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Hambantota (Sinhala භම්ඛන්තොට Tamil அம்பாந்தோட்டை) is a rural town in southeastern coastal area of Sri Lanka. It is also the capital of the Hambantota District in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka.
Hambantota was badly devastated by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, which was reported to have killed a large proportion of the town's population.
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[edit] History
Most inhabitants of Hambantota are of the minority Malay ethnic group that follow Islam.There is also a substantial population of Sinhalese Buddhists in the area.
Hambantota is famous for its salt flats and intensely hot arid zone climate. With sweeping sandy beaches on the side, it is a convenient base for exploring the nearby Bundala National Park, Yala National Park and the temples at Kataragama.
Around 1801-03, the British built a Martello Tower on the tip of the rocky headland alongside the lighthouse overlooking the sea at Hambantota. The builder was a Captain Goper of the Engineers, who built the tower on the site of a earlier Dutch earthen fort. The tower was restored in 1999 and in the past formed part of an office of the Hambantota Kachcheri where the Land Registry branch was housed. Today it houses a Fisheries Museum.
[edit] Politics
Hambantota is the electoral district of current President of Sri Lanka. Hambantota District comprises the following electoral wards: Tissamaharama, Beliatta, Tangalle and Mulkirigala.
[edit] Port
In the past, Hambantota was a sleepy old seaside village reminiscent of those grand old days of Leonard Woolf, who was the Assistant Government Agent-Hambantota (1908-11). Woolf was a literary scholar and the author of the fascinating novel – ‘The Village in the Jungle', which gives a vivid description of the old Hambantota district and how British hunted in the jungles of Hambantota. The district was plagued then with Malaria and poverty, and Woolf's printed diaries (1908-11), are filled with accounts of the life, times and hardships of the chena (slash and burn agriculture) cultivators.
[edit] Chinese development
Hambantota has now become widely known because China is building a billion-dollar port there. Hambantota is China’s latest “pearl” in its strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a “string of pearls,” a phrase first used by a U.S. Navy study for the Pentagon. China's other "pearls" in southern Asia include the port of Gwadar in Pakistan, now being expanded into a naval base.
[edit] Railway
In support of the port developments, in 2006 work started on a broad gauge railway to Hambontota.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
Coordinates: 6°07′N 81°07′E/6.117°N 81.117°E
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