Fruit bats were fruits of our labours

I DO not wish to belabour my readers on the theme of fruit bats, but when one sees them in sixes and sevens against the night sky, as big as egrets and flying with the same, slow wing-beats as herons, they warrant a few lines.

It was their sheer size and bird-like flight that made us pause, jaw-dropped, on the bridge of the Singhalese town of Tangalle, and look up at them, black against the cobalt sky, passing over the palm trees and the busy street of tiny, lit-up hucksters’ shops and tuk-tuks, trucks and buses. All leisurely and in orderly files, they passed.

We had arrived in Tangalle, on the southern coast, that afternoon after a short bus ride (3.5hrs; fare €1) from Ella, the highest village in Sri Lanka. The bus was packed, but the fare-collector kindly directed my wife to a platform raised a few inches off the floor, where she duly sat, and the driver invited me to sit on the engine cowling beside him. While this was not uncomfortable — it had a ‘quilted’ plastic covering and a rag-rug on top — after an hour I regretted not having taken the yoga classes on offer at home in west Cork.