Valencia yoga student ready for the 200 hour leap and Sri Lanka south coast trainings cost half the European price in a setting that markets itself The listings blur together though palm trees certification promises smiling cohorts What separates a s…
Northern roads person with a free Jaffna day The map shows a coastal loop I cannot resist Keerimalai the sacred freshwater springs beside the sea the Naguleswaram kovil the northernmost point at Point Pedro with its lighthouse and Casuarina beach on…
Brazilian so coffee chauvinism runs in my blood but the history hooked me this island was COFFEE before it was tea until the 1869 leaf rust catastrophe forced the great conversion Now I keep reading about a specialty revival highland arabica smallhol…
Vanlife veteran assessing the island Campervan rental listings have started appearing for Sri Lanka which surprised me there is no campsite network I can find no obvious overnight parking culture and the roads are famously narrow Who has actually tou…
Estate side posting for the drivers and riders the Hatton to Talawakele stretch of the A7 passes the two celebrity waterfalls St Clair called the little Niagara of Sri Lanka and Devon plunging opposite the tea terraces Visitors ask two things constan…
Summit collector with a complication Pidurutalagala at 2524 meters is the islands highest point but the top hosts a television and military installation Some sources say the summit is closed others describe driving up from Nuwara Eliya past checkpoin…
Cliff edge collector reporting for duty Beyond Badulla the Madulsima tea country supposedly ends at a drop they call mini worlds end or Pitamaruwa where the escarpment falls away to the eastern plains with zero infrastructure zero entry fee and zero…
Rainforest person staying in Galle and the maths puzzles me Sinharaja the famous name sits three plus hours away while Kanneliya apparently the core of the KDN forest complex and a biodiversity heavyweight in its own right sits barely an hour inland…
Dive operations side posting because the inquiry arrives daily can we dive the underwater museum the navy built sculpture gallery on the seabed off Galle The short answer disappoints people so here is the long honest one with the seasonal physics the…
Gem curious but allergic to showroom theatre Meetiyagoda inland from Hikkaduwa supposedly mines the finest blue sheen moonstones on earth from narrow hand dug shafts in village gardens Can a visitor actually see the pits and the cutting how does the…
Museum traveller confession the south coast was sand and surf until someone mentioned a folk culture museum at Koggala built around the childhood home of the national novelist Martin Wickramasinghe with a serious ethnographic collection Worth pulling…
Staying in Ahangama and the estate ten minutes inland claims things that sound invented tea growing at sea level when everyone says altitude makes quality silver tips picked with scissors into silk lined baskets never touched by hand a French press c…
School librarian posting for the visitors who message me weekly Dambulla gets sandwiched between Sigiriya climbs and onward drives a forty minute trot through five caves that deserve half a day The painted ceilings alone exceed two thousand square me…
My architecture list has one Sri Lankan entry I cannot decode from photographs Nalanda Gedige a stone shrine built entirely in South Indian Dravidian style but apparently Buddhist in dedication standing alone near the claimed geographic centre of the…
The history footnote that staggers me the entire Pali canon held in memory for four centuries was first committed to writing at Aluvihare rock temple near Matale around 80 BC on ola palm leaves by five hundred monks during famine and war Today the A9…
A craft historian friend insists the finest medieval wood carving in South Asia hides in a drummers hall at Embekka Devalaya twenty minutes from Kandy with two companion temples Gadaladeniya in stone and Lankatilaka in brick completing a half day loo…
Venue writer posting the assessment visitors keep asking for The Lotus Tower dominates every Colombo photograph now the tallest structure in South Asia at 356 meters with the observation deck the revolving restaurant and the evening light shows Is th…
Every Kandy guesthouse sells tickets to the 1730 cultural dance shows drummers acrobatic ves dancers plate spinning and a fire walking finale Reviews split between unmissable and staged for coaches I have one Kandy evening Is the show a compressed ve…
Ex smoker eighteen months clean thanks to vaping and now thoroughly confused Some forums say e-cigarettes are completely banned in Sri Lanka others say tourists bring personal devices through daily What is the actual legal position can customs confis…
Booking flights and then a friend mentioned tourists have been refused entry and even deported from Sri Lanka over Buddha tattoos I assumed it was internet exaggeration then I read about a British nurse deported years ago for exactly this My tattoo i…