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Colombo, Sri Lanka: Market mornings, paper dosas and a Dilmah tea tasting

A 2018 summer in Colombo: a covered vegetable market, a paper dosa longer than the tray, a Malinga sticker and Dilmah tea tasting, plus a city day back in 2025.

We spent a good slice of the summer of 2018 in and around Colombo, long enough to stop being tourists and start having a regular market, a regular dosa order and opinions about tea. This is the capital at street level.

Market mornings, May 2018

The covered produce markets are the best free show in town: okra, snake gourd, beetroot, limes and twenty kinds of greens laid out in neat pyramids under one big steel roof, with a scale and a shouted price never far away.

Inga standing in a covered vegetable market on the edge of Colombo, piles of okra, cabbages, greens and bananas laid out behind her — Market morning, May 2018. The vegetables are arranged more carefully than our luggage ever was.

The dosa situation, July 2018

Colombo does South Indian food seriously. Order a paper dosa and you get a golden scroll the length of your forearm, with the chutneys and curries lined up in steel cups alongside.

Inga at a restaurant table with a tall rolled paper dosa standing on a thali tray of steel cups with curries and chutneys — A paper dosa arrives vertical. Eating it gracefully isn't possible, we checked.

Inga in an orange t-shirt holding a huge rolled paper dosa across both hands at a plain cafe table, pink painted wall and wooden chairs behind her — Another from that same July 2018 trip: a paper dosa wide enough to need both hands. We never noted down which town this one came from, only that it didn't last long.

Small city details, summer 2018

Half of what we love about Colombo never makes the guidebooks: the cricket worship on every surface, and the fact that the country's most famous tea company runs proper tasting counters in town.

A sticker on a white SUV bumper showing bowler Lasith Malinga mid-celebration with the caption 4IN4 — Malinga on a bumper, celebrating his four wickets in four balls. Colombo doesn't forget.

Inga standing at a Dilmah t-Lounge counter lined with white tasting bowls of brewed tea and colourful tea caddies — Tea tasting at the Dilmah t-Lounge: a full line-up of bowls, strictly no rushing.

Back in August 2025

Seven years later, in August 2025, we were back for a city day, and Colombo obliged with two of its default moods: a kovil in full colour and the white columns of Town Hall over the park.

Inga standing in front of a Hindu kovil in Colombo, its gopuram crowded with painted deities above striped guardian statues, a blue three wheeler parked at the kerb — A kovil doing more with one facade than most buildings manage in total. The three wheeler completes the scene.

Inga in red patterned trousers on the park lawn in front of the white dome and colonnades of Colombo Town Hall — Colombo Town Hall, August 2025, doing its best Capitol impression across the lawn.

Colombo is most people's first hour in Sri Lanka and it deserves more than a transfer. When you do head out, the classic routes run south to Galle, up to Kandy, or north all the way to Jaffna.

We stayed at the Cinnamon Grand Colombo.