Jaffna

The first thing that registers on arrival is botanical. The palmyra palm replaces the coconut here — a tall, straight, fan-topped tree that grows in ordered stands rather than in the casual scatter of the southern coast, and it gives the whole peninsula a stark, upright, almost architectural look. The land beneath it is flat limestone, dry for much of the year, with shallow wells and lagoon water reaching further inland than a map suggests. The second thing is architectural and religious: gopuram towers rise above the roofline in tiered, brightly painted tiers of figures, and the sound from them at dawn is different from the south's. Tamil is the language of daily life. In the middle of the town stands a large star fort built by the Dutch on the lagoon shore, its ramparts and moat still legible and open to walk, one of the more substantial pieces of European military architecture in Asia and unexpectedly quiet to visit.

Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil is the religious heart of the peninsula and one of the most important Hindu temples in the country — a large complex of golden-roofed halls and a towering gopuram, active from before dawn with a sequence of daily pujas announced by drums and pipe. It is a working temple rather than a monument, and the conventions are specific: shoes off well before the entrance, and men remove their shirts to enter the inner areas, which is standard here and worth knowing before you arrive rather than discovering at the gate. Photography is restricted inside. Once a year the temple stages a festival lasting several weeks in the middle of the year, when processions, decorated chariots and enormous crowds fill the surrounding streets each evening — it is the largest event in the north by a wide margin, accommodation is scarce for its duration, and it is extraordinary to witness if your timing allows.

West of the town the land dissolves into a chain of low islands in a shallow lagoon, most of them joined to the mainland and to each other by long causeways that run just above the water — an unusual drive, with sea on both sides and almost no traffic. The furthest, reached by ferry rather than road, is the strangest: an island of coral-stone walls, baobab trees and a population of feral ponies descended from stock left by European traders centuries ago, wandering freely across open scrub. Closer in, the northern coast has shallow, calm, warm beaches quite unlike the surf coasts of the south, and a celebrated freshwater spring that emerges beside the sea and has been used for bathing for centuries. None of this is developed in the way the southern coast is, which is the reason to come.

Northern cooking is a separate tradition rather than a regional accent, and the differences are easy to taste. It is noticeably hotter than southern Sri Lankan food, it uses palmyra products the south does not, and its signature dish is a thick seafood broth thickened with flour milled from palmyra root, eaten communally and with the hands. Crab is the celebrated ingredient, cooked in a dark, spice-heavy gravy that has made the region's reputation well beyond it. Palmyra jaggery sweetens what the south sweetens with coconut treacle, and the region's dosai and string-hopper cooking leans closer to South Indian practice than to the coast. Eating here is one of the strongest reasons to make the journey, and the everyday version in a plain town restaurant is as good as anything arranged for visitors.