Sri Lanka: Escape to an island paradise – Selina Scott

After Covid and terrorist bombings, Sri Lanka – which has strong links to Scotland – is rebuilding its tourism industry, writes Selina Scott.

The beach at Anantara Tangalle

Sri Lanka, this island, like an emerald pendant off the southern tip of India was once one of Scotland’s most precious gems. For here, 150 years ago, in what was then Ceylon a canny shopkeeper, Thomas Lipton from Glasgow’s Gorbals, planted tea in a landscape luxuriating in velvety green cinnamon and coconut groves. From tea, ‘the drink of fragrant plants that are the gift of Mother Nature’ flowed vast profit and with it, charitable endeavour. Money which went to help the poor in Scotland.

Sri Lanka hasn’t forgotten Thomas Lipton. He is commemorated with a statue and a vista named ‘Lipton’s seat’.The railway he built and tea, of course, live on, in this tropical paradise.

Today Sri Lanka still has that same luscious natural abundance Lipton so readily exploited. A new motorway (financed by China) and blissfully underused, now cuts through the verdant landscape carrying wide-eyed tourists to eight UNESCO world heritage sites, 12 National Parks and 52 sanctuaries to marvel at the world’s highest concentration of leopards and the largest gathering of wild elephant, amongst many other incredible, natural phenomena. It is easy to see why Sri Lanka was named the best travel destination in the world – just before Covid and the ISIS Easter bombings of hotels and churches in Colombo in 2019, which brought unimaginable suffering, devastating its tourist industry.

Now the island has strict security and visitors are returning to stay in hotels that kept faith with the beauty and uniqueness of this island, and its resilient people. Luxury resorts like the Anantara Kalutara hotel, its bigger sister, the Anantara Peace Haven in Tangalle and TriLanka, a beautiful hideaway on Lake Koggala close to Galle.

Anantara, in Sanskrit, means ‘without end’, the kind of tranquility any long haul traveller craves. I was greeted at Colombo’s airport by Anantara’s driver Disi who cossetted me with cool drinks, towels and coconut shortbread from a cool box in the boot of his car before depositing me, refreshed, at Anantara Kalatara, an hour’s drive away. Anantara Kalutara is built on a narrow isthmus between the peaceful Kalu Ganga river, where kingfishers and egrets dip for fish, and the majestic Indian Ocean. It was designed by Geoffrey Bawa, a world-famous architect whose mother was of Scottish descent. In an inspiring fusion of Sri Lankan artistry and Dutch colonial heritage the Anantara Kalutara with its soaring entrance hall conjures an airy, other worldly atmosphere. It proved to be the perfect idyll, with a private cabin and private pool, to recharge.

Further down the coast, on the edge of the Indian Ocean at Tangalle, Anantara’s other luxurious hotel, the Peace Haven, commands 22 acres of pristine tropicality where endemic macaque monkeys, an endangered species, swing from tree to tree with their babies. Inquisitive wildlife is everywhere. At breakfast, a feast of every conceivable cuisine, a chocolate muffin I’d earmarked to eat later was nicked by a peacock who hopped on the chair beside me and nonchalantly carried it away.

Finding peace in nature, in natural therapies like yoga at sunrise, kneading bread, growing herbs, is the essence of Peace Haven, with Ayurvedic, the oldest healing system in the world and practised in Sri Lanka for centuries, at its heart. Dr Madurangi Shirodhara, Anantara’s dedicated holistic practitioner prescribed treatments for me which included massaging oil crafted from 13 herbs grown in the dispensary garden, into my head and body to harmonise my three (Tri) Ayurvedic vital forces: Pita (fire), Vata (wind) and Kapha (earth). It worked. After three days my Pita, (hotheadedness) was dampened and equilibrium remarkably restored ready for my final destination; TriLanka on the shores of Lake Koggala, the largest freshwater lake in Sri Lanka.

To get to TriLanka is to become intimate with cinnamon. Cinnamon trees grow so profusely on either side of the road my tuk tuk driver was able to reach out and pluck the sweet leaves for me to taste as he explained how cinnamon can cure all ills and Sri Lankan cinnamon is the best in the world. When we emerge from cinnamon heaven, TriLanka immediately captivates. On a hill overlooking unspoiled islands on a vast lake, is a collection of cabins (11, soon to be 15) each with incredible views which have been architecturally conceived to minimalise their impact on a landscape unchanged in millennia. From the ancient banyan tree on the crest of the hill, flows an understanding of the kind of serenity travellers seek. Each contemporary, glazed cabin has been sustainably built with jackwood and teak from the island, offering both privacy and a sense of community. Trilanka’s infinity pool under a solitary coconut palm just above the Lake’s shoreline was, for me, bliss.

TriLanka is the passion of a Brit, Rob Drummond, who fell in love with the site at the turn of the century, lived in a mud hut under the banyan tree, and then decided to share its beauty with others. He brought in water and electricity and because of his deep connection with the place, a desire to enhance its uniqueness with the lightest of footprints.It was at Trilanka I discovered how lime juice squeezed on papaya and ice-cream and porridge infused with cinnamon could change my life.On my penultimate day in Sri Lanka I went to the nearby world heritage fort of Galle where I experienced a sense of what goes around, comes around. Karma. How the wealth this island once gave to Scotland has had an echo, a reciprocity, these many years later.

It was a hot afternoon, during the monsoon, when Ajaa, a fisherman wrapped in a sarong, fell into step as I walked through the fish market. He explained how Galle’s 30 feet thick ramparts had buttressed the fort for 400 years against the worst the Indian Ocean could throw at it, saving Galle’s precious colonial heritage, when the 2009 tsunami hammered this part of the island in a biblical catastrophe that resonates to this day. Ajaa said elephants inland sensing the impending disaster stamped their feet in warning, but for too many it was too late. Only the Buddhist statues stayed firm, unperturbed along the coast as homes, trains and entire families were swept away. Thirty one thousand people died in just twenty minutes.

The cacophonous traffic on the outskirts of the fort didn’t deter Ajaa as he guided me into a dimly lit spice emporium where he presented me with a bag of Sri Lanka’s best ‘silver tip’ tea. A ‘thank you gift’ he said on behalf of all ‘Sri Lankans to the Scottish people for sending money after the tsunami’. Ajaa’s father had been washed away. Ajaa, a young boy, had been left destitute but Scottish charities had saved him by sending him £250. Kind-hearted Scots had rescued him. He could start again.Sri Lankans have been tested so many times in recent years, yet they have a compassion and a resilience we in the West seem to have lost. Today this jewel of an island, brimming with energy and optimism is open for business, more needful of the less timorous among us than at any time in its most recent past.

Inspiring Travel tailor-makes trips to Sri Lanka, offering a selection of the very best places to stay. For a nine-night holiday, including two nights at Anantara Kalutara, four nights at Anantara Tangalle, and three nights at Tri on bed and breakfast basis, and including return economy class flights from London and private transfers, prices start from £2,789pp, based on two sharing. For further information or to book visit www.inspiringtravel.co.uk or call 01244 729765.