Five years after the end of its quarter-century-long civil war, tourists are being lured back to Sri Lanka by friendly locals and an abundance of natural and man-made beauty, Wall Street Journal says.
This petite island nation—totaling just 25,000 square miles but including the 4.5 million-resident city of Colombo—offers everything from leopard safaris and surfing to ancient temples and complex curries. Here, four experiences that would be challenging, if not impossible, to find anywhere else.
Sri Lanka is a well-known source of high-quality precious stones. Hidden in the bottom of the Ellawala River near the town of Eheliyagoda, 50 miles from Colombo, are blue sapphires, rubies, garnets and aquamarines. Using a woven cane basket called a nambuwa, visitors (and prospectors) sift water by hand. Alternatively, climb into a 10-meter-deep mud pit to extract some (hopefully) jewel-studded dirt.
Traveling to the Kandy Kingdom to find the Buddha’s tooth sounds like a children’s fantasy adventure, but it’s a trip every Sri Lankan Buddhist hopes to make at least once. The relic is kept in a guarded temple complex in Kandy, a central city that was the capital of the last Sinhalese kingdom.
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