Sri Lanka

Från och med den 1 augusti erbjuds svenskar, och resenärer från 47 andra länder, gratis turistvisum till Sri Lanka. Anledningen är att landet vill ha tillbaka turismen efter bombattackerna i påskas.

Welcome to everyone’s favorite hill-country village, and the place to ease off the travel accelerator with a few leisurely days resting in your choice of some of the country’s best guesthouses. The views through Ella Gap are stunning, and on a clear night you can even spy the subtle glow of the Great Basses lighthouse on Sri Lanka’s south coast. Don’t be too laid-back though; definitely make time for easygoing walks through tea plantations to temples, waterfalls and viewpoints. After building up a hiking-inspired appetite, look forward to Sri Lanka’s best home-cooked food and a reviving cuppa.

Prepare your senses for overload, for the South is Sri Lanka at its most sultry and enticing: a glorious shoreline of dazzling white curves of sand set against emerald forested hills. Yes, you'll find the region a delight to explore, with each bend in the coastal highway revealing yet another idyllic cove to investigate.

You don’t have to be on Sri Lanka’s west coast for long to realize that the coastline has something of a multiple personality. North of the capital is Negombo, a cheerful beach town crowned with church spires that is, thanks to its proximity to the airport, a staple of almost every visitor’s Sri Lankan journey. Head further north, though, and you enter a wild and little-visited region that seems to consist of nothing but coconut plantations and lagoons, sparkling in the sun and filled with dolphins.

Often referred to as ‘Little England’, this genteel highland community does have a rose-tinted, vaguely British-country-village feel to it, with its colonial-era bungalows, Tudor-style hotels, well-tended hedgerows and pretty gardens. Indeed, Nuwara Eliya was once was the favored cool-climate escape for the hard-working and hard-drinking English and Scottish pioneers of Sri Lanka’s tea industry.

Matara is a busy, booming and sprawling commercial town that owes almost nothing to tourism – which can make it a fascinating window on modern Sri Lankan life. Matara’s main attractions are its ramparts, Dutch architecture, a well-preserved fort and its street life.

Nilaveli, the furthest north of the Trinco region's two beach resort areas, is more intimate than Uppuveli. Hotels are scattered up and down little lanes off the coast highway (B424) – it's around six kilometres from one end of the village to the other. If you're looking for some serious beach time, then Nilaveli could be just the ticket, for the sands are golden and the ocean inviting. Offshore, Pigeon Island offers fabled diving and snorkelling.

Rising dramatically from the central plains, the enigmatic rocky outcrop of Sigiriya is perhaps Sri Lanka's single most dramatic sight. Near-vertical walls soar to a flat-topped summit that contains the ruins of an ancient civilization, thought to once have been the epicenter of the short-lived kingdom of Kassapa, and there are spellbinding vistas across mist-wrapped forests in the early morning.

Perched at the southern edge of the Hill Country, the largely Tamil town of Haputale clings to a long, narrow mountain ridge with the land falling away steeply on both sides. On a clear day you can view the south coast from this ridge, and at night the Hambantota lighthouse pulses in the distance. On a not-so-clear day, great swaths of mist cling magnetically to the hillsides. Either way, it’s a spectacular part of the country.

Framed by soaring highlands on its northern boundary, the Uda Walawe National Park is one of the world's best places to see wild elephants. Largely comprised of grasslands and bush forest, it's also one of the best national parks in Sri Lanka for game spotting.