Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
Asia del Sur
Tropical · Ancient · Spiced
Sri Lanka became the first country in the world to elect a female prime minister, in 1960.
Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Colombo, Kandy — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, built on the outskirts of Colombo in a 15th-century royal capital and reinstated as legislative seat in 1982, functions as Sri Lanka's constitutional capital while Colombo remains the commercial and practical centre — an administrative distinction that confuses visitors and occasionally Sri Lankans.
Los principales idiomas hablados son cingalés, tamil, que reflejan el patrimonio cultural del país y abren puertas a una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Sri Lanka se contacta mediante el código +94. Sri Lanka's tradition of Kandyan dance, originating in the rituals of the Natha Devale temple in Kandy and codified under the last Kandyan kings, involves elaborately costumed performers executing precise footwork for the Esala Perahera procession — a ten-day festival drawing over a million spectators.
El tráfico rodado circula por la izquierda, en consonancia con la convención de
La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC+05:30, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.
Sri Lanka's 1996 Cricket World Cup victory — achieved as a team considered too small to compete, whose openers Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana invented the modern batting powerplay by scoring at rates previously considered reckless — permanently changed how all nations approached the start of limited-overs innings.
Sri Lanka's central highlands, a World Heritage Site, contain the Horton Plains' dramatic World's End escarpment — a sheer 870-metre drop into the southern lowlands — and the cloud forests that produce Ceylon tea, a crop that reshaped the island's entire ecology and economy after coffee blight destroyed the previous plantation system in the 1870s.