Northern Sri Lanka on the road to recovery

After years of conflict and natural disaster, Sri Lanka’s north is reawakening and revealing its beautiful beaches and islands, striking flavours and friendly, welcoming people
• Sri Lanka: readers’ travel tips

Hello! You want bananas?” The Surenthirans, on a family outing to the Hindu temple, make a colourful group on the sandy road: two bicycles, three adults, four children and one bag of bananas. Dad Harshiv is shirtless, as men must be to enter a temple, above a saffron sarong, and the rest are in shades of orange, indigo, turquoise.

We’re still full from lunch, but it turns out bananas are a pretext. The Tamil family want to meet a pair of westerners just as much as we want to chat to them. Bright-eyed and keen to practise her English, Shika, 11, is a “tsunami baby” – she was only one when the wave hit this low-lying area south of Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s east coast. More than 500 people around here died as the wave plunged up to 2km inland. Shika and her mother were rescued by boat. Kogila, Harshiv’s sister-in-law, tells us her brother was killed: “Every family knew someone who died.”