Go East The season to visit the East Coast of Sri Lanka begins this month, May, and lasts until October, as the monsoon storms switch coasts and the sea in the east becomes calmer and the weather bright, while the beaches on the west shrink under rough seas. Trincomalee is the best known… Read More »
City Birds As park and playing field walls are being torn down and roads cleaned up, Colombo is fast regaining its colonial reputation as a Garden City. Although the original sprawling cinnamon gardens that once formed the city’s boundary has become the prime residential district of Colombo 7, Vihara Mara Devi (formerly Victoria) Park… Read More »
The Flowering of the Lotus Pond Theatre The inaugural ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Colombo in November 2013 brought to the world’s attention the magnificent Nelum Pokuna (Lotus Pond) Mahinda Rajapaksa Theatre. This spectacular building, familiarly known as Nelum Pokuna (Lotus Pond) Theatre, began life as the… Read More »
Christmas in Sri Lanka Season’s Greetings! Sri Lankans love to party and happily join in the celebrations of the feasts or holy days of all religions. December 25 is a public, bank and mercantile holiday throughout Sri Lanka. Even though it is a Christian festival, the government sometimes regards Christmas Day as equivalent to a… Read More »
By Rasitjha Wickramasinghe A few months ago I realized one of my lifelong ambitions. I am 41 years old and lived in Sri Lanka until the age of 18. All that time the furthest north I have been was to Mannar. With the heightening of civil war and the JVP insurrection I… Read More »
A thousand baby turtles made tiny imprints in the sand as they scuttled across the Bentota beach to the sea. Bentota Beach Hotel along with the Victor Hasselblad Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Center, Sri Lanka recently released 1,000 newly hatched baby turtles into the sea to mark ‘World Turtle day’. The baby critters were… Read More »
Situated North East to the Hill Capital Kandy is a mountain range that is more often admired from a distance. The clear outline of the Knuckles Mountains – so called due to its resemblance to a clenched fist of knuckles – can be observed from the town of Matale, North of Kandy. We however… Read More »
I’m not sure whether any of you have watched Jurassic Park, but I was just a kid when I did, and one thing that really stuck in my mind is that moment when Richard takes off his hat and his jaw drops at the sight of the Brontosaurus. The moment when we saw our first… Read More »
For our journey to Pasekudah, which is fast winning a worldwide reputation as one of the jewels of Sri Lanka’s east coast, we took the route from Kandy through the Knuckles range and the challenge of the 18 hairpin bends. The route has been reopened recently after it was closed for road construction and despite… Read More »
I have always been a sucker for adventure, scaling rocks without equipment, checking how fast I can go on a bike without a helmet and I even attempted to ballroom dance, which didn’t turn out too well. Whitewater rafting has always been on the top of my bucket list, keeping company with bungee jumping,… Read More »
