Kalutara

Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka

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Kalutara is a major coastal city and the administrative capital of Kalutara District in Sri Lanka's Western Province, located approximately 42 to 43 kilometers south of the capital Colombo along the A2 highway connecting Colombo to Galle and Matara.

The city sits at the unique location where the Kalu Ganga (Black River), one of Sri Lanka's four major rivers, joins the Indian Ocean at the city's center, and features a 38-meter-long bridge over the river that serves as a major link between the country's Western and Southern regions.

Kalutara's most dominant landmark is the Kalutara Vihara (also called Gangatilaka Vihara), a three-story-high white Buddhist stupa built in the 1960s on the site of a Portuguese fort that holds the distinction of being the only hollow stupa in the world, while nearby Kalutara Bodhiya is one of Sri Lanka's most sacred Buddhist sites, believed to be one of the 32 saplings from the original Sri Maha Bodhi tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment.

The city has a population of over 37,000 (with the wider district exceeding 159,000), is Sinhalese majority with significant Muslim and Tamil minorities, and is famous for producing rope, bamboo baskets, mats, arrack, and Sri Lanka's finest mangosteens, a reddish-brown fruit introduced from Malaysia in the 19th century with fruit-bearing season from June to September.