields a darkish nubbin that dries into clove; over there bushy nutmeg trees with bright tan fruit.

      The delicate seed pods of the cardamom grow symbiotically under clove plants. Gangly peppercorns cluster under the long leaves of their plant, looking rather like grape bunches that took their diet too seriously. Visitors to these professional spiceries are treated to a fabulous bouquet of odors as they learn all about how spices are grown and prepared for consumers the world over.

      A final glance at the country's agriculture focuses on the men who walk ropeways high in the sky doing the dangerous job of harvesting drippings from the flowers of the kitul palm. Treading gingerly along a single rope and guyline fifty feet or more above the ground, they tie shut the tips of the kitul's flowers with cord so they cannot open. The sap, which ordinarily would go into swelling the flower and then filling its fruit, instead oozes into clay pots tied to the flower's stem. Every few days these are visited by the tappers, who empty the juice into a pot slung around their waists.

      The resulting treacle has a unique flavor which matches superbly with Sri Lanka's high-butterfat but bland curd or buffalo-milk yoghurt. When the treacle is hardened by boiling and then cooled, it becomes jaggery, the most popular sweetener on the island and an essential ingredient in most Sri Lankan desserts and sweetmeats.

      A close cousin of this process does the same with coconut flowers. The frothy white sap ferments into toddy or ra, a foamy white alcohol that can be drunk as is, or distilled into arrack. Ra is such a staple that it even lent its name to a town on the Colombo-Kandy railway line, Ragama—literally “Toddy Town."

      The sea's bounty includes several kinds of tuna, plus grouper, whitefish, kingfish, barracuda, trevally, squid, octopus, and a host of lesser species. One of the most popular fish in Sri Lanka is the seer or Spanish mackerel which is cooked in many styles.

      Most fishing is done from old-fashioned oruwa dugout outrigger canoes lashed together with coconut-fiber twine. The old handmade katta maran (literally “big logs,” and the origin of the word "catamaran”) dugouts come in various hues of salt-toughened wood. Their crews divide between "netters” and "chummers," the latter a term for hook-and-line fishers that was borrowed from the British.

      The fish left over after those for household use are sold to itinerant hawkers who have mounted wide wooden boxes on the back of bicycles. They wobble their way into the countryside, fish tails sticking out either side of the box, calling out "Lu! Lu!” (short for malu, the Sinhalese word for fish).

      A drive along the coastal highway passes one ramshackle wooden roadside stall after the other with gorgeous rows of tuna lined up like cordwood. They also sell squid, seer, kingfish, slabs of shark big enough to cover a dinner plate, and tiny silver sprats that are dried and munched like popcorn.

      Other stalls display freshly caught skipjacks drying in the sun. Although the chewy locally-dried tuna is often referred to as "Maldive fish,” the authentic Maldive fish used in restaurants is tougher than dried leather.

      The most idiosyncratic of Sri Lanka's fishermen are the island's famous stilt fishers. These men wedge sturdy poles into rock crevices in the shallows, to which they attach a tiny sling-net that passes for a seat. While the catch is modest, some of the brilliantly colored coral-dwellers they bring in, such as the striped mullet, are among the tastiest on the island.

      Another fishing style is net casting. Fishermen patrol tidal pools and rocky ledges in the late afternoon in search of the parrotfish or trevallly hungry enough to let down its guard as night approaches. Netters have hurling styles so unique that locals can identify someone at a distance by the way he throws his net.

      Mangoes, coconuts, pumpkin, and bananas are just some of the fruits and vegetables available from roadside stalls such as this.

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