Dear me, it is beautiful,” wrote Mark Twain during his 1896 visit to Colombo, likening the island city to “an emerald set in gold.” In a similar spirit, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described the city as an “earthly paradise”, captivated by its occult practices, and his encounters with a snake charmer’s cobras, along with reflections on Buddhism, and Ceylon’s philosophical undercurrents. In Ajay Kamalakaran’s Colombo: Port of Call, such impressions of travellers craft a layered portrait of the city that has stood at the crossroads of maritime power, commerce and global movement.
With a focus on visitors from the late 19th to early 20th century, Kamalakaran avoids a linear chronicle in favour of vivid vignettes from princes, writers, philanthropists, and performers. Drawing on archives, correspondence, memoirs, and periodicals, he prefers perception and cultural exchange over chronology. Through 14 distinct voices, Colombo’s religious spaces, social structures, and urban rhythms emerge with colour, texture and a sense of immediacy.
The introduction—tracing the city’s origins in Kolon Thota or Kola Amba Thota—frames Colombo as a strategic coastal node shaped by shifting political control and trade. Portuguese, Dutch and British rule left lasting marks on its architecture, governance and urban growth patterns, and by the 19th century, the port had become a vital link in global shipping, strengthened by the island’s coffee, tea, rubber, coconut and cinnamon economies and the rapid expansion of steamship routes.
The travellers’ accounts reveal striking contrasts. Many revel in the city’s sensory richness—the spice-laden air, gleaming shoreline, and sunlit streets—while also reflecting their cultural assumptions and political vantage points. Two themes remain constant: praise for Sri Lanka’s landscape and the near obligatory visit to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, which elicits reactions from reverence to ambivalence.
Mahatma Gandhi’s 1927 visit remains one of the most memorable. Travelling with Kasturba and C Rajagopalachari, he addressed large crowds on khadi, self-reliance, and non-violence. His request that autograph seekers pledge to wear khadi turned everyday encounters into moral lessons. Describing the island, he said that “Ceylon seemed to be a fragrant, beautiful pearl dropped from the nasal ring of India.”
Australian cricketer Don Bradman’s four stopovers between 1930 and 1948 highlight Colombo’s role as a pre-aviation sporting waypoint. Though he played only two matches, his appearances—especially the 1948 game at the Colombo Oval on a mistakenly shortened pitch—left a lasting mark on Sri Lanka’s cricketing imagination.
Writer Anton Chekhov’s brief 58‑hour stop in 1890, on his return from the Sakhalin penal colony, left behind a charming anecdote: his spontaneous purchase of two mongooses with his companion Glinka, later captured in photographs. His vivid impressions of Ceylon echoed through later Russian literature, including the work of Ivan Bunin. Deeply struck by the island, he even hinted in his letters at a romantic encounter in a coconut forest.
Kamalakaran includes personalities who widen the narrative frame, such as Siamese prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath, whose letters reveal an emerging diplomatic awareness, and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who praised Colombo’s orderliness while recounting exchanges with a local guide. Other visitors—including Crown Prince Hirohito in 1921, dancer Jane Sherman, Urabi Pasha, Mary Thorn Carpenter, Jules Leclercq, Nicolas Roerich and Esper Ukhtomsky—add further texture to this global mosaic. What emerges is not a single portrait of Colombo but a composite, shaped by encounters and passing impressions. Kamalakaran shows that cities are defined as much by those who pause briefly at their shores as by those who build or govern them—each traveller offering a fragment that enriches the whole.