PLACES TO VISIT

Lying off the southern tip of India, the tropical island of Sri Lanka has attracted visitors for centuries with its natural beauty. Sri Lanka was the ideal stopover of ancient seafarers sailing across the Indian Ocean to the Orient. Marco Polo, a great seafarer, who arrived in Sri Lanka in 1265, said "Sri Lanka is the finest island of its size in all the world". Pliny (45 AD), one of the greatest Roman historians wrote: "It had been of long time thought by men in ancient days that Taprobane (Sri Lanka) was a second world".