24 Hours With Sri Lanka’s Vedda People!! (Barehand Honey Harvest)

24 Hours With Sri Lanka’s Vedda People!! (Barehand Honey Harvest)

help. [Music] [Music] Welcome to Chopstick Travel and welcome to Sri Lanka. Today we’re heading deep into the jungle to meet with the indigenous Veta community. How they forge for ingredients in the jungle and how they prepare traditional Vetta cuisine. It’s going to be an adventure, guys. I’m super excited. So, we’ve got a short hike to meet up with the tribesmen. Let’s do it. [Music] Let’s go. Let’s go. Okay, we’ve got the blessings to enter the community. I did remember just one word. The only word I remembered in veta hondomay which means hello. So I’ve been invited into the kitchen. It’s just like a mud hut with a thatched roof. And Chulua, the beta man here, is preparing a traditional uh smoked and dried meat. So, he’s just slicing the meat up now. And they’ve got some kind of cooking over the fire as well. And it’s a very simple preparation, just dried almost like a jerky. You can see that he’s got the knife between his toes and he’s kind of stabilizing it there so he can cut the meat. Very cool. [Music] [Music] So that meat will just smoke away and dry for, you know, an hour, a couple hours, whatever, until it uh really starts to cook through. No salt, no spices, nothing. It’s just sort of propped up over the flame. And they’ll just leave that going and going. You can see a nice piece that’s already sort of dried out and cooked here. I guess this is the equivalent of washing the plates because those banana leaf are going to be our plates. just kind of sanitizing them by putting them directly into the flame. So, I think we’re going to try some of the meat now. Smoked meat. There’s some that was already pre-prepared. He just put another strip on, but there’s lots that he has already cooked. A little slice with that same knife we just cut the raw meat with. I don’t know if you can see right now, but he has a a tattoo which is the symbol of his tribe. So, it represents uh what meta tribe that he actually comes from. And this is the the biggest the top one. Okay, I think it’s time to try. Let’s try together. [Music] Whoa. Super chewy. Not much flavor. Just uh a little bit of giness, but actually still quite juicy in the center, but very smoky and dried on the exterior. Wow. Interesting. Wow. Wo. Yum. Really smoky. It’s like a jerky. And in feta language, there is very few vocabulary. So a lot of words like hmai can have two meanings like delicious or hello. It’s good. Simple flavors. Super smoky and dried out. Absolutely zero understanding. But that’s the great thing about food. Just brings everyone together no matter what. You don’t have to speak the same language, completely different cultures, but we all enjoy the food. Thank you. Cool. Just served in the coconut and wash it down. [Music] So actually rice is not a staple food of the veta community. It’s a little bit too difficult to cultivate in their area. Instead they replace that with corn. So they have some corn that’s sort of burnt and smoked and been sitting here dried. She’s added into the mortar and pestle with a little bit of water and just pounding that up. And this is the staple of the veta. It’s the corn. Unbelievable. So, even out here in the jungle, they have their vices. No cigarettes. Um, I don’t see any alcohol around, but they do have beetle nuts. The famous beetle nut. He kind of takes a little bit of a limestone paste that he rubs on a beetle leaf and then I think it was a piece of tobacco leaf and the beetle nut and then just crunch that out, chew on that. They’ll do that all along. It’s sort of a mild stimulant. I’m going to be skipping that one. So, while the lady prepares the corn, we’re heading into the jungle to forage for some ingredients. So, let’s see what we can find. This is real deal, guys. Okay, so we are heading into the jungle. Trying to keep my voice down. there doing a little bit of hunting, but he was just calling for his friend to be able to locate each other in the jungle. And here is the other feta man who barely has anything on Keeping up with these guys in the jungle is no joke. They just move so smoothly through these trees and I can’t can’t do the same. So, we’ve come across this clay pot that they’ve actually set up in the tree because they do this in order for the bees to actually have a place to create their honeycomb. So, it’s sort of an artificial nest for the bees so that they can collect the honey. So, here they go. [Music] Look at that. [Music] So, he’s absolutely fearless. He’s literally just sticking his hand in. There’s millions of bees in there and pulling out the honeycomb. And this is a very effective method to set up this clay pot. They’ve set it up a long time ago. The bees have made it their home, started building the honeycomb, and now they can come back and back and back and keep collecting honey from the same spot. And this is terrifying cuz I haven’t gotten stung yet, but they warned me that I probably will. But they don’t seem to care at all. They just stick their hand right in there. [Music] That was a serious bite of honey. So, a little offering to the spirits first he gave and now uh they’re enjoying it. Wow, that was a massive bite of honey. One of mine. Thank you. All right, my turn to try. Fresh honey. Look at that. Beautiful. I’m going to go for the whole thing. [Music] Oh my gosh. That’s probably the best ever. I know why. Amazing. [Music] We are literally being swarmed by bees and these guys are just chowing down. There’s like larae inside of the honeycomb. Gives you lots of energy. He’s loving it. That’s got to be one of the most delicious treats you can find naturally in the jungle. Absolutely delicious. And those guys just ate the most honey I’ve ever seen. That’s going to give them tons of energy. [Music] Wow. It’s funny how he only gave us a tiny little piece and then they ate like handfuls and handfuls of honey. I’m not complaining whatsoever. I mean, they need the energy. But it’s just funny to kind of see how much they savor it and cherish that honey. Really good stuff. That tasted amazing. That was literally probably the best honey I’ve ever tasted in my life. [Music] So, we’ve made our way down to a stream of water. And along the way, Nevada have been collecting different sort of ingredients that they’re going to use for fishing. I’ll show you here in a second how they do that. I can’t even keep up with these guys. They’re barefoot. Turn it. [Music] So along our walk, they’re collecting several ingredients. Now he’s collecting some leaves and he just peeled some bark from this tree here. And the other veta is pounding a piece of wood and some seeds or nuts that they collected on our walk. So only the indigenous people are going to know which ingredients are the proper ones to use. And what they’re going to do with these ingredients is is not eat, but they’re actually making a poison with all of this in order to fish in the stream. So these are some of the ingredients that will actually poison the fish and then they’ll float to the top hopefully and then they’ll have a fish for dinner. Okay. [Music] What? [Music] [Music] [Music] So he just got into the stream here and now he is pounding that piece of wood and sort of releasing all the juices and the chemicals which are present in that wood into the water. releasing them into the water. It’s poisonous for the fish. That’s the point. They want to uh poison those fish so they die, float up to the top, and then they can collect them. This is the first step. As you can see, he’s really pounding that thing, trying to get all the chemicals released into water. Never seen this before. It’s amazing. [Applause] [Applause] So the second step is they’ve created sort of a poison tea bag, if you will, of all of these other ingredients, the bark, those seeds, nuts, and he’s mixing that, sloshing it around, and there’s already a fish that’s floated up. So you can see it’s quite effective. The fish just float up to the surface and it’s just easy pickings. That was pretty amazing to see just the indigenous secret of the veta knowing how to use specific jungle ingredients to fish poison the fish. I’ve never seen that before. So, they’ve got uh plenty of fish. I think they’ve got some more back at the hut. And I guess it’s time to go cook up some lunch. [Music] [Music] So, we are back at the hut and a couple more uh people from the tribe have joined us. The fish are immediately onto the grill, right onto the fire. We’ve got some corn and beans cooking down here in the clay pot. And we are about to have a feast. Veta feast. Man, it is smoking hot. These guys just don’t stop. It’s like they’re not even affected by the elements. I don’t understand it. They’re barefoot. They don’t look like they’re sweating. They don’t look tired at all. Oh, and we’re going to add a little bit of uh ground coconut right into that. So, that’s going to be our rice sort of supplement. for rice. And this is the staple of the veta. Corn, beans, and coconut. So, one thing’s for sure, I’ve worked up an appetite. I’m starving. I’m going to try a little bit of this before the rest of the food is cooked. Beans, corn, coconut. I think they salted it. [Music] It’s actually really good. Super hearty. This is the type of food you need when you’re living out here in the jungle. foraging, you need a lot of energy, something that’s really going to fill you up. Yum, that’s actually really, really good. The coconut is beautiful with it. The beans are soft, but the corn’s got a little bit of a crunch still. Yeah, that’s actually delicious. Actually, this is really good. It’s nice and warm. I’m learning Va language, hanging out with the tribesmen. And one thing that’s kind of funny to note is these guys, they don’t know how old they are. They don’t know when their birthday is. That’s not important to them. They’re pagans, so they believe in spiritual spirituality, um, you know, wild life. It’s a very, very interesting culture, and it’s totally separate than the Sinhal culture and the Tamil culture here in Sri Lanka. So, we just roasted the corn kernels and uh now I’m pounding them into almost like a corn flour. And this is going to be used to make our dessert which is called agala. And also one of the beta just came back with some more honey from the beehive which is looking beautiful. Golden. How am I doing? Okay. I don’t know. She definitely does it a lot better than I do. [Applause] [Music] I got it. So that pounded corn flour is mixed with that fresh fresh honey. She just squeezes all the honey out of that wax. And now just mixing it around. And I think that’s going to be it. But maybe they’ll add some other ingredients. But it’s very simple dessert. AA very famous Sri Lankan dessert and I can’t wait to try it because that honey earlier was incredible just by itself. So the agala is finished for dessert. We’ll try that later. So that meat we smoked earlier will not go to waste even though we didn’t finish it all. They’re actually going to preserve the rest of the meat in the honey. So, they’ve just got a jar, throw the meat in the bottom of the jar, and then cover it in honey, and it should last for a long time. We’re going to prepare another dish. This is a stuffed pumpkin that we’re going to cook underground. So, he just hollowed out a pumpkin, and now we’re going to start filling it with different ingredients. So, the filling for the pumpkin is a mixture of onions, garlic, chilies, squeeze some lime in there, and then one of those fish that we roasted over the open flames, and then it’s uh seasoned with salt and pepper and some chili powder as well. And then it’s just stuffed all inside of that pumpkin. And then that’s going to go actually right under the coals underground. Baba. [Music] So, the pumpkin was wrapped up in a banana leaf and then tied up. And now he just dug a hole, filled it with some of the hot coals, and completely buried it underground. This guy, he’s literally standing on top of poles right now with his bare feet. I don’t understand. This is the hardest working man I’ve ever seen in my life. Just no complaints. Makes me feel like a little bit of a wimp to be honest cuz I am suffering in this heat right now. And he looks totally unfazed. So, we’re still waiting for the pumpkin to finish cooking, but uh the boys and the girls and I are sitting down and we got some of the the beans and corn. These guys have been incredibly welcoming today and work really hard to feed us. I hope I’m doing everything right. The least I can do is serve these guys. This This is really good. We already tried it. So, we’ve got the fish that was grilled and then they mixed it with onions, chilies, garlic, all kinds of spices, black pepper. Oh, smells very good. We also have the agala. Freshly made pounded corn with honey. We’ll save that for dessert. spicy. I like the onions and a little bit sour from the squeeze of lemon. I’m not sure is lemon or kamati. And I really like this with the corn. It’s got a little crunch. They left all the bones in there. Kind of mixed it around. I don’t know if they’re just eating the bones. I’m trying to pick them out. But well, today has been quite an experience, guys. Once in a lifetime experience. Very thankful. and grateful to be invited here and uh treated so well by the vet community. Really a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s good. Delicious. It’s always tastes better when you get to collect the ingredients yourself from the nature, from the wild. Super fresh. poisoned those fish. Hopefully that poison doesn’t uh poison me. And this food extremely hearty, like I was saying earlier, because these guys are the hardest working people I’ve ever met. They need food like this to keep them up going. It’s good. You know what? It’s actually really delicious. Everything works really well together. Spice up nicely. The squeeze of lime makes a huge difference. Crunchy onions in there. You know, the fish is really like flaky and it’s just kind of mixed in with everything. You know, they don’t have refrigeration. They don’t have electricity. They don’t have gasoline, nothing. Everything cooked on wood fire. But so flavorful. Like honestly more flavorful than food back home. And we have all those things. What are we doing? These guys know what tastes good. So, this is the agla mixed with that bee honey that we just harvested earlier today. Let’s try. Oh my god, that’s delicious. The corn is not cooked. It’s just pounded. So, it’s still really crunchy, like hard, but super sweet. All sticky. Yum. It’s almost like a toffee or like a peanut brittle or something. Some buffalo passing behind us here. This is really wild. The dogs smell the food. Wow, what an experience. I really love this augal. That honey is probably the best honey I’ve ever tasted in my life. I don’t know if you can see them back there. Why are we not having the pumpkin, Jinda? Why are we not having the pumpkin? It’s going to take a couple of hours. So, uh, we don’t have much time. We’re pretty full already, so we decided we’ll just, you know, give the pumpkin to the vet people. They need it more than us. Thank you though. Thank you for everything. Always welcome. There’s another amazing video. Huge thank you to Sri Lanka Tourism Board for helping us Sri Lanka. That’s going to be it for today’s episode from Sri Lanka. Huge thank you to the vetted guys. See you on the next episode. Bye-bye.

Deep in the jungles of Mahiyanganaya, Sri Lanka live the Vedda people. We spend the day foraging for ingredients to prepare a feast like you’ve never seen before! From gathering honey with their bare hands to roasted freshly caught fish over the fire. We will dive into Vedda culture deeper than ever before. Huge thank you to the Sri Lanka Tourism Board for supporting our filmmaking and helping us bring these amazing stories to the world.

#srilankastoryforallseasons

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I’m Luke Martin, food lover and world traveller! I make videos about local, authentic and unique foods from across the globe. I particularly like to sample street food across Asia. I’ve eaten my way across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, parts of Africa, North America and the list is still growing! My mission is to create content that is entertaining, informative, honest and fun! I love what I do and I’m always grateful for your support! Thank you and see you on the next episode!

Camera Operator : Nichakarn (Mink)
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