Cutting factory in Ratnapura unusual for its superb worker conditions. It also does excellent work.

Each lapidarist station fashions a different part of the gemstone.

Typical Sri Lankan tropical jungle approaching Ratnapura.

A rubber tree plantation near Ratnapura. One of Sri Lanka’s other cash crops.

Tea pickers at work in one of the numerous Ceylon Tea plantations.

Rubber trees above and Ceylon Tea below; both cash crops growing on same land.

Local woman doing her laundry in river

JB with Iqbal on right and our constant companion on left. Notice tiny white dot to the left of companion: it is the woman doing her laundry in the picture to the left.

Buddhist temple on the road from Ratnapura to Beruwella. Buddhism is the dominant creed of the largest ethnic group, the Sinhalese, and is followed by 70% of the population.

Another Buddhist temple on same road. Sri Lanka’s art, literature and architecture is to a large extent a product of its Buddhist basis.

JB preparing to buy in a Muslim gem buying house in Beruwella. Here the sellers handed in packets of gems through a window. The gem dealers of Sri Lanka are primarily Muslims. Muslims and Christians make up about 7.5% each of the population. The Tamils are approximately 15% of the population.

JB with our local gem dealer hosts in Beruwella, friends of Iqbal, my host in Ratnapura.

Gem sellers waiting to hand in gem parcels.

Sunset near Hikkaduwa, a coastal town on Sri Lanka’s south west shore.

The drive down the coast to Galle runs along the southwest coast and affords view after view of the Indian Ocean.

View from the old Galle fort. The port of Galle is Sri Lanka’s fourth largest town, with 80,000 people is 115 km south of Colombo.

Local Sri Lankans enjoying a swim off the old fort walls. Before the breakwaters of Colombo were completed in the late 19^th century, Galle was the major port and still handles shipping today.

JB and John L. at the Galle fort with lighthouse in the background. Historians believe Galle may be the Tarshish of Biblical times—where King Solomon obtained gems, spices and peacocks.

A stilt fisherman near Ahangama on the southern coast.

When the tide is running right the stilt fisherman man their stilts which are coveted locations handed down from father to son.

A mining monkey.