The island nation of Sri Lanka is fast becoming a popular pilgrim and tourist destination for people of this State with the SriLankan Airlines now having daily flights to Colombo.
The airlines restarted the service from Hyderabad in July last year with four flights, and increased it to five by November. It has now gone for for daily service with a round trip ticket available for about ₹15,500 with 80% occupancy claims for the less-than-two-hours flight.
It is hot alright in Sri Lanka now but “people visit our country throughout the year for its beaches, and now for several pilgrim spots, mountain tops, wildlife, events and destination weddings”, says Chammika Iddagodage, SriLankan Airlines manager for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
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Trincomalee houses one of the most famous Siva temples, part of the Shaktipeeths and there is also the temple for Seeta, Lord Rama’s consort, at Nuwara Eliya hill station; there are special Ramayana packages too. Besides, a few hours away from Colombo by road, there are wildlife national parks at Yala and Wilpattu filled with elephants, leopards, crocodiles, etc.
The not-to-be-missed feature is the whale and dolphin watching off the coast at Mirissa, says the manager. Colombo is a shopping paradise for tourists and the icing on the cake is the exchange rate: 1 Indian rupee equals to 2.35 Sri Lankan rupees.
SriLankan Airlines has direct flights to 14 Indian destinations with a total of 135 flights a week to other cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Kolkata, Kochi, Bangalore, Varanasi, Gaya, Trichy and Madurai other than Hyderabad.
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Visa is available online and the airlines is also offering a free one night stay in Colombo for tourists using it as transit towards Singapore or Thailand. This holiday season, there are other attractive packages, details of which are available on the airlines’ website.