A Little Bit of Paradise
The island of Sri Lanka lies off the southern tip of India in the Indian Ocean, a verdant paradise that is the cradle of the Buddhist faith. Apart from hundreds of miles of the world’s most beautiful palm-fringed beaches, verdant vegetation, ancient monuments, Tropical rain forests, Sri Lanka boasts no fewer than seven World Heritage Sites listed by UNESCO, ranging from sacred cities, palaces and cliff-top citadels to colonial strongholds.
This small island is incredibly rich in biodiversity and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, From the sacred and majestic mountain of Sri Pada, down awesome and powerful waterfalls, through the lush and serene Sinharaja tropical rainforest, past a green sea of paddy fields into a jungle of fish and coral, Sri Lanka has something beautiful to offer every possible taste and in that sense it is a unique place to holiday in.
A gemstone is the naturally occurring crystalline form of a mineral, which is desirable for its beauty, valuable in its rarity and durable enough to be enjoyed for generations.
The word "batik" is Indonesian in origin, even if the concept was known by Egyptians and South Asians. It is known to be more than a millennium old, and there are evidences that cloth decorated through some form of resist technique was in use in the early centuries AD in several West African, Middle-Eastern and Asian communities.
The town of Ambalangoda along the south coast road is the home of devil dancing and mask making traditions that have been carried out for generations. Traditional masks are still produced in soft kadura wood and some stained with vegetable dyes for ritual use.
Today spices are used mainly to flavor food. In medieval times, however, spices played a more important role as food preserving agents. In the absence of fridges and freezers, people used spices to preserve meat during the long winter months. Before the 15th century, the spice trade was in the hands of Arab traders.