Sri Lanka

Sri lanka is a small island, about 270 miles long and 150 wide as the crow flies, which lies like a pendant at the extreme Southern tip of India. Small, with mountain in the center the tea plantations are situated and a coastline fringed with sandy beaches that today attract tourists from Scandinavia and West Germany, the beautiful island, with its luxuriant vegetation and striking scenery, has rightly been called the “pearl of the Indian Ocean”. Almost all visitors to the island wax ecstatic not only over its beauty and the spender of its ancient ruins and monuments, but also over the warmth, hospitality, and good humor of the Sri Lankans as a people, who among other things, can laugh at themselves and irreverently retell stories about the foibles of their fellow citizens, especially the politicians. Arguably, no other country in South or Southeast Asia, expecting Thailand, is more open and inviting to tourists, travelers, researchers and fieldworkers, and seekers of Buddhist truths.