Colombo

Morning walks and indoor afternoons over two or three Colombo days

Split your sightseeing here into two or three short days. The midday heat and the traffic on Galle Road make it hard to cover much ground after lunch, so put the walking in the morning and the indoor sights in the afternoon.

• Day one, the old port: start in Fort with the Dutch Hospital shopping area, then cross into Pettah, where wholesale stalls sell everything from fruit to electronics. The Jami-Ul-Alfar Mosque, built by the Pettah Muslim community in 1909, sits in the middle of the lanes. Finish beside Beira Lake at Gangaramaya Temple and the Seema Malaka, the lake pavilion designed by Geoffrey Bawa.
• Day two, Colombo 7: give the morning to the National Museum, the largest in the city, then walk through Viharamahadevi Park to Independence Square. Craft shopping at Lakpahana on Reid Avenue or Barefoot on Galle Road fills the afternoon, and the Lotus Tower (351.5 m, with a viewing gallery on its seventh floor) is best after dark when its lights change colour.
• Day three, out of town: Negombo is an hour or a little more away by bus and close to the airport; Kandy is about 120 km inland and takes the best part of four hours.

If your flight lands late at night, sleep in Negombo and come into the city the next morning. When you move on, the coastal railway to Galle makes the easy first leg. Sigiriya and Dambulla lie several hours north by road. Book hotels on the seafront or in Cinnamon Gardens rather than near the Fort station, where cheap rooms tend to be grim.

For the Cultural Triangle or the hills, plenty of visitors rent a car with a local driver.

Colombo's drier January and February, and the monsoon pattern

January and February are the best months for Colombo. The northeast monsoon then mostly soaks the other side of the island, leaving this coast with roughly 80 mm of rain a month. Highs hold at 30 to 32°C all year, May brings the southwest monsoon in force, and October has the heaviest storms.

The city never cools down. The real variable is rain, of which Colombo gets around 2,500 mm a year.

April changes everything. Totals jump to about 249 mm, and May, at roughly 314 mm, is when the southwest monsoon arrives in force. Wikivoyage points to a drier break in July and August, and the figures back it up (around 116 to 123 mm), so a midsummer stopover is perfectly workable. Avoid October and November if you can: the second inter-monsoon brings the heaviest storms of the year, peaking at around 359 mm in October.

A few dates change the feel of the city. Full-moon poya days are dry, with no alcohol on sale. Mount Lavinia hosts Colombo's Pride week in June. Galle Face Green fills up on Saturday and Sunday evenings, which is either the point or a reason to go midweek. Anyone planning to head inland to Kandy in July or August should know that the Esala procession, when the tooth relic is paraded, fills rooms there well ahead.

Bakery short eats, lunch packets and Jaffna crab in Colombo

Eat the way office workers do: rotis and short eats from the neighbourhood bakery in the morning, a rice-and-curry lunch packet at noon, then Jaffna crab or a South Indian thali in the evening. Ask how hot a dish is before you order, wear smart casual to clubs and keep affection for private spaces.

Breakfast and snacks come from the small bakeries found on almost every block. Look for triangular rotis stuffed with egg or fish. Bowl-shaped hoppers are made with coconut milk; the fried or bread-based snacks on the counter go by the name short eats. At lunchtime, office workers buy a lunch packet from street stands: rice with several vegetable curries, wrapped to take away and enough to keep you going until evening.

Colombo is the place to try food from the north without going there. New Yarl Eat House on Station Road in Wellawatte serves Jaffna-style rice and curry with whole crab, and The Palmyrah on Galle Road in Kollupitiya is one of the few restaurants doing Jaffna cooking in the south. For a crab blowout, Ministry of Crab occupies part of the Old Dutch Hospital in Fort. Vegetarians eat well at Arunthathee Vihaar on Main Street downtown and Thalis on Park Road, both South Indian. After a night out, locals end up at Hotel de Pilawoos on Galle Road for chicken roti with an iced Milo.

Food can be fiercely hot, so ask before ordering. For a safe cold drink, buy a thembili, the orange king coconut cut open in front of you.

Couples should keep kissing and hugging for private spaces. On city buses, the front seats are given up to monks and priests. A greeting of āyubōvan goes down well with Sinhala speakers; Tamil speakers say vanakkam.