This is Nuwon, who oversees a restaurant named Mandala Café just down the road from the train station in Ella. Mandala Café has an unabashedly Rastafarian vibe, and pictures of reggae great Bob Marley hang in every corner of the restaurant. Though Ella is a mountain town smack in the middle of Sri Lanka, Mandala Café evokes a decidedly Jamaican-beach atmosphere.
Idiosyncratic as this might seem, I’ve seen reggae-themed bars and hostels (overseen by local guys with dreadlocked hair) in places as far-flung as Tofo in Mozambique, Dahab in Egypt, Punta del Diablo in Uruguay, Koh Samui in Thailand, and Boracay in the Philippines. No doubt there of dozens (if not hundreds) more of these little quasi-Rasta cafes in counterintuitive traveler scenes worldwide – places where the vibe is relaxed, weed is easy to come by, and Bob Marley’s “Legend” CD is more or less played on repeat.
At some point I’d love to see someone write a travel book about this global empire of chill little reggae traveler-scenes, which have a lot in common with each other, even as they occupy far-flung corners of the globe. At one level this Rasta vibe is – inevitably – appropriative of a purer Jamaican essence, but it never feels like some soulless corporatized enterprise, even as its reggae vibe is mixed up with a secondhand sense for what a reggae vibe feels like. The owners of these places tend to be young local fellows who see the travel-scene reggae ethos as a way to assert their freedom and individuality within more traditional cultures like Sri Lanka (or Thailand, or Egypt).
Nuwon is a good example of this. Though I didn’t talk to him for long because he was busy attending to a bar packed with backpackers, he seemed to be at ease in the Mandala Café – his traditional Hindu dreadlocks (most commonly seen on ascetic sadhus in this part of the world) evoking something of a syncretic, cross-cultural vibe amid the Rastafarian motifs of the restaurant.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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