How To Use This E-Book
Getting around the e-book
This Insight Guide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for your visit to Sri Lanka, as well as comprehensive planning advice to make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editors Choice categories of activies and experiences. Detailed features on history, people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Sri Lanka. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full information on getting around, hotels, activities from to culture to shopping to sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your trip.
In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.
Maps
All key attractions and sights in Sri Lanka are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.
Images
Youll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of Sri Lanka. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.
About Insight Guides
Insight Guides have more than 40 years experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different needs.
Insight Guides are written by local authors who use their on-the-ground experience to provide the very latest information; their local expertise is evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features. All the reviews in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide to you the best places to stay and eat, so you can be confident that when we say a restaurant or hotel is special, we really mean it.
Like all Insight Guides , this e-book contains hundreds of beautiful photographs to inspire and inform your travel. We commission most of our own photography, and we strive to capture the essence of a destination using original images that you wont find anywhere else.
2012 Apa Publications (UK) Ltd
Table of Contents
Introduction
History
Features
Places
Travel Tips
Introduction: Remember My Name
Sri Lankas many different names are a reflection of its fascinating history.
The island currently going by the name of Sri Lanka has had a string of other names and identities over the centuries. Prince Vijaya and his followers called the island Tambapanni, after the copper-coloured beach at which they landed on the west coast. In the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, a sea captain working for Annius Plocamus, a tax collector in the Red Sea, suffered the misfortune of catching a monsoon that swept his boat off course and dumped him on the island 15 days later. For him, and other Roman and Greek callers, Tambapanni was too much of a mouthful and became Taprobane, a name that survived in Western use for hundreds of years, even cropping up in Miltons Paradise Regained (where it is described as the utmost Indian Isle Taprobane) and Cervantes Don Quixote .
A Thai Buddha statue at the Seema Malaka, Colombo.
Marcus Wilson Smith/ApaPublications
Arab traders could have told Annius Plocamuss captain that if he waited a while a different monsoon would blow him back to Arabia or, if he liked, East Africa. They relied on these winds to go back and forth, knew the island well and called it Serendib, a corruption of the Sanskrit Sinhaladvipa. This was the name that 18th-century English novelist Horace Walpole used for his fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendib , coining the word serendipity (Sirinduil is another variant).
Edward Barbosa, a Portuguese captain who visited in 1515, tried to persuade his countrymen to adopt Tennaserim, which in some ancient Indian language meant Land of Delights, but they had already settled on Ceilo which, thanks to medieval Europeans like Marco Polo, became Seylan. The Dutch worked out their own derivation to produce Zeilan; the English compromise was Ceylon.
Wall panel, Anuradhapura.
Sylvaine Poitau
Through all of this, the Sinhalese had long ago decided it was Lanka, and it officially changed to Sri Lanka in 1972 (Sri means holy or beautiful). The words Prajathanthrika Samajavadi Janarajayi (Democratic Socialist Republic) were tacked on in 1978. Its quite a mouthful, but your mistakes will doubtless be forgiven: Sri Lankans are used to people getting their name wrong.
Sri Lankas Top 10 Attractions
From the Buddhist temples and palaces of Kandy and the ancient ruins, art and architecture of the Cultural Triangle, to the altogether simpler pleasures of a good rice and curry.
Top Attraction 1
Galle Fort. A perfectly preserved colonial time capsule, the quiet streets of Galle Fort ooze old-world atmosphere, with characterful Dutch-era mansions encircled by a venerable chain of ramparts and bastions, and the crashing waves of the Indian Ocean breaking just beyond. For more information, .
Corbis. All Rights Reserved.
Top Attraction 2
Kandy .The cultural capital of Sri Lanka has a vibrant traditional arts scene, a superb array of Buddhist temples and palaces, and a beautiful location amidst the islands precipitous central hills. For more information, .
Sylvaine Poitau
Top Attraction 3
Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage. Touristy but undeniably enjoyable, the Orphanage is home to the worlds largest troupe of captive pachyderms, from majestic old tuskers to the cutest of newborns. For more information, .
Top Attraction 4
Polonnaruwa. This is where youll find Sri Lankas finest collection of ancient Buddhist art and architecture, from the magnificent rock-carved statues of the Gal Vihara to the exquisitely decorated temples of the Quadrangle. For more information, .