Sri Lanka

The name Sri Lanka comes from the two Sankrit words for “venerable island” and this country of 20 million people lies to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait. Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was formerly known, gained independence from Britain in 1948 but the nation has enjoyed little stability in recent times as a civil war raged between the government and Tamil Tigers militants from 1983 to 2009.