Sri Lanka Sapphire Mines – A Tour

Sri Lanka Sapphire Mines – A Tour

Let me take you for a tour of the Sapphire mines near Ratnapura in Sri Lanka. We landed in the capital city of Colombo where our guide and the highly respected gemologist, Gamini Zoysa, met us with a bus to go to the Sapphire region.

Our first stop was a Sapphire mine in the middle of a rice field. Watching the video below and let me take you underneath the gem rich soils of Sri Lanka.

Next stop was a small hut where people still cut gemstones in the traditional way without using anything mechanical. I gave it a go myself, but the skill required to operate this machine and create perfectly flat facets takes years.

Then it was on to the gem market where there is plenty of low quality, non facet grade rough and a few cut gems. Most of what I saw was either synthetic or imitation.

For the last stop, I had the opportunity to visit one of the major cutting factories in Sri Lanka where they have an amazing collection of minerals. Some of them include this huge Sapphire and the biggest Emerald I have ever seen