“We’re taking you to this beautiful place. You’ll love it. It’s a movie-like location – Riverston.”

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What an odd-sounding name in a place so foreign I thought. Riverston, as I came to learn later is actually one of the scenic mountain areas under The Knuckles Mountain Range; but I much prefer it’s longer, unutterable consonant clusters of a name the locals bestowed upon it – Dumbara Kanduvetiya.

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I recalled being awoken at the earliest hints of morning crickets from our temporary dwelling in the outskirts of Colombo - courtesy of a great and inspiring friend - to embark upon a long, enduring hours-long journey. I confess here that at the time my travelling companion, Howard and myself were cursing underneath our breaths that the trip better be worth it – for the beds were irresistibly comfortable. Spoiler alert – it became the most humbling and soul cleansing experience ever.

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Our grumblings in the van were completely exorcised out upon the gradual sight of the mountain range. The sun was positioned particularly in a pleasant angle with godlike light rays ever so gradually shining across the landscapes. It felt as if we were witnessing nature painting a scene in real-time to bless and welcome our gloomy souls.

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It was a rare case of a complete 360 peripheral view of mountain ranges all about. There was not a single hint of human’s interference, apart from the occasional roads that complimented the silhouette outlines of the hills it traversed. Even the occasional huts and villas we encountered served as a pleasant focal point amidst the vastness of the spectacle. I intended this approach of capturing this scene in this format as I intended to encapsulate the vastness and the distance range of this majestic set; one of which I find the alternative approaches lack in its intensity.

 

Legends and local fairy tales are always a great way to get in the mood for landscape photography. I am not a local of Sri Lanka, yet due to its topographical and geographical similarities, I had a fantasy of appropriating my own fairy tales onto the landscapes. Yes, these mountains are perfect representations of what my own, Malaysia’s mythologies; ‘Hang Tuah’ and his friends may have traversed before. Or ‘Puteri Gunung Ledang’ could have swayed across the edges of one of these hills. There might be ‘Bunians’ living among those trees. All those similar silhouettes of hills, its textures, its ecology, its energy shaped the natural and cultural peculiarities of my ancestry.

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There I was overwhelmed with sadness; of the potentials that my home’s own predecessors and present had raped out of existence for our own landscapes. What I saw in Dumbara Kanduvetiya was a time capsule of Malaysia’s own past landscapes; or an alternative reality in which we were not so bamboozled by real estate wealth. I shed a tear while shooting these images as I pray that Sri Lanka does not emulate us. Nature created these works of art. I am merely ‘re-presenting’ them.