The lagoon is the first thing. Wide and silver-grey in the early morning, it wraps around the fort on three sides like something protective, something patient. Fishing boats sit low on the water. A man is repairing a net on the bank. Somewhere inside the old walls, a...
Sri Lanka's Ancient Baobab of Pallimunai, Mannar It does not greet you politely. There is no signboard at eye level, no manicured path, no gift shop selling miniature replicas. The Baobab of Pallimunai simply stands there, at the edge of the Mannar peninsula, its vast...
The tuk-tuk driver switched off his engine halfway up the hill and just pointed. "Look up," he said, grinning as though he'd personally arranged the view. I did, and there it was, an 88-foot white figure glowing against the grey monsoon sky, watching over Kandy the...
You smell the stone before you see it properly. That particular scent of old granite warmed by the morning sun, half mineral, half earth, a little like rain on dry ground. Then you step through a gap in the treeline and there it is: a raised stone platform of...
Negombo doesn't advertise itself as a temple town. Wander its streets and you'll find church spires, a fish market that starts before dawn, and canals lined with fishing boats, all of it distinctly Catholic in flavour, a legacy of the Portuguese and Dutch who once ran...
A trouser press. Of all the small details that told me Adara Guest House takes its guests seriously, it was the trouser press tucked in the corner of my room that made me smile first. It's such an old fashioned, slightly formal little object to find in a homestay down...
The air in Habarana smells of warm earth, jungle leaf litter, and something vaguely ancient. Given that this pocket of Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle sits within easy reach of Sigiriya, Minneriya, and the ruins at Polonnaruwa, that makes a certain kind of sense. It is...
Two thousand years is not a number the human brain handles well. It is too large to feel, too distant to picture. Abhayagiri Dagoba does not ask you to picture it. It simply stands there and lets the number become real. A great pale dome rising from the flat...
The pilgrimage to Adam’s Peak has two faces. The one most travellers see is the Dalhousie approach, the night climb up 5,500 steps with thousands of others, the cold summit, the famous shadow at sunrise. It is extraordinary and worth doing. But the traditional...
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