Off the southern coast of India, not far from the Maldives, is the spellbinding island nation of Sri Lanka. It gained its independence in 1948 after almost 150 years of British rule and was then Ceylon, before changing to Sri Lanka in 1972. It has so much to offer, which I learned last night as a dinner guest of one of my favorite travel marketing companies, Rebecca Recommends. We were joined by the founder of Resplendent Ceylon, a collection of luxury properties including the only Relais & Châteaux resorts in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka is rich with cultural highlights with eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites including the Ancient City of Sigiriya, located on top of the granite rock pictured above. It's famous for Ceylon tea and cinnamon, and the country's cuisine reflects Sri Lanka's diverse history with dishes featuring curry, roti, coconut milk, nutmeg, and cinnamon plus Middle Eastern, Dutch, and Portuguese influences and traditions. Sri Lanka of course has nice beaches (being an island and all), and safaris to see animals like elephants and endangered Sri Lankan Leopards.
Sri Lanka is far less daunting (and less populated) than India, and its welcoming hotels make it a perfect place to have a fun, unique, and immersive cultural visit - for kids too. I hope you enjoy the article below about road tripping through the southern coast, and if you'd like to learn more about Sri Lanka, please reach out and let me know. I have great local contacts in Sri Lanka!
Excerpt below from 3/18/2022 article produced by Chris Schalkx can found here.
On an island a bit larger than West Virginia, Sri Lanka packs in a lot. Yet it doesn’t hit travelers with sensory overload like its northern neighbor, India, often does, and it delivers more mental stimulation than a sun-and-sand break in the Maldives to the southwest. So for my first post-lockdown holiday, I took an eight-day road-trip adventure, a leisurely loop from Colombo along the south coast and back through the Hill Country, an excellent way to sample Sri Lanka’s highlights.
After landing in Colombo, it’s best to set out for Galle the same day. Roughly a two-hour drive from the capital, Galle’s seventeenth-century fort, National Museum, and former hospital (now home to a cluster of trendy restaurants) stand as relics of the country’s Dutch colonial past and provide a more walkable and less hectic setting to recover from long flights. Kids play cricket in the shade of twisting rain trees on its Court Square, while the odd peacock looks on from branches overhead. A tangle of lanes weave from its fortified corners past bistros and galleries in fixed-up godowns (warehouses).
From Galle, it’s a 30-minute drive east to Ahangama, a palm-tufted beach town where waves teem with surfers at dawn, and where stilt fishers take over at sunset to catch herring and mackerel with rods made from the spines of toddy palm trees. Away from the main road’s buzzing tuk-tuks, frangipani-scented lanes snake inland to rice paddies and patches of untamed jungle. Here, nine-to-five escapees from Colombo and expats from abroad have transformed gingerbread-trimmed villas into yoga salas, vegan bistros, and surf boot camps.
Ahangama clings to its cusp-of-discovery vibe, reminiscent of Bali or Australia’s Byron Bay before they became boho boomtowns. “People here haven’t broken the law yet,” Colombo transplant Ravi Bandaranaike explained over Lion lagers in the lush garden of Trax, the café and music venue he and industry friends from the capital city opened last year. The comment was in reference to the Sri Lankan law against high-rise construction. Elsewhere along the south coast, he said, local authorities have succumbed to bribery and the profits of overdevelopment. Sure, Ahangama’s community of downward-dog-stretching, wave-chasing – and now, remote-working – residents has grown exponentially over the past five years, but there’s still a welcome absence of souvenir kitsch and megaresorts.
The straight shot from Ahangama to Tangalle takes a couple of hours. Realistically, plan for at least half a day – to stop for fresh coconuts from roadside stalls, for rice and curry at holes-in-the-wall overlooking the ocean, for walks on some of the countless caramel-colored beaches strung along the coast like shells on a surfer’s bracelet. One don’t-miss recommendation: Dondra, a quiet settlement on the island’s southernmost tip, where a nineteenth-century lighthouse stands sentinel on a rocky headland and stealthy macaques nab fruit from front yards.
Sri Lanka’s southern coast lays claim to two Aman resorts: Amangalla in Galle channels the town’s colonial past through antiques and stately dining rooms, while Tangalle’s beachfront oasis of Amanwella takes a more contemporary turn. Its villas, with designs inspired by the tropical modernism movement that blossomed out of Sri Lanka, come with private pools and airy bedrooms, where guests (at least this one) can watch fireflies light up the surrounding palms as they doze off to the roar of restless surf. Tangalle is do-nothing territory; there’s a bird-rich lagoon and nature reserves, but people really come here for the beaches. Guests at Amanwella needn’t look far: The resort hugs a crescent of near-deserted sand, with a private beach club serving Mediterranean-tinged lunches and homemade ice cream beneath skinny coconut trees.
While beaches are the main draw in Sri Lanka’s south, Yala National Park, roughly 50 miles east of Tangalle, attracts travelers for wildlife and day-trip safaris. Sri Lanka’s second-largest wildlife reserve occupies much of the island’s southeastern plains, an expanse of low-slung jungles and boulder-strewn grasslands where dirt tracks are often more potholes than road.
“Buffalo,” said my guide, Sunil, nodding at a herd in the distance. He spotted a family of wild boar hidden in the jungle fringe and crocodiles lurking in its murky ponds, and pointed out a crested serpent eagle almost invisible in a treetop ahead. Suddenly, Sunil slammed on the brakes: An elephant mother and her tuk-tuk-size bambino emerged from the thicket just a trunk’s length ahead of us – two of some 300 Sri Lankan elephants that roam the park.
While our car’s shadow lengthened, Yala kept on giving: a bigger herd of elephants crossing the road, a couple of great hornbills playing hide-and-seek in a tree overhead, and, at the end of the day, the star of the park: a leopard soaking up the last rays of sun.
Rather than doubling back along the coast to Colombo, from Yala, head inland to the Hill Country, the island’s undulating, jungle-covered heart. This is the cradle of Ceylon tea, imported from China by British colonizers in the mid-1800s and now one of the country’s main export commodities. On my last visit, I traversed this mountainscape on a rickety local train from Ella to Kandy, two charming hill stations surrounded by rolling tea plantations. The journey is known as one of the world’s most iconic rail trips, but for comfort, this time around I followed a similar route by car.
From roads as twisting as the Sinhalese script, the views are no less enticing. Around me, swollen waterfalls poured from cliffs, and plants emerged from every crack and crevice. In villages, tarpaulin-covered stalls brimmed with backyard-grown beans, chard, radishes, and curly kale. And everywhere, troupes of sari-ed tea pluckers dotted the hillsides like Funfetti on a matcha ice-cream scoop.
Pulling back into Colombo, I reflected on the week of surfing, safari-ing, and sauntering through tea plantations – a proposition few destinations can deliver. Still, so much more awaits on return visits, like chasing waves along the east coast or exploring kaleidoscopic Hindu temples up north in Jaffna. And therein lies Sri Lanka’s appeal: After three trips to the tiny island country, it seems like I’ve only scratched the surface.
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