Sri Lanka

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.

Sri Lanka har underbara stränder, men efter ett tag tröttnar man på solsvedda axlar och sand mellan tårna. Då är det dags att åka tåg, vandra uppför klippor, bo på kolonialhotell, meditera, leva hälsosamt och spana i det tropiska djurlivet.

Protected from noisy Galle Rd by the sluggish sweep of the Bentota Ganga, the ribbon of golden sand that makes up Bentota Beach is a glorious holiday sun-and-fun playground. There's a good mix of uberluxe resorts and smaller boutique places catering to independent travellers. There are more such places bordering Aluthgama, a small town on the mouth of an inlet and straddling the main road between Beruwela and Bentota. The town of Aluthgama has a raucous fish market, local shops and the main train station in the area. Induruwa doesn’t really have a centre – it’s spread out along the coast.

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.

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.

Lovely Arugam Bay, a moon-shaped curl of soft sand, is home to a famed point break that many regard as the best surf spot in the country. It's a tiny place, with a population of a few hundred, and everything is dotted along a single road which parallels the coast. So in other words, the epitome of the laid-back beach scene that first drew surfers and sun-seekers to Sri Lanka.

Under kriget höll sig turisterna på tryggt avstånd från stridszonerna. Med nu är det fritt fram att besöka den krigsdrabbade östkusten. Och ridån går upp för några av Sydasiens vackraste stränder.

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.