Geography Read Online Free

Angeles? I tried to work it out. I wanted to make sure it never happened again.

Two
    It looks perfect. Whitewashed, with windows overlooking the ocean. If we looked ceiling-wards we would see there is no fan, but it doesn’t occur to us.
    â€˜We’ll take it,’ I say to the owner. She is an elegant, pale Moslem woman dressed from head to foot in white. Her name is Mrs Kalid. She scrutinises us carefully. She is, after all, letting us into her home.
    â€˜You may stay,’ she nods at us. ‘Would you like a Sprite? Or a cup of tea?’
    Ruby and I are in Galle. In biblical times King Solomon bought his gems, spices and peacocks here. Now it is a picture-postcard walled town, a tiny place that hasn’t changed for centuries. Its fort walls overlook a cricket pitch on one side and the sea on the other.
    â€˜This ground is famous,’ Ruby says. ‘Some very important games have been played here.’
    Inside the walls are Dutch churches with blue alcoves, old colonial hotels with large verandas and whitewashed mosques from which white-robed men pour out at regular intervals. Banyan trees drape over the streets and public squares. It is under one of these trees that we shelter after a storm breaks, though by the time we get there we are soaked already. We huddle together, enjoying the drama of the weather, giggling like young girls. A group of school children are giggling too, as they walk down the street, sharing umbrellas.
    â€˜I haven’t travelled during the monsoon time before,’ I say. ‘I had no idea it would be so fun—to start with anyway. I’m sure it would exhaust you after a while. The build-up of humidity all day, the explosion late every afternoon.’
    â€˜I’ve been waiting for this,’ says Ruby. ‘And now it’s come I have to leave it.’
    The monsoon is a mystery to me, its beginnings and endings seemingly as variable as the unexpected changes you encounter crossing a street in Manhattan, or climbing down just a few metres into the Grand Canyon. There is no monsoon fifty kilometres east. There is none to the north. But here the clouds tower up above us like skyscrapers, laden with water. Tomorrow we’ll leave the rain behind us. Ruby and I have decided to keep travelling across into South India together and, if our travel guides are accurate, will be dancing around three different monsoonal zones.
    I don’t really know why we have decided to travel together though I suspect Ruby thinks my age makes me interesting. I like her because she is relaxed, and sure of herself. She doesn’t drag history around behind her like I do. We are comfortable with each other.
    That night, after we have dried off and dressed up, we head to Sri Lanka’s most luxurious hotel, the Lighthouse, for dinner. The columns and patio merge with the rocks and sea below. We order gin and tonics.
    â€˜A tuk-tuk driver told me,’ Ruby says, ‘that not far from here is a famous beach called Sunset Point.’ She leans forward and points to our left, to a cove some kilometres away. ‘And, this man says, on that beach Arthur C. Clarke, David Hasselhoff and Lord Mountbatten have all stood. He said these men’s names in one breath, as if they were all equally significant. David Hasselhoff—who remembers him?’
    I laugh. ‘I remember him,’ I say. ‘I was a big “Night Rider” fan and I even saw his fine performance this year in Shaka Zulu: The Citadel .’
    â€˜Well,’ Ruby says drily. ‘Let’s change the subject so I can continue to respect you.’
    Ruby tells me she is intimidated by how much I have travelled and I tell her that I travelled a long way and to many places without getting anywhere. That I worked overtime to impose an order on things no matter how far I strayed from home.
    Ruby isn’t buying it, doesn’t believe I’d still be travelling if it were just a form of