Everything you need to know about Sri Lanka
Explore Sri Lanka from Sigiriya and the ancient reservoir cities to Kandyโs highlands, Jaffnaโs peninsula and Galleโs coast. Learn all nine provinces, place twenty cities and sixteen sights, discover ten illustrated topics with thirty answered questions, and begin Sinhala.
Read it, then make it stick
An island of monsoons, highlands and coastal plains
Nine provinces connect a dry northern plain, a wetter southwest and the central highlands.
Know the shape of the country
Start with all nine provinces, then place twenty cities and towns and explore six selected waters: the Mahaweli River, Senanayake Samudraya, Palk Strait, Gulf of Mannar, Bay of Bengal and Laccadive Sea. Zoom in to distinguish Colombo from Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte. Province boundaries: geoBoundaries / ยฉ OpenStreetMap contributors, Wambacher, ODbL 1.0, 2017 reference. Waters: Natural Earth, public domain. City coordinates are curated. These generalised learning maps show neither a complete water network nor maritime claims.
Places worth visiting
Essential ยท Archaeological landscape
Sigiriya
A rock rises above gardens and the remains of a fifth-century royal centre associated with King Kashyapa. The UNESCO property includes the surrounding archaeological landscape as well as the rock.
Find sixteen places across Sri Lanka, from ancient dry-zone capitals and sacred cities to Jaffna, the highlands and the coast. Forest and mountain pins identify representative locations rather than visitor entrances. Essential and detour describe learning priorities. Check access, seasons and local guidance before visiting working religious sites or protected landscapes. Select a pin to read about a place, then play the map and find them all.
Take Sinhala with you
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the ten openers everything else builds on.
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of Sri Lanka, the countries marked guide have a page like this one, and every other has maps of its own.
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