Sri Lanka travel guide

However, in a country still suffering from the repercussions of conflict and territorial claims, it is important to understand the history going back a little further. The original inhabitants were thought to be from northern India in the 5th century BC, with the Sinhalese emerging as the majority clan of the time. This period was also the birth of Buddhism here, with Anuradhapura becoming its first spiritual centre.

Two centuries later saw the migration of Tamils to Sri Lanka, also from India. These mostly impoverished Tamils went on to be used as bonded and cruelly treated labourers on many of the colonial plantations, and indeed this poverty still exists among many Tamil speaking populations in Sri Lanka, most of whom live in the central highlands or in the Northern Province. Many still work on the tea plantations which bring huge income to Sri Lanka, but where working conditions and pay are still a concern for many. See an excellent Al Jazeera video for more details.

The majority of Tamils are Hindu, although today there are also Christian and Muslim Tamils. And just to complicate things, there are two types of Tamils: Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian Tamils, the former originating from the island’s Jaffna Kingdom on the east coast, and the latter from southern India. Language and culture are still of great importance to Tamils, although the majority of them only gained Sri Lankan citizenship by the 1990s.

Sri Lanka gained full independence from British colonial powers in 1948, although the name did not change to Sri Lanka, which means "resplendent island" in Sanskrit, until 1972. A year after independence, with the Sinhalese government in power and a wave of post-colonial Buddhist euphoria infusing the island, Indian Tamil plantation workers were disenfranchised and refused citizenship, although this changed in the 1960s when about 40 percent of Indian Tamils were given citizenship, but many were repatriated to India.

Tamil riots started to break out in protest at their lack of representation in Sri Lankan government and law and, when the name changed in 1972, Buddhism was given primary place as the country's religion, which was fuel on already simmering smoulders. Smoulders which turned to flames in 1976 when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was formed in the Tamil areas of the north and east, who were seeking their own autonomous region in the north, to be known as Eelam, and which led on to the civil war with the Sri Lankan government forces, only ending in 2009.

It says a lot about the resilience of Sri Lankans when you think that, on top of all this conflict when up to 100,000 people were killed, the natural disaster of the 2004 tsunami then destroyed vast regions of the south and east and took the lives of 35,000 people.

In spite of more peaceful times, there are still major concerns over human rights in Sri Lanka and, in 2011, the UN announced that both sides in the Sri Lankan civil war committed atrocities against civilians and called for an international investigation into possible war crimes. The go ahead for this full investigation into alleged abuse of human rights on both sides was only finally announced by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in June 2014. It is hoped that this will finally allow for ghosts to be put to rest, and for Sri Lanka to become a thriving, multi ethnic beacon of reconciliation and responsible restoration. For more details on the UN decision, see Amnesty International.