Whale watching was first mooted back in the 1980s when according to the report whales began to enter Trinco harbour, one of the great natural harbours of the world, using an old submarine canyon. But plans to turn Trinco into one of the world’s great whale-watching destinations were shelved because of security restrictions during Sri Lanka’s separatist conflict.

The end of that civil war has seen controls eased on Sri Lanka’s east coast and Chaaya Blue has begun to operate whale-watching tours during part of the year.

Date from the Sri Lankan navy has confirmed that whale sightings are in the 80-90 per cent region for confirmed sightings, the level regarded as necessary to make tourist whale trips an attraction.

First indications are that the whale spotting season could take place not just from December to April, low season for the east coast, but could continue as late as September, which would fit perfectly with the peak holiday season on this side of the island.

There is a growing contention, too, that the Koneswaram Temple on the top of Swami Rock is one of the great places to observe whales from an onshore location.

There is so much more in this excellent piece, which the Sri Lanka travel Blog urges everybody with an interest in wildlife to read.

What this admirable intelligent feature also makes clear is that with opportunity comes responsibility. Sri Lanka’s whale-watching boon needs careful regulation. Responsible tour companies are discussing the need for a licensing system for operators and boats – a solution that the Sri Lanka travel Blog wholeheartedly supports.

Nobody puts it better than Naren Gunasekera, wildlife enthusiast, diver, amateur photographer, sales consultant for Red Dot Tours, and keeper of an excellent wildlife blog when he writes:

“Unfortunately our experience was hugely marred by some extremely irresponsible (not to mention obviously cheap) tourists who had chartered a local fishing boat to come whale watching. The boat sounded like they had jerry rigged a Tuk Tuk engine and the fishermen had absolutely no respect for the animal, charging up and down and scaring the whale into taking short surface breaks.

“The irresponsibility of the fishermen is one thing, but the sheer stupidity of the tourists is something that has to be seen to be believed. For the sake of a few thousand rupees theses cheap tourists put the wellbeing of one of the world’s most majestic animals at risk.

“… If you do go to Mirissa to see the whales, please be responsible and use Mirissa or the Ceylon Fisheries boat and avoid the cheap fishing boats that are destroying the natural heritage that attracts the tourists in the first place.”

Thousands of volunteers counted the elephants from watchtowers at 1,500 watering holes and ancient irrigation lakes.  Elephants are classified age and sex, and more knowledge is sought on their movements and distribution.

This is the driest time of year in Sri Lanka, and animals are at their most thirsty, so come to drink in more open habitats in large numbers, sometimes bringing them into conflict with the people. The conflict between farmers and free-ranging wild elephants results in dozens of human and elephant deaths each year and finding solutions is necessary to.

Sri Lanka revere elephants as sacred. Since ancient times, captive elephants have fulfilled ceremonial roles for priests and kings. Frustratingly for the Sri Lankan authorities, this involvement of elephants in pageants persuaded some conservationists to refuse to lend support to the census for fear that they might be supporting attempts to capture elephants and remove them from the wild.

A government wildlife official has tried to allay concern from conservationists that the census will be used to bring more animals into captivity. A senior wildlife official, RB Dissanayake, told the BBC they want to use the survey results to minimise clashes with people and declare new protected areas. The official denied that the census also serve to find strong young elephants to be captured and donated to temples. He said tame elephants would instead be bred from the existing domesticated or captive population.

Earlier this week, environmental groups pulled out of the elephant survey after a minister said it would be used to tame more of the animals. Wildlife Minister S. M. Chandrasena had been quoted in the Colombo-based Daily Mirror that the results of the survey would be used to identify elephants to be domesticated and handed over to the temples. The number of tamed elephants is thought to have declined from about 300 to perhaps half that number.

The fall in the number of elephants in Sri Lanka demands that a census is necessary. One estimate is that numbers have fallen from 12,000 to 4,000 over the past century. It seems clear that more information and action is needed to stem that decline – however passionately the conservationists may argue that their boycott was justifiable.

Thilakshana’s hundred, reached of the last ball of the innings after an overthrow, allowed the strong Seenigama XI score 245 for 2 in 35 overs. Dulwich College, the strongest of four English teams in the tournament, were restricted to 59 for 8 before rain stopped play in the 22nd over.

St. Patrick’s College Jaffna, who were invited to participate in the tournament by former captain Kumar Sangakkara, one of the trustees of the Foundation of Goodness (FOG), won the third place play-off against KLCA from Malaysia.

The eight-team schools tournament, which was sponsored by Elephant House, was played over a period of nine days. It was a unique tournament conceived and managed by FOG and Red Dot Tours that was designed to raise funds for a learning and empowerment institute and a new school in Mankulam in Sri Lanka’s north-east.

This exciting development project will provide facilities and services to meet the needs of rural communities and help bridge the gap between these areas and the rest of the country. Serving approximately 50,000 beneficiaries a year, the project will cater to the healthcare, educational, business development, sports and empowerment needs of the local population through programmes of community development, inter-cultural activities and skills exchange.

In-between each team’s five matches, children from each school participated in various community activities within the Seenigama village, including beach cleaning and the painting of classrooms in the local school. Just as importantly, the tournament brought together children from different cultural backgrounds, including the north, central and southern provinces of Sri Lanka, to interact together and forge new friendships.

There were some outstanding performances during the tournament with Pulina Tharanga from Seenigama being named the Player of the Tournament for his 184 runs and 15 wickets. He was presented by Muttiah Muralitharan, a founding partner of the FOG, with a special Reebok bat donated by Mahela Jayawardena.

Other prize winners included Sam Ryan from Bloxham School who was named Batsman of the Tournament for his 233 runs scored at an average of 46.6. The tournament’s leading wicket-taker was spinner Arul Norbet from St Patrick’s College and George Regilaus, also from St. Patricks, was named the best wicket-keeper.

About FOG:

The Foundation of Goodness aims to narrow the gap between urban and rural life in Sri Lanka by tackling poverty through productive activities. Recently recognised as the best example of post-Tsunami disaster-relief work, the Foundation of Goodness’ project in Seenigama provides a holistic model that can be replicated to tackle the problems that face rural villagers throughout Sri Lanka.

About Red Dot:

Red Dot Tours specialises in tailor-made travel to Sri Lanka. The company, which has offices in the UK and Colombo, has cricketing roots having first been conceived as a cricket tour company back in 1999. The Red Dot website, meanwhile, is the leading online travel portal for Sri Lanka providing in-depth information for the independent-minded traveller.

Media Notes:

For all the latest news and information on the Murali Cup 2011, please visit – www.themuralicup.com.

For further information please contact:

Kushil Gunasekara
Tel: +94 1 2586344
Foundation of Goodness Founder/Trustee
Email: kushil@unconditionalcompassion.org

Anura de Silva

Foundation of Goodness Director of Sport
Tel:  +94 1 5373342
Mobile: +94 779 939 805
Email: anura@unconditionalcompassion.org

The Murali Cup is the first community tourism-focused international school cricket festival in the world, bringing together Under 18 cricket teams to compete and support the cause. Sri Lankan corporate giant, Elephant House is a brand that has won the hearts of children in this nation. They take pride in connecting with a child in every step of their brand journey, promising to nurture their experience at all levels through their unique offerings of soft drinks and ice cream.

In an exemplary act towards this commitment, the goodness brand Elephant House will be lending their support towards this good cause.”This is a great initiative by Murali, FOG and Red Dot that brings together children from different backgrounds to participate in a competitive sporting environment while also learning from each other and fostering new friendships. We are proud to be a part of this initiative,” Ceylon Cold Stores Head of Frozen Confectionery Neil Samarasinghe said.

The financial target of the inaugural tournament is to raise £20,000 to help fund the development of a sports academy for the North that will be run by FOG. The Murali Cup has started as an eight-team tournament played from 12th July to 18th July 2011 on the South West Coast. Five international teams from England and Malaysia as well as three local Sri Lankan teams from Seenigama, Matale and Jaffna will compete against each other with the finals to be held at the Galle International Stadium on 18 July. The first-ever tournament has also been helped and supported by Ethiad Airlines, MAS, Yes FM and Coral Sands.

Surrey Village has been one of the pet projects in providing assistance to tsunami affected areas and out of the £2.5 million that the Oval Relief Trust has given away for charities for victims of natural disasters, around £800,000 has been given to Sri Lanka. Funds have also built 50 houses in the area for tsunami victims. The fund raising effort for Maggona ground began back in 2005 with an international cricket match between an Asian XI including India’s Sachin Tendulkar, Sri Lanka’s own Muttiah Muralitharan and an International XI led by Australia’s Shane Warne at Lords.

The venue now represents a premier venue for the Kalutara District. Mr. Sheldon was optimistic that the ground will be well maintained so that school, club and first class games could be played at this venue on a regular basis. Hidden away in a cute setting off the Galle road between Bentota and Colombo, the ground has been cut into a slope giving the elevated pavilion views of the surrounding village and jungle. The venue will now be available for hire on Red Dot’s cricket tours packages.

A significant media event was hosted by the Laureus Foundation on the Sunday evening 27th March 2011 at a function room in the Taj Samudra Hotel, Colombo with Sir Ian Botham, Kushil Gunasekera, Muttiah Muralitharan, Kumar Sangakkara, Michael Vaughan and Christopher Martin-Jenkins on the podium. The gathering was meant to publicize a venture that was being launched at Mankulam in the north, one initiated by the Foundation of Goodness, but now supported powerfully by Laureus Sports Foundation.

Botham, Vaughan, Murali, Kushil, Jenkins and a number of foreign journalists had flown to Mankulam by helicopter earlier that day to see the site selected for the project, to look around the devastated war zone and to meet some of the Tamil IDPS who had returned to their locality after the harrowing experiences of war and displacement. This trip in itself was a unique operation calling for permission and cooperation from the army and air force. As such, it was a measure of the influence secured by Kushil Gunasekera and Muralitharan working in conjunction.

As head of the MCC the well-known cricket writer, Christopher Martin-Jenkins started proceedings by indicating that he had recently visited the FOG community project at Seenigama where, a few years preceding, Michael Brearley had inaugurated the MCC Centre of Excellence. He was all praise for the community work that was in place at Seenigama. He said that he was very hopeful that MCC would also be directly involved in the cricketing aspects of the initiative at Mankulam. A fund-raising dinner on June 8, immediately after Sri Lanka’s Test at Lord’s, is planned as a tribute to Muttiah Muralitharan, and MCC will keep close contact with the Foundation for Goodness to ensure that the proceeds go towards a continuing MCC involvement at Mankulam.

Sir Ian Botham marked the central role of the Laureus Sports Foundation in supporting the project of creating a sports village and top-class school at Mankulam by emphasizing the central location of Mankulam, a nodal point which was twenty-thirty miles from other little towns east, west and south and not far from the populated Jaffna Peninsula. He spoke graphically of the flattened and leveled war zone around the place and remarked on the pock-marked and damaged remnants of buildings in the area. He added that he was “hugely impressed by the plans for a new sports complex site which will regenerate communities and encourage reconciliation.”

Muralitharan indicated that the rejuvenation of the war zone and restoration of the life-world of its peoples was an enormous task calling for massive expenditure. The government resources did not stretch in every direction and it was important for private initiatives to fill some of the gaps. They could not go hat in hand to those who had already chipped in to help FOG, so Kushil and he would be seeking new sources of support abroad and had already mapped out visits to USA in the near future. He emphasized that “the army was doing a great job” in assisting the people of Mankulam locality and the north in general, an assessment based on many visits to the former war zone [on top, one could add, of visits during the ceasefire period].

Muralitharan went on to stress that Sri Lanka’s cricket fans were an integral pillar of the success story of cricket in recent years. So it was the duty of cricketers to respond to the needs of supporters who face hardships. Kushil Gunasekera observed that the Mankulam venture was designed to contribute towards a reconciliation of the people of the north and those in the south.

Kumar Sangakkara contended that the Seenigama venture had transformed the locality and was a “fantastic facility.” It was now “a vibrant hub.” As such, the Mankulam project has every prospect of transforming a deprived area. It was at an accessible location and one could envision the development of a “premier sporting facility” in the near future. “We in Colombo,” he said, “were a world away from the war” and not subject to the experiences faced by people in the north and east. This venture was one step towards enabling them “to stand on their own two feet and to become vital members of Sri Lankan society.”

Michael Vaughan stressed that he had been involved in four Laureus projects and in every one of them the response of the children to their visits was uplifting: “their eyes light up.” So his vision was of a future where the Mankulam region would produce a new Sri Lankan cricketer.

Cricketing development is a slow process. In contrast the emergence of local Einsteins in engineering, IT, and other modern professional fields will take less time. The founding of a well-staffed and well-supplied school at Mankulam will bear fruit quickly. Its rejuvenating capacities will be more widespread that those provided by the cricket field. But cricket and sport are fun; and, as fields of joy, a necessary adjunct to academic effort. And, as those on the podium at the Taj Samudra indicated, cricket is an arena that promotes ethnic amity and camaraderie.

Cricketers from schools in the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Sri Lanka will come together for the Murali Cup 2011 taking place from 12 – 18 July, 2011 in Sri Lanka’s beautiful south coast. The Murali Cup is a community work-focused international schools cricket tournament endorsed by cricket legend Muttiah Muralitharan and organised by the Foundation of Goodness in partnership with Red Dot Tours.

The Murali Cup will take place from 12 – 18 July, 2011.The organisers say Dulwich College, King Edward’s School Southampton, Warwick School and Bloxham School will participate from the UK, and the final international spot remains open. Three local schools will also be invited from underprivileged rural areas from different parts of the island.

“This unique tournament brings together kids from different backgrounds to share their joy of cricket while also helping others less fortunate have a brighter future,” Muralitharan said of the event, which is designed to promote friendship and compassion between children with different social and ethnic backgrounds as well as help raise funds for a Learning and Empowerment Institute in Sri Lanka’s north and east; a project that will be managed by the Foundation of Goodness.

A crucial part of the 10-day tournament will be special community work days when all the players and school teachers will join together to participate in special community programs and activity schemes in Seenigama, a small village near to Galle and the headquarters of the Foundation of Goodness.

In addition to community work, former MCC Secretary Roger Knight will use the tournament to promote the MCC’s Spirit of Cricket ethos while international stars, including Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara, will run specialist coaching sessions.

“We are delighted to be working together with Red Dot Tours to create a really innovative schools tournament that will be run annually every July,” Kushil Gunasekera, the founder of the Foundation of Goodness,told the media.

The Foundation of Goodness is a charity which aims to narrow the gap between urban and rural life in Sri Lanka by tackling poverty through productive activities. Recently recognised as the best example of post-Tsunami disaster-relief work, the Foundation of Goodness’ project in Seenigama provides a holistic model that can be replicated to tackle the problems that face rural villagers throughout Sri Lanka. The Foundation of Goodness provides essential facilities and programmes that benefit 20,000 people from 25+ villages free of cost.

The other organiser of the event, Red Dot Tours, specialises in tailor-made travel to Sri Lanka, South India and the Maldives. The company, which has offices in the UK and Colombo, has cricketing roots having first been conceived as a cricket tour company back in 1999. Since then, though, Red Dot has grown from its humble cricket beginnings into one of the most respected travel companies in Sri Lanka offering a broad range of holidays. The Red Dot website, meanwhile, is the leading online travel portal for Sri Lanka providing in-depth information for the independent-minded traveller.

The game attracted some of cricket’s leading photographers, including Tom Shaw from Getty Images, who took himself outside the stadium to take a look at the excitement in the streets around the ground. This was not just one of the great days in Sri Lanka cricket. For some of the people crowding round a host of small tv sets in the neighbouring streets, it was one of the greatest days of their lives. Some of Tom’s images can be seen by following this link and all are available for sale via Getty Images. We thought you might like to see them to get a different take on a memorable day for Sri Lankan cricket.

A wicket for Murali with his last delivery on home soil – repeating his feat in Test cricket when he took a wicket with his last ball against India in Galle last July – the unplayable yorkers of Lasith Malinga and more irrepressible strokeplay by Tillekeratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga were among the highlights that sent a crowd of 35,000 into raptures, even if the last 40 runs or so were gathered more nervously than many had anticipated.

Sri Lanka’s growing confidence since the end of the terrorist war is showing through in their cricket, their people, a growing number of their cities, towns and villages – and, of course, their tourism. The fireworks that exploded around the ground, prematurely as it happens with a few runs still needed, might have captured the optimism of a nation looking to a brighter future. The Sri Lanka travel blog wishes Sri Lanka the best of luck in Mumbai in the World Cup final on Saturday.

We planned to leave Colombo by dawn, but as usual things did not turn out the way we planned. One of my friends had overslept and we had to wake up the whole neighbourhood to get her to open the door. We had a leisurely breakfast at the Annavilundawa wetland, bought a few village vegetables on the way hoping that we could ask our bungalow keeper to make is an authentic Sri Lankan village curry, and it was about 1pm by the time we reached Aniwila.

We were quite beat after the long drive but all any complaining vanished the moment we walked in to the bungalow. It reminds one of a typical wildlife bungalow you have inside the parks but much more tastefully done and luxurious. There was a scramble to get the best sleeping beds in the top floor veranda where you can sit on your mattress and watch tree tops all around you. There is a lovely bedroom as well with an attached bathroom which is perfect for those who are not as keen about sleeping too close to nature. We spent the rest of the day resting and watching and photographing the wildlife all around. The next day we planned a full-day safari in the national park. Since it is such an expansive park, a full day inside the park is the best way to see and enjoy the wilds.

The rain did not stay away throughout the day and the ‘Villus’ in the park were over flowing as we drove through the park by jeep. Our tracker Dinesh, who has been in the park for over 11 years, showed us all the historical sites, old bungalows and spotted many birds for us to photograph. There were short spells of sunshine which gave us all some hope. Sadly we missed all the big game, but we did see very fresh pug marks of a leopard which had walked along the wet sand seconds earlier. There were also large herds of Spotted Deer all around the park and it was refreshing to see so many animals in this park after so long.

We also visited Kudiramale Point, known as the place where King Vijaya arrived in Sri Lanka in 432 BC. He then named the place ‘Thambapanni, which translated to ‘copper sand’ as the soil here has a distinctive colouration found nowhere in the island. We had to cross two main roads which have been cut through the park. One hopes that the beauty of this park and its wildlife will not be affected by unnecessary development.

We returned to Anavila for an early dinner and truly enjoyed a well cooked Sri Lankan rice and curry. The next morning, reluctant to leave, we were allowed to stay around until till late afternoon. Despite the return of the rain, we had a great weekend. Going back to Wilpattu was absolutely wonderful and staying at Anavila was an excellent way to relax and enjoy the wilds of Lanka.

Wilpattu’s Facebook page can be found at www.facebook.com

Laid out on 14 acres of wilderness that borders an estuary where the Urubokka River meets the sea, Back of Beyond Kahandamodara is preciously unhurried and laidback. Only the peacocks seem to be having a busy agenda strutting about trying to impress the peahens.

In between sipping coffee on my verandah, reading and watching the goings on with the birds and the buffaloes, there was plenty of time to explore the gravel paths to the Kahandamoda village, down river on an oruwa to the sea, and finally to the Kalametiya bird sanctuary.  Even Rekuwa where the Marine turtles come to nest is so close by here, but I left this adventure for another time. Once back, there was always a fabulous lunch with village vegetables and fish cooked in clay pots waiting to be devoured.

This is my third visit here. Somehow the wilderness seemed greener, the house more of a home, the staff Namal, Mahesh and chef Nelson — more part of the family. De-stressed and rested, I headed back to the chaos of Colombo knowing that I will return to this bliss soon.