No. XI · June · mmxxviJaffna

Jaffna is worth visiting. It is the largest city in northern Sri Lanka and the cultural capital of the Tamil community on the island — a city with a working lagoon, a Dutch-period fort, the Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil, and a food tradition that has no equivalent on the south coast. Most itineraries built from Colombo do not reach it. The ones that do come back with a different picture of what Sri Lanka is.

Jaffna Fort stands at the southern edge of the old town, at the end of a road that passes the public library rebuilt in 2003. The fort was built by the Portuguese in 1618 and taken by the Dutch in 1658; the Dutch engineering — the star plan, the moat, the sea-facing bastions — is what remains legible in the walls. The interior is partly ruins, partly occupied. You walk the accessible section from the landward gate to the sea bastion, roughly four hundred metres, and from the top you can see the island of Nainativu across the water on a clear morning. The fort earns its visit not through drama but through the weight of four centuries in one set of walls.

The Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil sits in the northern quarter of the city, its gopuram rising roughly twenty-five metres above the street, covered in painted stucco figures. It is one of the most important Shaivite pilgrimage sites in Sri Lanka, dedicated to Lord Murugan. In late July and August the kovil hosts the Nallur Festival — twenty-five days of ceremony that culminates in a chariot procession on the final night, drawing pilgrims from across the island and from the Tamil diaspora abroad. The procession moves through residential streets rather than around a lake circuit; it is louder and faster than the Esala Perahera in Kandy, and different in character — a street event absorbed into a working neighbourhood rather than a civic occasion held in a civic space. Both are worth the journey, and they fall close enough in the calendar that a circuit covering both is possible within a single trip.

Jaffna crab is not the same as crab curry on the south coast. The mud crabs come from the Jaffna Lagoon — the broad brackish body of water that separates the peninsula from the mainland — and are cooked with dried spices and dark roasted coconut particular to the north. The preparation is drier and more intense than the coconut-milk curries of Galle or Mirissa; the crab itself is large and the eating takes time. Lunch at a room in the old town, at the right hour when the crabs are fresh, is the correct setting. Jaffna is also the place for string hoppers with fish curry at breakfast, palmyra jaggery at the market, and mutton preparations that do not exist further south. The food in the north is not a variation on Sri Lankan food. It is its own thing.

The city is quieter than its size suggests. The war ended here in 2009 and the reconstruction since is still visible in 2026: some streets have the particular blankness of places where buildings used to be, and there are houses with new walls in old foundations. This is part of what Jaffna is. The city gets on with itself — the market runs at the usual hour, the kovil stands, the crab boats come in before dawn, and the library that was burned in 1981 has been rebuilt and is open. A guest who comes to Jaffna with attention to spend rather than a list to complete will find that the north requires a different posture — slower, less structured — than the south.

The Yal Devi train from Colombo Fort Station takes approximately nine hours; the drive on the A9 is similar in traffic. The forty-minute flight from Bandaranaike to Palaly Airport removes the road and leaves the day intact. We build Jaffna into journeys as a northern chapter — three nights minimum. One night is not enough for the fort, the kovil, the market meal, and the crab. Two nights is sufficient. Three gives you the islands: Nainativu, Delft, the shallow lagoon crossings that have their own unhurried logic.