Travel Day 1130 – Batticaloa, SRI LANKA
After Exploring Kallady and the beach yesterday, today I definitely had to venture into town and visit the Dutch Fort…
Dutch Fort of Batticaloa in Sri Lanka
Obviously every coastal colonial place in Sri Lanka seemed to have a Dutch Fort which was typically built over an earlier Portuguese version, but here things seemed possibly a little bit different. The fort in Batticaloa was the last one to be completed by the Portuguese in 1628 and the first fort to be captured by the Dutch, only 10 years later, in 1638. Since the fort had only been in use for such a short time and since it must have been still quite modern at the time of the takeover, it seemed likely to finally find a few more Portuguese traces than elsewhere…
After my initial arrival in Sri Lanka I had looked for the Portuguese Colonial Fort Colombo and later for some Portuguese leftovers in Jaffna and Trincomalee, but to no avail. On the contrary, here in Batticaloa a lot seemed to indicate that the so-called Dutch Fort was in fact still the old Portuguese one. Not only the age seemed to be a good indicator but also the fact that the Batticaloa fortress was unusually small and rectangular in shape seemed more than curious for a Dutch Fort which usually appeared to be a structure and quite large in size…
Bastion of the Dutch Fort in Batticaloa
While entering the Dutch Fort and walking around atop the four different bastions, it also became quite obvious that the quality and level of detail of the stone work was not quite reflecting what the Dutch would normally construct. It actually all made sense to me as Batticaloa was not really an important city or harbor that urgently needed to be protected and so the Dutch probably never saw the need to spend the time and effort to erect a completely new fortress. Some minor tweaks and improvements were presumably enough to keep the barely used second-hand fortress up to date and running…
Quite happy about the find of this simple Portuguese Fort with a small courtyard, colonnaded administrative buildings and one sentry box at each corner, I continued my walk for the rest of the day though the city itself. Since there were no mayor sights to be visited, it was actually nice to just simply stroll around, have some local food and find some colonial buildings here or there. Out of the buildings seen along the way, three were Christian churches, one was an old college and one was a pretty kitschy mosque…
Me at a Sentry Box of Batticaloa Fort
But at least one more building I came across proved rather useful if not pretty, the bus station. Looking at the time table and making a reality check with my wish to travel to Arugam Bay, only lead to the conclusion that I was actually running out of time and I needed to cross country if I really wanted to make it down to Galle and spend some time there. So instead of seeing one more beach along the west coast, the most logical decision was to catch the 6am bus inland to Badulla and then from there another bus to the cooler hill station of Ella…
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