The tiny coral island sits way out in the Palk Strait. Locals know it as Neduntheevu. The Portuguese called it Ilha das Vacas (“Island of the Cows”). The Dutch named it Delft. The flat 8 x 6 km island is home 5000 hardy souls and herds of wild ponies We went to Delft Island in northern…
A stupa is a hemispherical pre-Buddhist Indian burial mound or a commemorative monument housing relics associated with the Buddha. It is said that two seafaring merchants called Trapusa and Bahalika from ancient India brought a few strands of the Buddha’s hair to Sri Lanka and enshrined them on top of a small hillock in the village of Thiriyaya near…
Nilaveli was already an established beach resort in Trincomalee on the East Coast of Sri Lanka as early as the 1970s with two classy beach-front hotels in operation. I stayed at one of them in 1980 and thoroughly enjoyed it. The four-kilometre long palm fringed beach was exquisite and the hotel served sumptuous…
I peered in to the darkness and saw giant shapes moving slowly. They were prowling wild elephants beyond the perimeter fires I lit that evening. I was lying in my little hut with a thatched roof and no walls. The jungle was all round me That was then – 1966 to be…
On the final day of our stay at the Blue Magpie Lodge in central Sri Lanka, we visited Duwili Ella Falls The path down to the stream is steep and a garden lizard with a bright red head watched us trying to negotiate it. Further on, concrete steps and a metal hand…
“That’s a Kangaroo Lizard” the guide whispered, pointing at a small brown lizard on a tree trunk. Otocryptis wiegmanni with long hind legs, is a small ground-dwelling lizard of the rain forest. The female is brown in colour and the male has a garland of emerald round its neck. We were in the Sinharaja Rainforest in…
We spent a weekend at he Blue Magpie Lodge in Kudawa, Sri Lanka, using it as a base for visiting Sinharaja Forest. We left Colombo at dawn and drove to Ambalama – a roadside cafe in Hanwella, for a fine Sri Lankan breakfast of freshly made hoppers – pancakes made with rice flour and coconut milk…
On our final day at Jetwing Surf, Hiran Cooray and Len Porter of Jetwing led a dawn beach walk to Pottuvil Point and back We took nothing from the beach and left only footprints in the sand.
In Sri Lanka, ‘Tank‘ refers to an ancient irrigation reservoir. The first Tank was built in 4th century BC and over the years, successive kings constructed nearly 2800 of them in the dry zone of the country to retain rain water for paddy cultivation. The bund was built with compressed earth and the inside…
The oarsman beached the boat. It was painted blue and the man was wearing a blue sarong. Three young women in blue traditional dress stepped out of the dugout canoe. They were wearing white necklaces and had white flowers in their hair. They carried wicker baskets full of hoppers, milk-rice, fish curry and Sri Lankan sweets to…
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