Sri Lanka starts issuing temporary driving license to tourists at airport
'Foreign tourists and even Sri Lankan visitors to the country, who are not dual citizens, would be issued these licenses valid for a month,' Kamal Amarasinghe, the chief of the Motor Traffic Department, said here.
The tourists getting these temporary licenses would, however, be not eligible to drive heavy vehicles and three wheeler tuk-tuks, Amarasingha said.
Currently, any tourists could have obtained a license at the Department's Colombo suburban facility following the due process, he said, adding, the new arrangement is a more swift process where tourists can self drive.
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Mint
2 days ago
- Mint
Lessons in design from Geoffrey Bawa's Sri Lankan homes
Colombo is beautiful, like a sane, disciplined version of Thiruvananthapuram or Bengaluru. Heritage structures sit elegantly beside contemporary buildings in peaceful self-assured coexistence. The traffic is polite; cars keep a safe quarantine line of distance from one another. It is tropical and familiar yet its non-chaos is strangely foreign. It could be India but the city is so orderly and courteous that it doesn't feel like our country—in a bad, good and sad way. For years I'd wanted to visit Number 11, architect Geoffrey Bawa's home in the Sri Lankan capital, and Lunuganga, his estate in Bentota. Very recently, I made the pilgrimage. Perusing images of his spaces in books, I always focused on the way he put things together, his skill for cajoling the natural surroundings to provide the vistas he wanted, his seemingly preternatural skill at creating places that taught the viewer how to see. But to see images of Bawa's work without seeing Sri Lanka itself is to miss the intricate ways in which he was influenced by the place where he was born. Bawa was a citizen of the tropics but spent a significant part of his time as a young adult in Europe, which had a significant impact on him. It was a failed attempt at building a home for himself in Italy that finally brought him back home to Sri Lanka at the cusp of 30. Bawa chose Bentota because that was where his elder brother, the landscape designer Bevis Bawa, lived on a property christened 'The Brief". If you do go on a Bawa pilgrimage then Bevis' property is a must-visit for comparison. The younger brother's estate is a much more architecturally articulated space than Bevis' somewhat ghoulish Brief. Lunuganga, now a boutique hotel, appears in various garbs, depending on where you look and what you see. Bawa was able to realise here the many scenographies that had impacted his design language. Back in 1949 he took the 25-acre rubber and cinnamon plantation and cut through its rough-and-tough foliage to create multiple personalities. In some parts, the nondescript tropical foliage of the estate has been left to grow, controlled but not manicured. In other scenes, the estate feels European, a disciplined rolling-hill and stone-sculpture montage that could have been in Italy. Somehow Bawa stitched these seemingly incongruous instincts together, placing them quite seamlessly on the estate. He tinkered with Lunuganga for decades, till his death in 2003. If you work with décor, as I do, it is sometimes difficult to be truly captivated by a space. There's too much criticality and rationalising. So I was surprised to feel so deeply moved at No.11 in Colombo, smaller in scale and ambition than Lunuganga. I felt a deeply emotional stirring in the city property—for the first time ever in response to someone's home. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, except to admit that my eyes welled up. The space had a feeling of nurturing, of ensconcing, of shelter. I sat on a bench off the side of the living room and with my little notebook and ink pen, tried to make sense of what this home, once occupied by a tall architect whose life had nothing in common with mine, was trying to teach me. What lessons had he left behind? Architect Channa Daswatte, writing a few years ago in Architectural Digest about Number 11, described the series of cottages that made up the home as an 'extraordinary labyrinth of spaces" that became Bawa's 'inner landscape". Bawa died 22 years ago, and visitors have been traipsing through that inner landscape, which has been under the cloche of time, in tableau, yet it doesn't feel like a mausoleum. There's a cosy energy, the anticipation of someone's arrival. The objects tell you stories about a man you never met, about his whims and its fancies. There's bric-a-brac, precious things and random collectibles, all sitting next to one another; Riten Mozumdar's textiles on one wall, a collection of stones somewhere else. Bawa's objects told me that for a room, a sense of humour is more important than one may think. Peering into the iconic architect's bedroom from behind the cordon, I could see an orange transparent inflatable armchair at the foot of his bed. On either side of the bed, teddy bears sat comfortably on old wooden chairs. The architect mixed materials and blended high-design with humble materials. Shiny epoxy white paint on the floor reflected and doubled the light coming through a small cutout in the roof of the tunnelled entrance of the home. There were mismatched Sri Lankan colonial armchairs but also a set of furniture resembling Eero Saarinen's plastic Tulip series. Wood sat with metal sat next to textile, next to stone, next to cane—instead of mix-and-match, it was all just mix. Bawa had a natural ability to create aesthetic balance, and he achieved that perfection with enviable nonchalance. Many of the pieces of furniture seemed like off-cuts or experiments or not designed at all. The checkered lounge at the heart of the living room—the eye-candy of every image taken here—was quite low, with a very deep seat and the perfect throne for a man who was reportedly almost 7ft tall. The pieces in that world were simple, created to exemplify and masquerade shortcomings in craft and material available in those times in Sri Lanka. The side tables and coffee table, in stone and metal, clean-lined perfect impervious partners to the dramatic textile on the sofa. (Incidentally, Bengaluru-based studio Phantom Hands is now exclusively licensed to produce edits of Bawa's furniture designs for the contemporary market.) I imagined how the very tall architect must have moved around this space, how its scale must have seemed like a cocoon, a womb-ish sanctuary in the centre of his city. Instead of a palace that soared upwards, Bawa's home wrapped itself around him. Its physical features all appeared to have the same intention: to capture and move light appropriately through the cavernous home. Its poetry was personal, a feeling that if you accumulate objects you love, they will sing together like a well-practiced choir, even if some of it is plastic and some of it is stone. Mix it up, don't stay just with wood or just with stone or any other preciousness, let the limitations of the materials, craftsmanship and resources be your guide to simpler, more tactile solutions. Have a bit of fun, Bawa seems to say. Manju Sara Rajan is an editor, arts manager and author who divides her time between Kottayam and Bengaluru.
The Hindu
5 days ago
- The Hindu
Inside the City of Dreams Sri Lanka: An integrated contemporary resort that reflects the island nation's spirit
Mohammad Akram weaves his autorickshaw through peak evening traffic in Colombo. It is almost 6.30pm and he promises a quick tour of the must-see spots. The capital city of Sri Lanka is lit up in evening lights as Mohammad, in crisp Tamil, lists the touristy places and things one must buy. 'Tea, spices, and gems,' he says, his eye on the road. 'What would you like to try first?' In Colombo, we discover, much like in Chennai, auto-drivers are the best tourist guides. It is the night before the grand launch of City of Dreams Sri Lanka, said to be South Asia's first integrated resort. The event is set to feature a performance by actor Hrithik Roshan and the resort is all set to receive guests from across the world. In between curated dinners and art and architecture walk-throughs, we slip outside for a taste of what is unapologetically Sri Lankan. Mohammad was among the many everyday people who were affected by the recent economic crisis in the island nation. But his autorickshaw saw him through it, and continues to do so. Economic growth is among the many driving factors of the City of Dreams Sri Lanka, by John Keells Holdings and Melco Resorts & Entertainment. It is Sri Lanka's largest investment so far that has set its eyes on attracting tourism from across South Asia. The resort features luxury hotels Cinnamon Life and Nüwa, apart from a casino, a shopping promenade, 17 signature restaurants and bars, event and meeting spaces, residences and offices. Art, everywhere The property takes art seriously, with around 30 pieces by Sri Lanka's top artistes adorning its walls. This includes names such as Chathurika Jayani, Jagath Weerasinghe, Firi Rahman, and Priyantha Udagedara. Sajeewa Premaratne, senior assistant vice president, John Keells Group, takes us through the key works of art, that touch upon subjects of urbanisation and city building, history, flora and fauna of the island, and the ethnic conflict. 'The building itself is conceptualised like a work of art,' says Sajeewa, drawing attention to the façade, interiors, the tile layout, ceilings, carpets, columns and lighting units. 'Much like guard stones that can be found at the entrance of Sri Lankan temples, the building is positioned like the guard stone of Colombo,' he explains, adding that the structure is not defined by rigid boundaries. Prime numbers and mathematical models find their way in the design process. Modern, yet, traditional The property has the sea on one side and Colombo on the other, and has been designed such that there is a harmonious flow of energy and light all around. 'The building has the Sri Lankan spirit, manifested in a more modern way. It is diverse and complex, also very simplistic,' explains James Balmond, the creative director of London-based Balmond Studio that has worked on the interiors for the property. James takes us through the architecture of the building, that was built over a period of 12 years. 'When the building was first conceptualised, our thinking was: with the sea on one side and the city of Colombo that is constantly evolving, the different ethnicities and constantly shifting kinetic ideas, it had to encapsulate all of that.' What's in the sambol? The food too, while it has influences from Indian, Chinese and European cuisines, maintains local flavours at its core. The breakfast spread at Quizine at Cinnamon Life has an exclusive section for Sri Lankan food, with a live counter for egg appams and coconut roti. All had with sambol, of course. Quizine serves a variety of the condiment that is somewhere between chutney and thuvayal. We try the coconut sambol with string hoppers: the powdery concoction of ground coconut, shallots, and red chillies is packed with flavour. There also is the sweet seeni sambol made of caramelised onions and a fierier version with powdered dry fish and coconut that is hugely popular among the locals. Rumesh Fernando, the executive sous chef, says that sambol is had with appam, idiyappam and even rice. 'It is called the rice puller,' says the 40-year-old. 'No matter what we eat, we have a craving for a bit of sambol with it.' Rumesh is from the Moratuwa municipality in the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka and grew up eating fresh seafood every day. 'In our town, fishermen would distribute what they did not sell of the day's catch among the people,' he recalls. While Sri Lankan cuisine is similar to South Indian food, Rumesh points out that they use generous amounts of coconut in every dish. 'Our island is covered in coconut trees and we use coconut in various forms: we grind it to extract milk, grate it, cut it open to use its water…' While in fish curry too, the base is coconut, he says that instead of tamarind, goraka that is grown in Sri Lanka, is used to incorporate tanginess to the dish. After a good meal, there is shopping at the in-house promenade to look forward to, and we also make plans for lunch at Cinnamon Life's Indian restaurant, Indiya. The integrated resort's location makes it convenient for us to explore Colombo too. But the idea, according to the people who dreamt up the place, is to spend entire holidays within its vast expanse. The writer was in Colombo on invitation by City of Dreams Sri Lanka
The Hindu
6 days ago
- The Hindu
Sri Lankan government recognises Sabarimala pilgrimage in Kerala
The Sri Lankan Cabinet has decided to give recognition to the annual pilgrimage by nationals to the Ayyappa shrine in Sabarimala, Kerala, according to a cabinet statement released on Tuesday (August 12, 2025). The decision was taken at the Cabinet meeting held in Colombo on Monday (August 11, 2025). Every year, over 15,000 Sri Lankan nationals visit Sabarimala, the statement said, adding 'the pilgrimage will be treated as one recognised by the government.' 'For a long period of time Sri Lankan devotees have been worshipping the famous Sabarimala Ayyappa Kovil (shrine) in Kerala, India, every year from November 1 to January 31 of the following year,' it said. The annual Mandala puja festival at the Ayyappa shrine in Sabarimala takes place between November and December. Thereafter, the temple opens for the Makaravilakku pilgrimage, which ends in January. The shrine closes after the pilgrimage season ends.
