ISLE OF PLENTY

Having weathered a decades-long civil war and a more recent economic crisis, Sri Lanka has nevertheless demonstrated a remarkable ability to bounce back. Tatler travels the breadth of the island country to sample the rich culinary traditions that it offers

- Gavin Yeung

The first thing that strikes you about Sri Lanka is the overwhelming lushness of it all. Gazing down from a descending aeroplane, a thick, verdant blanket coats the entire island, from the dramatic, mist-laden peaks of the evocatively named Knuckles Massif, falling away into gentle parallel ridges as the Central Highlands merge with the lower elevations of the coastal plains. On the ground, vegetation threatens to gobble up the world-roadside shacks are routinely and effectively dismantled by creeping vines, their roofs crumbling into the red earth; while banyan trees dot the landscape, their aerial roots dangling downwards to erect entire forests over the ages. All of this is to say that Sri Lanka is a bona fide biodiversity hotspot, with over 400 species of birds and 100 species of freshwater fish calling the island home.

In his 1977 anthology The View from Serendip, British science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, who lived in Sri Lanka for 52 years until his death, wrote, "Sri Lanka is a small universe; it contains as many variations of culture, scenery and climate as some countries a dozen times its size."

Conspicuously omitted from his description of that universe is Sri Lankan cuisine, which contains multitudes. The country's proximity to India (which British author Simon Winchester described as "expansive and blowsy" compared to the "petite and gem-like" island nation) naturally means that the food takes many cues from its neighbour to the north-the abundance of curries, for example but Sri Lanka's location as Asia's last redoubt before the endless expanse of the Indian Ocean, a droplet of land sliding off the face of the Indian subcontinent, enriches the cuisine with the bounty of the sea-from the many varieties of crab and shellfish that throng its shallow lagoons to the yellowfin and skipjack tuna that inhabit the deep waters beyond.