# Book review: Colombo: Port of Call explores colonial Ceylon 2026-08-13T05:52:34+00:00 | World & Diplomacy | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet A new book by Ajay Kamalakaran, *Colombo: Port of Call*, stitches together travelogues of famous visitors to colonial Ceylon. Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Anton Chekhov, and Mahatma Gandhi all feature. Twain mocks Western clothes on locals. Gandhi, visiting in 1927, urged Sinhalese women to give up jewellery and wear khadi; one woman refused his autograph rather than promise. Kamalakaran also notes Gandhi's patronising tone: he called Lanka a 'glorified edition of India'. The book, published by Penguin at Rs 599, offers trivia and an impressionistic portrait of the late 19th and early 20th century. Doyle, during his stay, believed in spiritualism and doubted the Temple of the Tooth's relic but accepted the Bodhi tree's history. The review highlights how these accounts reveal colonial attitudes and a lost world of steamships and British supremacy. ## Coverage - frontline.thehindu.com Tags: book review, Colombo, colonial history, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Twain, Sri Lanka Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/book-review-colombo-port-of-call-explores-colonial-ceylon/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/book-review-colombo-port-of-call-explores-colonial-ceylon/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes.