Sri Lanka Map

About Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is a pear-shaped island of 65,610 km² in the Indian Ocean, off the south-eastern tip of India. The Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar separate it from Tamil Nadu, and a chain of sandbanks and shoals known as Adam's Bridge (Rama Setu) almost links the two at Mannar. The UN puts the population at about 23 million (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate), but the national census of 2024 counted 21.8 million. The official capital is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, a Colombo suburb where parliament has sat since 1982, while Colombo remains the commercial capital, main port and seat of most government offices. The island was called Ceylon until 1972.

Hill country and lowlands

The south-central highlands rise abruptly from the coastal plains. Pidurutalagala (2,524 m), above the hill station of Nuwara Eliya, is the highest point. The cone of Adam's Peak (Sri Pada, 2,243 m) is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, each of whom link the "footprint" on its summit to their own tradition. The highlands, where British planters cleared forest for tea from the 1860s, are the source of Ceylon tea, and the Central Highlands are a UNESCO natural site. The Mahaweli, the longest river at about 335 km, rises here and flows north-east to the sea near Trincomalee, one of the finest natural harbours in Asia.

Around the hills, the land falls away into two very different lowlands. The south-west "wet zone" is green and densely settled and still has patches of rainforest such as Sinharaja. The much larger "dry zone" covers the north and east and was the heart of the ancient kingdoms. Their rulers built thousands of irrigation reservoirs, called tanks or wewa, many of which are still in use. In the far north the flat, limestone Jaffna Peninsula almost touches India.

Two monsoons and when to go

Sri Lanka gets two monsoons, which is why there is always a good coast somewhere. The south-west monsoon (roughly May to September) soaks the west and south coasts and the hill country, and that is the season for the east coast beaches of Trincomalee, Pasikudah and Arugam Bay. The north-east monsoon (roughly December to February) brings rain to the north and east, while the west and south coasts, including Galle, Mirissa and Bentota, are at their best from December to April. October and November are the wettest inter-monsoon months across much of the island. Storms can be severe: Cyclone Ditwah in late November 2025 caused the worst floods and landslides in decades and killed hundreds of people.

Provinces and cities

The island is divided into nine provinces and 25 districts. Colombo District had about 2.4 million people at the 2024 census, and Gampaha, its northern neighbour, slightly more.

• Colombo - The largest city and main port, on the west coast. A trans-shipment hub for South Asian shipping, it is growing seaward with the reclaimed Port City project.
• Kandy - The last royal capital, which fell to the British in 1815. It is home to the Temple of the Tooth Relic, and the Esala Perahera procession is held there every July or August.
• Galle - A south-coast port whose fort was rebuilt by the Dutch in the 17th century and is still a lived-in walled town.
• Jaffna - The cultural centre of Sri Lankan Tamils in the far north, rebuilding since the end of the civil war.
• Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa - Ancient capitals of the dry zone, with giant brick stupas, monastery ruins and reservoirs.
• Trincomalee - The east-coast naval port and beach town on its deep natural harbour.

From Ceylon to today

The island was ruled from Anuradhapura for more than a thousand years, then from Polonnaruwa and later from Kandy. Its coasts were held successively by the Portuguese (from the early 16th century), the Dutch (from the mid-17th century) and the British, who took the whole island in 1815. Independence came on 4 February 1948. The Sinhalese, mostly Buddhist, make up about three-quarters of the population. Sri Lankan Tamils, mainly Hindu, live in the north and east, and the Malaiyaha (Hill Country) Tamils on the tea estates. Muslims form around a tenth of the population. Tensions over language and rights led to a civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from 1983 until the LTTE's defeat in May 2009. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 30,000 people on the island.

In 2022 Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt amid severe shortages of fuel, food and medicine. Mass protests forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office, and an IMF programme followed in 2023. In September 2024 voters elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake president, and his National People's Power alliance won a two-thirds majority in parliament two months later. Sri Lanka's position on the Indian Ocean sea lanes draws close attention from both India and China; the southern port of Hambantota was leased to a Chinese state company for 99 years in 2017.

Interesting Facts

• Sri Lanka has eight UNESCO World Heritage sites: Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Sigiriya, Kandy, Galle's old town and fort, the Dambulla cave temples, Sinharaja Forest Reserve and the Central Highlands.
• Sigiriya, a granite rock rising about 180 m above the plain, was the palace-fortress of King Kashyapa in the 5th century and still has fragments of its painted frescoes.
• In 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world's first woman to be elected prime minister.
• Yala National Park, on the south-east coast, has one of the highest densities of leopards recorded anywhere.