The Sri Lanka Insider's Final Word: What This Country Gives to People Who Pay Attention

Some of them are obvious. Climb Sigiriya. Take the train from Kandy to Ella. Eat a rice and curry at a roadside restaurant and pay 300 rupees for the finest meal of your trip. Watch the sunrise from Adam's Peak. Swim in the Indian Ocean at Nilaveli in September when the east coast is flat and warm and empty. These are famous for the same reason all great things become famous: they are genuinely extraordinary.

Some of them are less obvious. Cross the Colombo Creek by abra at dawn when the working city is waking around you. Eat at a kade in a village market where nobody speaks English and the food costs 150 rupees. Accept an invitation to a Sri Lankan wedding and stay until the end. Buy a king coconut from a roadside stall and sit in the shade and drink it slowly. Walk the Galle Fort ramparts before 6am when you have them entirely to yourself. Ask a Sri Lankan friend to take you somewhere that is not on any list and go without looking it up first.

And then the hardest one: leave time in the itinerary that is not filled. Leave a day or two without a plan and without a destination. Get in a tuk-tuk and ask the driver to take you somewhere he likes rather than somewhere you have researched. Sit somewhere beautiful and do nothing for longer than feels comfortable. Sri Lanka is at its best when you stop trying to get the most out of it and simply let it happen around you. The country is generous. It gives back more than you bring to it if you come with the right kind of attention.