Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
With individuals and governments around the world cutting down forests to make way for bio-fuels and profit, one man is taking his passion for travel, wildlife and woodlands a step forward.
Sri Lankan Frank Ryde, a resident of Sehla in Bahrain, is an adventurer and travels countless times during the year deep into his home country's heartlands to meet the indigenous Aborigines, come up close to the plethora of wild animals inhabiting the jungles of Sri Lanka and study the ecosystem of the forest ... but all this and more he does with a group of people who also have a love of the wild.
Frank's recent trip to Sri Lanka in May was a whirlwind tour where he covered more than 2,000 kilometres, at times on foot and other times in a Jeep, with three friends. Award-winning Lebanese photographer Bashar Thebian, Moroccan banker Naema Mengad and Jordanian business executive Mohammad Amirah went off the beaten track and learned a bit about the rich and diverse eco-system along the way.
"The jungle, mountains and nature have a special charm for me - it signifies life. Whenever I go on my trips I observe the insects that come my way as I have a special interest in bees.
"I study how the insect exists and co-exists and their interdependence on other life forms for survival. The eco-system is like a neat web and if one aspect of the complex system is removed the whole web is affected," said Frank a.k.a the bee and fire-man as he is known in Sri Lanka and among friends in Bahrain. Frank is the director at Alpha Fire Services in Bahrain and nurturing bees is his passion, as featured last year in GulfWeekly.
Frank's love for the wild started at a very young age when he started hitchhiking into the Sri Lankan jungle to learn more about bees. Now 50, and although living in Bahrain for the last 20 years, Frank's trips have not abated. He has cultivated friendships with local people and Aborigines, or Vedaas as they are popularly known, who keep him informed about scenic routes, hiking tracks or the location of wild animals in the jungle.
On his recent trip, Frank, his friends along with a local guide and driver ventured deep into the Habarana forest to see a herd of wild elephants. "We had already seen and fed some tame elephants at the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage and we wanted some adventure," he said. And adventure they had.
"While photographing the elephants, the mother elephant thought that we were trying to harm her baby so she charged at our Jeep and stamped on it causing a hole in the vehicle's canopy."
Although incidents like these are few and far apart, Frank insists that keeping a safe distance from the animals and taking all the necessary precautions like good local guides, reliable vehicles, fully recharged mobile phones and first-aid kits are necessary.
So from tasting the sweet water of the freshly picked king coconut to having local Sri Lankan fare by the river and tasting honey straight from the honeycomb the group indulged their senses and their taste buds in local delights.
The group visited Polonnaruwa, second capital city of Sri Lanka in the northeast that was built in the 11th and 12th Centuries AD and is a world heritage site today, 5th Century Sigiriya rock fortress in the southeast also a world heritage site because of the citadel's unusual beauty rising 200 metres from scrub jungle, temple of the tooth relic in Kandy, the breathtaking tea plantations in the mountains of Nuwara Eliya and much more.
The trip was a roller coaster ride of scenic and serene beauty be it the botanical gardens of Peradeniya, Spice Gardens in Matale or the Kelani River where the Oscar-winning Hollywood blockbuster Bridge on the River Kwai was filmed. Rubbing shoulders with Aborigines, the danger of charging elephants, discovering frescoes and rock formations in caves Bashar, Naema and Mohammad can pen their own Indiana Jones adventure in Ceylon.
