The heart-breaking job of burying the dead was still underway in Sri Lanka this week when three cornered suicide bombers blew themselves up on Friday night during a security forces operation, killing 15 others, including six children.

Another devastating blow for the people of Sri Lanka who last week, on Easter Sunday, witnessed their country racked apart when suicide bombers took up position in three churches and three luxury hotels and detonated their terrible packages. A statement from Isis said that churches and hotels with foreign guests from “crusader” countries had been struck.

I was one of those “crusading guests” who visited Sri Lanka last September, staying at the Shangri-La hotel in Colombo, having breakfast in that same dining room that was last week ripped apart by two bomb blasts that killed entire families.

I chatted to the friendly staff, met many kind people who welcomed us to the hotel and Sri Lanka, delighted that after many years of civil war in their country, tourists were now returning and boosting the economy, providing jobs and income. (Twenty-six years of fighting between the government and the Tamils ended just ten years ago).

The driver who picked us up at the airport at 4.30am stopped his car as he drove through the dark city so he could buy us two fresh coconuts from the early morning stall-holders who were just setting up by the river. We drank coconut milk as the sun came up and the driver told us how happy he was we had come to his country. (He also told us how delighted he was to see my friend Rob’s dreadlocks – “the first time I have ever seen hair like this,” he said)

Later that day we zipped through the city streets in a tuk-tuk – presented with more fresh coconuts by our driver Rex as we climbed abroad.

We wound our way through the traffic as people waved from neighbouring scooters, children laughing as we overtook them, waving furiously with wide smiles as they overtook us.

We met groups of men in the Spice Market who wanted to come and shake our hands and have their photo taken by Rob. With wide smiles and thumbs up they posed madly. And later, one man who had stayed outside of the group shyly approached Rob to ask if he could have his picture taken too.

We learned the history of Sri Lanka’s proud past in the tea shops, ate lunch with locals in the market – the men sitting with us at the communal tables gesturing at the staff to bring me some cutlery, so that I wouldn’t have to look like a foreign idiot eating with my hand as they did.

We went down streets that have only been opened recently to the public following the years of fighting, the bullet holes still clearly visible in the walls. And everywhere we went we found friendliness and kindness – Rob is still in touch with many of the people we met on our visit.

Yesterday the British government issued a statement advising against travel to Sri Lanka, except in essential cases. The country will suffer loss of income from foreign travellers and no doubt many of the people we met will lose their jobs. Another heart-break.

But while the bombers have wrecked great destruction and tremendous horror on the country, they can’t take away its spirit – the spirit of kindness, friendliness and welcome. The welcome that the suicide bomber who entered the Protestant Zion church in Batticaloa received from the pastor’s teenage son – killed moments later – is unutterably poignant and heart-rending.

But kindness and love will win out over hatred and hostility. I believe this. I believe that the spirit of the Sri Lankan people will win. And people will return to the country again, to show solidarity and to show those that attempt to spread fear and hate, that you will not succeed.

Christian churches and western style hotels were targeted in the hate attacks. Only just over 7% of the country is Christian. 9% is Muslim, 12% is Hindu and the overwhelming majority, 70% of the 20m Sri Lankan population, are Theravada Buddhists. There are 6,000 Buddhist monasteries in Sri Lanka, over 15,000 Buddhist monks and thousands and thousands of temples.

Theravada is the most ancient form of Buddhism, a practice that teaches its followers to develop the qualities of awareness, kindness and wisdom to reach a state of complete freedom from any spiritual, emotional or mental restrictions or limitations. It teaches that nothing is fixed or permanent, actions have consequences and change is possible. And so I believe that hate doesn’t have to be permanent, that change is possible.

On our last day in Sri Lanka, having travelled to the south of the country, we visited one of the temples – Mulkirigala Rock Temple, where we climbed over 500 steps to visit seven caves on five terraces, with their ornate wall paintings and huge reclining Buddhas. We met a monk called Siriniwasa, who was wary at first when Rob, having asked our guide if it would be appropriate to ask for a photo, approached him.

And after posing for a few photos with his young Buddhist apprentices, he eventually whipped out a mobile phone from under his robes and asked if Rob could take a photo of them all with it. I was eventually persuaded into the group to take photos of Rob with the monks, all of them beaming furiously. By now fast friends, Siriniwasa asked Rob to help them plant a tree and he did, there at the top of Mulkirigala, everybody delighted with their new found friendship.

I’ll go back to Sri Lanka again. I’ll go back to see the people we met, to see how they’re coping and to see if Rob’s tree has grown. I very much look forward to it.

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I first wrote about my trip to Sri Lanka for The Scotsman newspaper and it was published in December 2018 using Rob’s photos

There’s an elephant standing a few metres away from our jeep in Sri Lanka’s Udawalawe National Park, engaged in a very elaborate breakfast routine. Kicking the grass to loosen it, he tugs it free, then rolls it painstakingly with his trunk, constantly repeating the process over and over – kicking, tugging, rolling – an awful lot of hard work to make each small mouthful.

So far this morning we’ve seen elephants, spotted deer and water buffalo as well as a myriad of birds. But the most magical moment of all was on our way to the elephant transit centre, where abandoned baby elephants are cared for before being introduced back into the wild, when a – clearly selfie-conscious – large male elephant came to the edge of the road for a photo.

Standing the other side of a thin wire fence where a few other jeeps had also pulled up, he moved over to each new arrival, waiting patiently until they’d had their photo taken with him before moving on to the next group. “This is such kindness,” said our guide Palinder in wonder as we snapped away furiously.

Read the rest of the article published in The Scotsman…

All photos by Rob Wilson Jnr, Fluid4Sight