Sri Lanka

With towering, rainbow-colored Hindu temples and a spectacular coastline fringed with palmyra and coconut palms, the North is a different world. Here the climate is arid for most of the year and the fields sun-baked. The light is stronger: surreal and white-hot on salt flats in the Vanni, bright and lucid on coral islands and northern beaches, and soft and speckled in Jaffna’s leafy suburbs and busy center. Look for the shimmer of colors from the wild peacocks that seem to be everywhere.

Crack open a coconut, slip into a hammock and rock gently in the breeze, allowing the hours, days and even weeks to slip calmly by. Welcome to Mirissa, a stunning crescent beach. Modest guesthouses abound and there's a string of simple restaurants at the back of the sand.

I nio månader har Sri Lanka varit stängt för utländska turister på grund av pandemin. Men nu öppnar landet åter för besökare. Från och med. 21 januari gläntar man på dörren och öppnar för besök på den tropiska ön i Indiska oceanen.

Hikkaduwa has been a firm fixture on the Sri Lankan tourist map since the 1970s, and this long exposure to tourism has left it a little worse for wear. A kilometre-long strip of guesthouses, shops and restaurants lines the beach, which is quite badly eroded in its northern stretch. The busy Colombo–Galle Rd, with its crazy high-speed bus drivers, runs right through the middle of Hikkaduwa, which can make stepping outside of your guesthouse as deadly as a game of Russian roulette!

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.

Although it's unlikely it will reclaim its 19th-century moniker 'the garden city of the East', Colombo has nevertheless emerged as a must-see stop in Sri Lanka. No longer just the sprawling city you have to endure on your way to the beaches, it has become a worthy destination in its own right and makes an excellent start – or finish – to your Sri Lankan adventures.

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.

With palm-lined beaches, turquoise waters and a good selection of guesthouses and restaurants, Unawatuna is very popular with travelers. The resort's location is superb, with the historic city of Galle just 6km away and a wooded headland to the west dotted with tiny coves.

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.

In Tissamaharama (usually shortened to Tissa), eyes are automatically drawn upwards and outwards. Upwards to the tip of its huge, snowy-white dagoba and outwards, beyond the town’s confines, to nearby wildlife reserves crawling with creatures large and small. With its pretty lakeside location, Tissa is an ideal mellow base for the nearby Yala and Bundala National Parks.