Serendib Magazine - January 2015

In this issue

The railway system in Sri Lanka is now 150 years old, following the sesquicentennial of the day the first train took to the rails under royal patronage.
The scheduled mid-January arrival of His Holiness Pope Francis to Sri Lanka on a visit (formally known by the Vatican as an ‘Apostolic Voyage’) presents an excellent opportunity to trace the history of Roman Catholicism in the country, an extraordinary spiritual voyage in itself.
Sri Lanka is a country bursting with brilliant colour and ancient culture, and nothing conveys these qualities more graphically than this serendipitous island’s village based batik industry.
The Island’s creamy kithul hakuru, crystalline pol hakuru, bitter-sweet thal hakuru, and sugar sweet ukk hakuru cut a sharp profile in the world of unrefined sugars.
The propellers lay still, the exhaust smoking no more, the airframes creaking and cranking, the paint a shade old, but together withstanding the test of time, they reveal the majestic story of Sri Lanka’s history in military aviation. This is to be seen only at the Air Force museum at Ratmalana.