Ferry service between India and Sri Lanka resumed after 30 years

Ferry service has resumed between Sri Lanka and India after being halted for almost 30 years because of the island’s civil war.

The Scotia Prince with a capacity of 1,044 passengers, a cruise vessel registered in the Bahamas but now chartered by an Indian company, Flemingo, which also owns a chain of duty-free shops, reached Colombo on Tuesday morning from the southern Indian port of Tuticorin. The ferry will initially operate twice a week, with the journey taking about 10 hours each way. Tuticorin to Colombo is an entirely new route.

Another boat, to start operating soon, is run by Sri Lanka’s state-owned Ceylon Shipping Corporation.

An earlier ferry service between the south Indian town of Rameswaram and Sri Lanka’s northwestern town of Talaimannar was stopped after Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict grew into a full-scale war in the 1980s.