Kicked Off the Island

There's been a late-breaking twist to Survivors, the reality show from Taprobane. The Sting family rented the place. They fell in love with the island when they came for lunch last week, and my brother Geoffrey offered them a special tsunami rate. After all, the swimming pool was put out of action by the tsunami and the entryway consists of a climb up a slippery rock.

To make way for the paying guests, I gracefully voted myself off the island. So where does a homeless hack go when supplanted by celebrities?

Fortunately, the Barberyn Beach Ayurveda Resort on the outskirts of Weligama was offering its own tsunami rate. (Note to Washington Post accountants: $60 a day, including meals.) It's a gorgeous place, high on a hill overlooking the ocean, with spectacular sunsets. The only drawbacks are that alcohol is forbidden and the diet is strictly vegetarian.

Ayurveda is the oldest known natural healing system in the world. (At least, that's what the hotel brochure claims.) Developed millenia ago in Sri Lanka and India, it's also a niche tourism product that seems to be doing better post-tsunami than the rest of the tourism business. Other hotels in Weligama are practically empty, but the Barberyn Beach is full of healthy-looking Germans who spend much of their time sitting on prayer mats, contemplating the horizon.

Why Germans? My theory is that to benefit from the Ayurvedic regime, you have to be willing to follow orders. Ayurvedic meals, which come in small, carefully supervised portions, are not for the average Frenchman or American.

And then there are the cures, which range from herbal baths to leech therapy. (In case you are wondering, leeches are bloodsucking worms. Very good for the skin, we are told.) Guests are also offered enemas or "vomiting therapy" to expurgate all the bad toxins from their bodies.

We adjusted ourselves to the spirit of the place and flowed with the karma. But a stiff drink would have been nice. When I asked our waiter for some arrak -- a potent coconut concoction much loved by the locals -- he responded with a shocked giggle.

Arrak was definitely verboten.

-- Michael Dobbs

By washingtonpost.com |  February 24, 2005; 5:00 AM ET  | Category:  Michael Dobbs
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