India or Bharat....

The 'correct' name of the second country we are going to visit is Bharat. 

Courtesy Wikipedia:

"The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush, equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as "The people of the Indus".

The geographical term Bharat which is recognized by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. It is a modernization of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which traditionally referred to the Indian subcontinent and gained increasing currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India."

Hence the name of this blog of our trip to India in February 2019.

But, first things first. Before we visit India proper we are visiting Sri Lanka for a few days. Sri Lanka was formerly known as Ceylon in the days when the British ruled but independence in 1948 included a change of name. The former name of Ceylon was a corruption of a name for the island given by the Portuguese and then corrupted by the British. I cannot find any etymological meaning of the term Sri Lanka which is from Sri Lamka in the Sinhalese language. There is also a Tamil version of the name - Llankai

We depart from the US on January 30th and arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka via Mumbai on January 31st. Then we take a 5 full days tour of some parts of the country.

A map of the island of Sri Lanka.
The gray line traces the approximate route of our short 'taste of Sri Lanka' visit.

The itinerary for our Sri Lanka visit is as follows:

After arrival at Colombo Airport we travel to Negombo where we spend our first night.

Then next day we travel to Dambulla. En route we take in the Dambulla Cave Temple. We stay at Dambulla for two nights. The next day we have a bike tour to Polonnauruwa Citadel and also a game drive  in Minneriya National Park.

Dambulla Cave Temple

 From Dambulla we travel south to Digana which is near Kandy. On the way we climb Sigiriya Rock and visit the fortress. also take in the Millennium Elephant Foundation. 

Sigiriya Rock

Next day we visit Kandy with its Royal Botanical Garden and Temple of the Tooth. We go from Digana to Colombo for one night and a special dinner and then leave for Delhi on Wednesday 6th February to join the Indian 'party'.

There is so much more to see in Sri Lanka and this will only be a small sample of some of the sights and sounds of this country.

Details of the Indian portion of our trip will be in the next post.