NOVEMBER 27, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 21

Hot Spot
By CHRIS STOWERS

TRAVEL WATCH Finding Peace in a Himalayan Hideaway It isn't often that the manager of your hotel is the uncle of a queen. Hot Spot Off Sri Lanka's palm-fringed south coast one can espy perhaps the island's strangest sight—stilt fishermen. Hot Deals With the summer long gone and the leaner months approaching, you might find you haven't squirreled away enough for a winter escape. Short Cuts In December, the Ritz-Carlton in Osaka will celebrate what sticklers insist is the true start of the next millennium. Travel Watch Archive Browse hundreds of Asian travel tips

Off Sri Lanka's palm-fringed south coast one can espy perhaps the island's strangest sight—stilt fishermen. Along a 30-km stretch of shoreline east of Galle, between the towns of Weligama and Matara, a natural coral plateau extends out into the Indian Ocean. At the edge of this plateau, where the sea floor drops away, generations of local fishermen have waded out chest-deep during the calmer morning tides and climbed 7-m-high wooden poles. Shaded beneath floppy straw hats and perched on precarious bamboo crossbars 4 m above the crashing surf, they spend up to four hours at a time dangling lines for garoupa. The southern region is a tropical paradise with world-class beaches, coral and dive sites—but tourists have been frightened off by fighting in the country's north. On the beach a wiry and wizened fisherman says he isn't concerned about the war. And why would he be? He spends his days on his pole where he can smoke, far from the disapproving gaze of his wife.

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