Local Girl Shows Me Sri Lanka’s Burj Khalifa 🇱🇰

A day around Kandy, Sri Lanka, driving a rented tuk-tuk himself, with a Sri Lankan friend who spends the day answering questions — about Buddhism, about the civil war, and at length about marriage and dating.

The set piece is a tower he calls Sri Lanka’s Burj Khalifa: a half-hour walk up, then an external spiral staircase so narrow that two people passing have to negotiate it.

Obs: the description links a tuk-tuk rental company and a travel insurer. No provider is recorded here.

Obs: his companion is a private individual and is not given a page — the register in log.md records why. Her account of Buddhism, the war and dating culture is recorded as hers.

Key moments

• [00:00] The tuk-tuk, driven by Harry, on a 55-minute run out of the city.
• [00:34] Buses are the kings of the road, and he means it as a warning.
• [01:05] Manual windscreen wipers, operated by hand, in the rain.
• [01:05] Foreigners pay about ten times the local price at the tower — he asks what a local pays and does the arithmetic on camera.
• [01:39] He gives up on driving the steep final stretch and walks.
• [02:41] A lake below, built under a former prime minister.
• [03:12] Monkeys, and a serious concern about losing a phone to one.
• [04:19] Half an hour of walking before the tower itself.
• [04:53] People under 25 are extremely shy, which he raises repeatedly and which shapes half his interviews in the country.
• [05:26] The climb starts where he thought it ended. The structure keeps going, up an external staircase around the spire.
• [05:59] It is too narrow for two. Anyone coming down has to be negotiated with, one body at a time, and he films the manoeuvre.
• [06:34] Roughly 50 m above the ground and, he reckons, 1,000 m above sea level.
• [07:43] The pep talk on the way up, which is the tip in miniature: don’t look sideways, don’t think about it, keep going.
• [10:01] His actual advice: if you’re scared of heights, do not do this — and get outside your comfort zone every day anyway.
• [12:58] A pony ride, offered for free by a man they meet at the top.
• [13:25] The pony behaves impeccably apart from the parts that don’t bear describing.
• [16:30] Free tuk-tuk rides for locals — three women who assume he must be a Sri Lankan who moved abroad, because his companion speaks Sinhala, and a man who recognises him from the channel. See give strangers a lift.
• [18:44] A venomous snake killed by a group of men, which prompts his one flat criticism of the country: animal welfare here isn’t good.
• [20:12] A Buddhist temple, explained by his companion as they walk it — Buddhism brought from India, around 70% of the population, and a teaching centred on the relief of suffering.
• [19:33] Reincarnation and karma: you don’t choose, and where you’re reborn follows from how you lived.
• [20:38] The civil war, raised carefully by both of them: Tamil and Sinhalese, she was a small child, and — her framing — it isn’t something people bring up, and the friction isn’t between ordinary people. Neither of them goes further, and Harry says outright that he doesn’t know enough to.
• [21:48] The Buddha’s first seven steps on lotus flowers; born a prince into wealth; leaving it; enlightenment as the search for an end to suffering.
• [24:36] Hindu shrines inside the Buddhist temple — Lakshmi and Ganesh — and her explanation that the religions overlap here.
• [26:07] On whether men and women can be friends, which is really a question about why everyone keeps assuming they’re a couple.
• [27:13] Marriage: families do push it at a certain age, less than they used to, and some are stricter than others.
• [28:19] Dating exists and is westernising. People used to marry in their early twenties; that’s changing.
• [29:23] Traditional gender roles are common but not universal, and children don’t move out at 18 — staying with parents is the norm, which he contrasts with Britain.
• [29:59] The statistic she gives him: Sri Lanka is first in the world for searches of the word sex, ahead of India (from video – unverified — an internet claim neither of them sources). Harry’s own assumption is that it must be per capita.
• [31:12] Kottu, cheese and chicken, and a spice challenge he expects to lose and doesn’t. The best meal of the trip so far — with the caveat that he has said that several times already.
• [33:03] Hookup culture is taboo and not discussed openly, more so outside Colombo; her account is that her generation talks about it more.

Extracted pages

• Country: Sri Lanka
• Place: Kandy
• Tips: Give strangers a lift, Ask what a local pays