The future of Sri Lankan tourism is up in the air. And that's a good thing. An amphibious air-taxi service is proliferating in the wake of the tsunami, affording tourists the chance to circumvent the chaotic road system and gain easy access to the island's cultural and recreational gems.
Popular destinations that require up to a day's hair-raising ride on a bus or in a cab, on some of the most terrifying highways known to the automobile, can now be reached in an hour or less from the capital, Colombo. This is good news for tourists seeking Sri Lanka's multitude of palm-fringed beaches, wanting to explore ancient cultural sites or setting out to enjoy a few rounds of golf in tropical peace. It is also good news for the island's tourism industry, which is still struggling to overcome the devastating effects of the killer waves of 2004.
Consider the taxi flight from Colombo to a reservoir alongside the Victoria Golf and Country Resort outside Kandy, the island's second city. By car, the trip between the two cities on a decrepit, congested, two-lane, potholed road is a 3.5-hour exercise in discomfort and fear, with a nervous glance now and then at village life played out against a backdrop of mountainous jungle scenery. Travellers invariably arrive at their destinations feeling drained - which is a waste when on a short holiday.
In addition to leaving visitors with an appreciation of Sri Lanka's natural beauty, the half-hour flight to the Victoria Reservoir also leaves them fresh enough to head straight to the adjacent golf course, ready for 18 holes on a picturesque, par-73 layout voted the best in South Asia by a leading Asian golf magazine.
Whether you're swinging a club or not, time saved on the road means more time for sightseeing. Starting within Kandy, the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is an essential stop. This imposing and ornately decorated building on the shore of Lake Kandy is the holiest Buddhist site in Sri Lanka and houses, as the name suggests, a remnant of one of the Buddha's teeth. The intriguing tale of how it came to repose in Kandy is told in frescos adorning the walls of the shrine.
Ninety minutes' drive north of Kandy is the Dambulla Cave Temple, carved into a vast isolated rock mass and dating back to the first century BC. It is home to a host of frescos depicting great events in the life of the Buddha and landmarks in the history of the Sinhala people, but the real attention-grabber is the 14-metre recumbent Buddha statue carved into the rock face.
Few who visit the fifth-century Stone Fortress at Sigiriya, north of Dambulla, can fail to be impressed by the ingenuity, scale and sophistication of the society that lived on and built gardens and palaces on and around the towering edifice. Yet these days, Sri Lanka is almost as famous for its herbs and spices. Visitors are welcome to stop at the numerous spice gardens scattered along the roads north of Kandy, where they can learn about the benefits of these plants, which play an important role in Ayurvedic medicine.