The Tuk-Tuk Ride – Part 1: One Day

"Where to?" said Dilan.

"Wherever's good," said Nora.

"Everywhere is good."

"Then wherever's best."

He grinned, a flash of white teeth, and the little green tuk-tuk coughed, rattled and shot out into the traffic. Nora clutched the metal rail, laughing. It was eight in the morning on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, hot and humid already, with palm trees leaning over the road and the Indian Ocean flashing blue between the houses. She was thirty-one, a dentist from Toronto, on her first solo holiday, in a straw hat and a thin cotton dress, with a guidebook she was beginning to suspect was wrong.

Dilan was thirty-five, a driver, slim and brown, in a faded shirt and a baseball cap, with a lanky grace and a gentle, teasing voice. He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other waving at everyone he passed.

"First stop," he said. "Breakfast."

It was a roadside stall: three plastic tables under a mango tree, a woman frying hoppers on a clay stove. Nora ate a crisp rice-flour bowl with an egg in it, and a coconut sambal so hot her eyes streamed. Dilan watched, delighted. "You like?"

"I love it."

"Good. We have seven more."

They drove all day. He took her to a hidden beach where fishermen mended nets, to a turtle hatchery where she held a baby turtle the size of her palm, to a lake thick with water lilies. At noon, they ate rice and curry on banana leaves in a village kitchen. In the afternoon, he showed her stilt fishermen on the shore, perched on poles above the surf like herons, casting lines into the foam.

"It's the best day of my trip," said Nora.

"It is not over."

"What's left?"

"Sunset."

"Can I ask you something?" said Nora, as the road wound along the coast.

"Yes."

"Why are you so good at this?"

"Because I love my country," said Dilan, simply. "And you are very easy to show things to."

"Green?" she said, a palm, a light.

"Green," said Dilan, laughing. "Very green. Hold on. Big bump."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Sunset Road.