1 destination · 10 things to do

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka squeezes two and a half thousand years of history, misty tea country, a walled colonial port and a coastline patrolled by blue whales into an island you can cross in a day, and Colombo is the natural place to start. The capital is easy to underrate: a seafront promenade where the whole city gathers at sunset, a Victorian museum full of royal treasures, a temple crammed with brass, ivory and Buddha statues, a 350-metre tower shaped like a lotus bud, and a street-food scene that runs from crab curry to kottu roti chopped on a hot plate. From here the island’s headline sights are day trips. Inland, Kandy was the last royal capital and keeps the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, the most revered Buddhist site in the country, beside a lake in the hills. Further north, Sigiriya rises sheer from the jungle, a fifth-century palace on top of a granite rock with painted maidens on its walls, paired with the cave temples of Dambulla. To the south, Galle Fort is a living Dutch-era town inside sea ramparts, with Mirissa’s whale-watching boats an hour beyond. This guide shows what to book, what each experience is really like, how to plan around the monsoon and the post-cyclone rail repairs, and where to stay, from a grande dame hotel on the Colombo seafront to a Geoffrey Bawa masterpiece above the Galle surf.