Sri Lanka
This is not a story about paradise.
Even if everything seems to point in that direction — golden sand stretching to the horizon, mist-covered hills, tea fields smelling of rain, waterfalls cascading down rocks, elephants marching proudly in a direction known only to them, bright green rice terraces.
The jungle pulses with life, and the tropical air — thick and sticky — carries the scent of incense. At times it hypnotizes, at others it overwhelms.
incense. At times it hypnotizes, at others it overwhelms.
The train cuts through green hills — so crowded there’s barely room to breathe. You’re thirteen years old, caught in the middle of it all, pressed by the crowd, feeling tired and wanting to go home.
But you’re not standing in the aisle. You’re by the window, and tomorrow, you don’t have to go to work all day.
Sri Lanka is not always an easy love. It’s a beautiful country, but full of tensions. Warm and hospitable, yet often silent. There’s still an invisible line between Tamils and Sinhalese — delicate, but palpable.
In the cities, there’s a tangle of electric cables, tuk-tuks weaving between traffic, the smell of fried coconut, and temples where Buddhist monks in saffron robes walk as if they’re floating above the ground.
The sacred tooth of the Buddha in Kandy, colonial ghosts in Galle, whispered prayers at the rocks in Dambulla.
Rituals you don’t understand, but feel deeply — in the gestures, the smoke, the silence.
The British tea plantations look like paradise now, but they remember another world order.
In the city, you glide between tuk-tuks on a scooter, making up traffic rules as you go.
Tea — black, green, with spices, with milk, no sugar — is both daily routine and quiet ritual.
Food means rice with curry in ten variations, spicy sambals, crispy string hoppers, dal, coconut.
Sometimes eaten deep in the jungle, other times on a plastic table by the road.
A street vendor hands you a pendant with a zodiac stone and promises it will change your life — and maybe, just maybe, it will.
There are bridges here that look like something out of a movie — swaying ropes and broken wooden slats suspended over a void.
You take the first step and feel like everything is about to collapse.
But it doesn’t.
Just like the people here — resilient, exhausted, proud.
Their stories flow through generations — in the beat of drums, in a cup of tea, in tales whispered at bedtime.
In the streets of Colombo, young people listen to rap, but their phones still play old Tamil and Sinhalese melodies.
History, faith, culture, and politics are always dancing — never still.
Some places are easy to call beautiful — because they are.
But not all of them want to be possessed.
Sri Lanka is a place to see, to feel, to try to understand — and then to leave with respect.
To let it be just as it is. Without trying to tame it.
