Sri Lanka has wonderful beaches, but so do Los Angeles and Cannes. What California and the Cote D'Azur do not have is haunting monuments carved from rock.
Down through the ages, throughout the island, the Buddhists of Sri Lanka have created monuments and shrines to their faith, imbuing the landscape with spiritual depth and resonance.
Some are among the finest religious art in the world. These works were sculpted from rock that seems to have been brought to life by the hands of the artists.
Almost all of Sri Lanka's rock monuments stand far from modern urbanisation, in a splendid isolation that enhances their historical power. Unlike Rome's Colosseum and the Tower of London, they are not circled by traffic and battered with noise, but stand in silent glory within natural landscapes less populated than they were in ancient times.
Take Mihintale, where Sri Lankan Buddhism originated. Mahinda, the son of India's great Buddhist emperor Ashoka, came to Sri Lanka as a missionary in 247BC, staying on a rocky hill near the city of Anuradhapura while he sought a suitable place for meditation away from the urban bustle. While hunting, the story goes, the city's ruler, King Devanampiya Tissa, came across Mahinda rather than a deer and took up the faith.
The site of the encounter became a great Buddhist monastery, encompassing four rocky forested hills, with monks' cells formed out of caves and rocky outcrops. Mihintale, meaning 'Mahinda's Mountain', has been one of the most sacred sites in Sri Lanka for thousands of years and is protected by special laws.