A fossilised footprint at the summit of a mountain called Sri Pada or Adam's Peak, is attibuted equally to the Hindu god Shiva, Adam, Buddha and even to the Christian apostle St. Thomas.

The ancient inhabitants of Sri Lanka were master irrigators, building a network of sophisticated canals and reservoirs from the 3rd century BC onwards, thousands of which still dot the lowlands
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According to early chroniclers, the original Sinhala people arrived in Sri Lanka from the Indus Valley with the exiled Prince Vijaya on the day that the Buddha gave up his mortal body (circa 480 BC).

Cinnamon was such a valuable export commodity during the colonial era that it was made a capital offence to damage any of the plants, or to sell it on the black market.

Sri Lanka has more festival days than anywhere else on earth; the current calendar lists 29 public holidays for the year, and that only counts the elaborate religious events and feast days celebrated by the Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims.

It is traditional to eat with your hands, but etiquette requires that you must not mess your fingers any higher than the first knuckle (and not to use the phone with the same hand).

The customary form of greeting someone ( " Ayubowan" ) means literally: ôhave you eaten rice?

The gems of Sri Lanka have been famous since Biblical times. The famous Star of India, belonging to the Queen of England is in fact a Sri Lankan sapphire.

The multi-award winning movie The Bridge over the River Kwai (1957) was filmed among the lush hills of Sri Lanka's central highlands.

The Pinnawella Elephant Orphanage, just north of Kegalle, 80km from Colombo, is a government-run home for abandoned or injured baby elephants, which are reared and trained here to become working animals.