In October 2024, I travelled across Sri Lanka on a short exploratory trip, hoping to get a sense of the island’s cannabis heritage. While Sri Lanka has a long history of cannabis use in Ayurvedic medicine, finding local ganja proved more complicated than expected. Unlike in Thailand or India, where cannabis plants can still be found growing in the wild or on remote farms, Sri Lanka’s cannabis culture is underground—hidden, fragmented, and under pressure from strict enforcement.
I had heard from Sri Lankan friends that cannabis in Sri Lanka was largely divided into two categories, local landrace - termed 'local' and imported South Indian ganja, possibly landrace - termed 'Kerala Ganja' or 'KG'. Most people we spoke to prefer the local landrace, believing it to be better medicine and less "chemical".
Thus began the hunt for the local landrace!
Here’s how the search unfolded.
Colombo – Getting My Bearings
I landed in Colombo with no real expectations. The city is chaotic and humid, a sprawling metropolis where the cannabis trade is completely hidden from outsiders. Anything available is either charas or Kerala ganja smuggled in from India, and even that wasn’t easy to find.
Sri Lanka has some of the strictest cannabis laws in the region, and while Ayurvedic practitioners are legally allowed to use it in medicine, that doesn’t mean it’s openly accessible.
After a couple of days in the city, I moved inland to the highlands, thinking that the remote, agricultural regions might have a stronger local cannabis-growing tradition.
Kandy – The Central Highlands
Kandy is a beautiful city, surrounded by rolling green hills, tea plantations, and misty forests. If I were in Nepal or northern Thailand, this kind of terrain would be ideal for small-scale cannabis farms hidden away in the mountains. But here, nothing. I asked around cautiously, but the few people who did talk about cannabis mentioned only its use in Ayurvedic medicine—no sign of local cultivation.
I started to suspect that if landrace cannabis was being grown on a large scale in Sri Lanka, it wasn’t in the highlands.
Hatton – A Likely Place?
From Kandy, I travelled deeper into the mountains by train to Hatton, another tea-growing region. If there were hidden farms anywhere, this seemed like a strong possibility. But once again, I came up empty. The region is entirely dominated by tea plantations, and any agricultural space is tightly controlled.
If local ganja was growing somewhere in Sri Lanka, I was looking in the wrong place.
Ella – Tourists, Moroccan Hash, and Kerala Ganja
Next stop: Ella, a backpacker hub in the hills. Given the number of travellers here, I expected to at least find some locally grown cannabis circulating among the hostel crowd. But surprisingly, most of what was available wasn’t Sri Lankan at all.
Instead, the main offerings were Moroccan hash and Kerala ganja from India—nothing local.
This reinforced the idea that Sri Lanka’s cannabis trade is heavily reliant on imports rather than domestic cultivation. Either local cannabis production is minimal, or it’s so well hidden that even the people selling imported ganja don’t have access to it.
At this point, I figured I had been searching in the wrong parts of the country. I needed to head to the dry lowlands of Uva Province, where I had been told years ago by a Sri Lankan friend in Parvati that the town of Thanalmalwila functioned as a sort of hub for the underground traffic and sale of locally cultivated landrace.
Thanalmalwila – Jackpot (Sort Of)
Thanalmalwila changed everything. This small town, located near Sri Lanka’s dry zone national parks, was the first place where I finally started finding actual Sri Lankan cannabis. The nearby Yala and Udawalawe national parks are known for their elephants, leopards, and—apparently—hidden cannabis plantations.
I managed to get my hands on multiple samples from different sources. The flowers were wispy, clearly from NLD type landrace plants, but they were all way too dried out to properly assess their quality in terms of aroma. The structure alone told me they were true tropical sativas—long internodes, narrow leaves, and a delicate, airy bud structure.
The effects however were fantastic. I had abstained from smoking any of the hash or KG up until now so the lack of tolerance really let me feel the landrace properly - it was a soft and ethereal experience - dreamy and trance like with a subtle hum of energy and the need to smile. I really enjoyed it!
One local invited me to visit a farm deep in the forest. But something about the arrangement felt off. He insisted that he couldn’t guarantee my safety from the police, while at the same time asking me to bring a huge amount of cash for a 12-hour round-trip hike through the jungle. That sounded like a setup, so I declined—but I took note of where I suspected the farm was located.
Instead, we focused on buying dried flowers reportedly grown in the national parks and picking through them for seeds. In total we collected about 400-500 seeds, of which only 25% or so are viable. We made connections with locals who might be able to provide access to more in the future. The whole situation confirmed that Sri Lanka’s cannabis trade is tightly controlled, with any large scale, landrace cultivation happening in deeply hidden locations rather than openly in villages like in some parts of India or Nepal.
Back to Colombo – One Last Score
With our flights coming up, we had to wrap things up quickly. On our way back through Colombo, we decided to source some seeded Kerala ganja flowers—imported from India - I just felt that since the KG is so widespread here it, wouldn't hurt to get samples from it too, for posterities sake.
Final Thoughts & What’s Next
This trip was only a short, exploratory mission, but it confirmed a few key things:
Sri Lanka’s cannabis culture is highly underground and concentrated in specific regions.
The central highlands don’t seem to have any cannabis cultivation.
The dry zone national parks (like Yala and Udawalawe) appear to be the main growing regions, but farms are extremely well hidden, remote and risky to access.
Most of what’s available on the market is imported— 'Kerala ganja' is flooding the market.
The landrace plants we did find were NLD-type tropical landrace 'sativas', adapted to Sri Lanka’s climate.
While this was just a first scouting trip, it laid the groundwork for future explorations. Sri Lanka’s landrace cannabis does exist, but it’s well-hidden, and conservation efforts will be difficult under the current legal framework.
I’ll be back. Check us out on Patreon if you want to support conservation and more trips like this!
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