THE ISLAND ROBIN HOOD

Saradiel Village, 22 miles from The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, is the home of Sri Lanka’s Robin Hood, hung by the British on 7 May 1864 in Bogambara Prison Kandy, along with his childhood friend, Mammale Marikkar - the last two people to be publicly executed. To the British, Saradiel was little more than a gangster, though today his exceptional good looks would have won his modelling and TV contracts aplenty. But his reputation amongst Sri Lankans is that of a bountiful re-distributor of wealth, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Many highway robberies, imprisonments, escapes, and escapades later, his undoing finally came about when his gang robbed an Arab horse trader in Galagedera, killing two people in the affray. The police eventually tracked him down to a house in Mawanella, and following a robust shoot out, captured him. Over 150 years later his fans constructed a 6 acre replica village – all in concrete - of his life and times, bristling with life size recreations of devotions at the temple, his mother serving coffee, snake charmers, gypsies, toddy drinkers, house scenes, kitchens, laundries, and workshops for the village goldsmith, potter, and astrologer.