Colombo

Colombo is the front porch of an island that has everything, and she has learned not to compete — just to welcome: a lighthouse standing among office towers, a temple that collects everything from Buddhas to a vintage Rolls, markets sorted by street — one for cloth, one for spice, one for bangles —, and at the edge of it all Galle Face Green, where the whole city comes at dusk to fly kites into the Indian Ocean wind and eat prawn fritters while the sun performs.

The sensible traveller walks the Fort's colonial blocks in the morning shade and dives into Pettah's sorted chaos next door; takes Gangaramaya temple for its magpie collection and the lake pavilion for its calm; rides a tuk-tuk along Marine Drive; and ends at Galle Face at five sharp, kite string in hand or isso vadai in both, as the light goes gold over the water. Then — the island: the coastal train south leaves practically from the lawn.

The Guide's honesty: the tuk-tuk meter exists — insist gently or agree the fare first —; Colombo is a comma, not the sentence: give her a day, then take the train, whose coastal stretch is the country's best free attraction even when you are standing; curd with treacle is the correct dessert always; and during Vesak in May the city becomes a festival of paper lanterns — plan around it or, far better, into it.