Mandaitivu Island

Mandaitivu sits immediately off the western edge of the Jaffna peninsula, the first of the inhabited islands you reach when you drive south-west from town. The connection is by the Pannai causeway, a long low road across the shallow lagoon water of the inner approach, with fishing boats drawn up on the mudflats below. It takes about twenty minutes from Jaffna town to be on the island.

The character of Mandaitivu is straightforward. It is a working fishing community — small, Catholic in many of its villages, with the lagoon as its principal economy. The harbour at the eastern end of the island handles small craft only; the boats run out at first light to work the shallow waters between Mandaitivu and the mainland and return through the morning with whatever the catch happens to be that day. Most visitors who pause on the island do so for the fish breakfast at one of the village stalls along the road.

The island is also one end of the new bridge to Velanai (the larger island formerly reached only by the older Pannai approach), so for many travellers Mandaitivu is the route through to the rest of the chain — Velanai, Karainagar, the ferry jetty at Kurikadduwan — rather than a destination in its own right. That is fair. There is no monument here, no great church or fort or ruined wall. What there is, is a quiet fishing landscape and the southern view across the inner Jaffna Lagoon, which is at its best in the late afternoon when the light comes in low across the water.

Stop for half an hour if you are passing. Walk the harbour. Buy a packet of fried fish from one of the morning stalls. Watch the boats come in.

The drive on from Mandaitivu to Velanai and beyond takes a further twenty minutes by tuk-tuk or car.