A farmer’s wife carries her husband’s lunch out to the paddy fields where he is at work, close to Mawanella, in the foothills of Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands. Shot on assignment for Serendib, the inflight magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines. My story‘Eating Like a Farmer‘, appeared in the May 2017 issue.
A rickety platform perched above a broad expanse of paddy field will be manned each night by a farmer guarding his ripening rice from the elephants that patrol the border between human cultivation and the Ritigala Strict Nature Reserve. Shot for my photo story, “The Road to Ritigala“, which ran in the March 2016 issue of Explore Sri Lanka magazine. Check out my upcoming interview in ASH Smyth’s Sunday Times column this weekend in which, amongst other things, we discuss an eerie encounter at the top of Ritigala Mountain.
The sun rises over a field of maa wee, a variant of historic Sri Lankan rice, famous for its distinctively tall stalks which can reach six feet in height. Shot in Chillaw, on assignment for Serendib, the inflight magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines. To find out how this rice is being reintroduced to the island after a century of absence, read my article, “Heirlooms Unforgotten“, in the March 2016 issue.Continue reading “Maa Wee at Sunrise”→
Lowland Ceylon Tea grows in jungle clearings close to Akuressa, in the southern Sri Lankan district of Galle. While the tea of the Central Highlands, with famous names such as Uva and Nuwara Eliya, is more sought after, lesser known plantations in the low hills of Galle are far more accessible to visitors on beach holidays in southwestern Sri Lanka. Shot on assignment for Serendib, the inflight magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines. My photo-story, “Tea in the Jungle”, ran in November 2018.
An overseer walks across a hillside carpeted in tea bushes at the Gunawardana Tea Estate in Akuressa, Sri Lanka. While lowland tea isn’t as famous as the country’s high-grown variety, it is quite well-regarded locally, and these estates in the deep south of Sri Lanka are far more accessible to tourists in the popular seaside towns around Galle. The estate conducts visitor tours of the factory and the surrounding hills. Shot for my photo story, “Tea in the Jungle”, which ran in the November 2018 issue of Serendib, the inflight magazine of Sri Lankan Airlines.
Surrounded by fields of rice in January 2016, Ritigala Mountain is at the center of the Ritigala Strict Nature Reserve, a fifteen square kilometer protected area into which entry is forbidden. At 766m, Ritigala is the tallest mountain in northern Sri Lanka, and home to a ruined complex that includes a Buddhist monastery, and one of the earliest hospitals in the world; parts of which date to the 4th century BC.
A manmade bund, or dike, separates a small reservoir from the lush paddy fields that it irrigates. Mahakapuyaya, east of Dambulla, Sri Lanka. February 2018.
Son of the Morning Light 