COLOMBO (News 1st); The Traveller Magazine of the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia has highlighted Sri Lanka as a travel destination in every tourists bucket list.
Lee Tulloch, from SMH's Traveller Magazine said if there is a country that could do with a lot of love right now, it’s Sri Lanka.
Her five Five must-visit highlights were Yala National Park, Sigiriya Rock Temple, Kandy, Anuradhapura, and the Galle Fort.
Following is an excerpt from the report:
Over the past three decades, the island nation has been ravaged by conflict and disaster, beginning with the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed 30,000 lives, and the 26-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009.
It had just re-emerged as a popular tourist destination when, on Easter Sunday 2019, a terror group, in retaliation, bombed three churches and three luxury hotels in Colombo, unnerving the tourists who had returned in record numbers.
And then in 2020 there was COVID-19. Even though Sri Lanka managed it well, the world shut down. Shopkeepers in Galle Fort, the beautiful, fortified 17th-century village on the south-west coast, say they closed their stalls for two years and are only just starting to get back on their feet. Some expats, mostly Brits, went back home, dismissing their staff and shuttering their houses. Hotel workers went back to their villages.
But most Sri Lankans agree that last year’s political and economic crisis, although short-lived, has been the most damaging event of all for tourism. Scenes of long lines at petrol stations, protesters storming the Presidential Palace and gathering on Galle Face green in huge numbers to oppose years of economic mismanagement and corruption, gave the impression that the country had erupted in chaos.
Affluent travellers stayed away, concerned that they’d be taking essential resources from Sri Lankans if they visited.
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