Photos of a two-day stay at Trincomalee in January 2012.
After staying at Kandalama Hotel I drove to Kerirawa, a small town where I caught a train to Trincomalee. The scenery between there and Trinco is green but not interesting or photogenic. A few pictures of the journey appear in my gallery Riding the Rails (click link above).
Trincomalee is such an evocative name that it alone attracted me to the place. A fascination with the British colonial period and the beauty of the natural setting combined to make me feel that I should not go to Sri Lanka without visiting Trinco, although it has no conventional tourist attractions other than beach resorts and cemeteries. (Local authorities are converting a former governor's residence to a museum.)
Guidebooks by Lonely Planet and Rough Guide both describe Trinco as a recent war zone, and indeed it might be, yet apart from a couple of grim reminders of the civil war (see my first two photos), today Trinco appears to the casual visitor to be a place at peace with itself and getting on with life.
It seems never to have been a great metropolis, rather a bustling and cheerful regional town with a similar character to such towns in the south of India. For me it is characterized by strong colours and vivid images of commerce, domesticity and colonialism.
Trinco has few hotels or restaurants. I stayed at a decent mid-range place, Green Park Beach Hotel, which has been built on the waterfront but with its back to a magnificent view. It also houses one of the best restaurants in town, so I ate nearly all my meals there.