Sri Lanka - The Isle of Delight

Legend as well as history record that Sri Lanka has always delighted visitors to its shores. For countless centuries its fragrant spices, priceless gems and pearls, legendary beauty, sublime culture and friendly people captivated princes, poets, traders, empire-builders and admirers.

The island's beauty, abundance and culture earned for it much praise and many admiring names. Ancient Moorish merchants called Sri Lanka the "Isle of Delight". To early Arab traders it was 'Serendib', the land of happy surprises, and to the medieval explorer Macro polo, 'the finest island in the entire world'.
American novelist Mark Twain called it beautiful and most sumptuously tropical'. Mahatma Gandhi was convinced that Sri Lanka's natural beauty was 'unsurpassed on the face of the earth'.

Today too, this beauty, abundance and variety, magic and magnetism enchants visitors. A small tropical island set in the sunlit surf of the Indian Ocean, high elevation in it's central highlands produce sudden, surprising and delightful geographical contrasts and variety. Thus 160km.

From the very tropical sea-port commercial capital Colombo, the hill -resort of Nuwara Eliya often has hoarfrost on chilly nights.