Marketplace in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

After 30 years of conflict and civil war, Sri Lanka is currently in a financial crisis with rocketing inflation and escalating prices. The pandemic hit the country hard, and civil unrest led to the storming of the presidential palace recently. The tension between the majority Sinhalese population and the Tamils is allways brewing under the surface, but both groups are hoping tourism will soon return to normal to this paradise island, in order to inject much needed foreign money to the ailing economy.

The island is small, yet home to some 22 million souls, and the trip from the "tooth temple" in Kandy, which holds the holy relic of the Buddhas tooth, to the predominantly hindu Tamils among the tea plantations is but a few hours ride.

The native Tamils are mostly populated in the north and east of the island, but under the British colonization of Ceylon, they brought a large number of Tamils from British India and made them indentured labourers in the Hill Country to work the tea plantations. Most never left, and enjoy limited freedoms and rights to this day.