India, July 3 -- Women in sarees, Tamil film music playing, heaps of mangoes, rambutan, bananas, pineapples, massive jackfruit, brinjals, and other vegetables - the whole scene washes over me with a familiar deja vu. Friendly shopkeepers try to sell me local specialities like packets of dried fish and chunks of jaggery made from palm sugar. Palmyra is everywhere in jaggery, flour, chips, and even woven household items. The tree is central to the peninsula's identity.

If your idea of Sri Lanka is emerald tea plantations, beaches and stupas, then a visit to Jaffna in the country's far north will change your perception. Jaffna, also called Yalpanam in Tamil, was for decades at the heart of the devastating civil war and, therefore, long cut ...