Jaffna

Jaffna sits at the northern tip of Sri Lanka, the cultural and administrative heart of the Northern Province and the city most travellers arrive into first. Its rhythms are Tamil and Saivite Hindu in their daily texture, with Catholic, Protestant and Muslim communities long woven into the same streets.

The geography is unusual: a flat peninsula tethered to the mainland by a narrow land bridge at Elephant Pass, with the lagoon to the south, the Palk Strait to the north, and a chain of inhabited islands to the west. The city itself is compact — colonnaded shopfronts, walled gardens, the gold-tiled gopuram of Nallur visible from several streets away.

The food is its own tradition. Crab curry, palmyra products, the famed Jaffna mango, palmyra toddy from village kallu shops — none of this is the cuisine of the south. It rewards the slow traveller. Hire a bicycle, walk into the market before nine, take the lagoon road at sunset.

Getting here is now straightforward. The Yal Devi and Uttara Devi run from Colombo on the restored Northern Line. The A9 carries the road traffic. Jaffna International Airport — formerly the Palaly airfield — has reopened to limited regional service after its post-war upgrade.