The island, formerly called Ceylon, off South India's coast, is covered with jungle and lined with beaches, equally inspiring fairy tales and mystery. Its history is a succession of invasions and influences from oversea, reflecting its strategic position in the Indian Ocean. These left it with a Buddhist Singhalese majority and mainly Hindu and Christian Tamil minority, engaging in a bitter 20th century civil war.

A docudrama reconstructing the climbing of the Eiger's north flank, the ultimate Alpine challenge. Ambitious young German mountaineers Thomas Burger and Holger Wedel went missing after a bad fall. It took a helicopter rescue to retrieve Holger, already clinically dead.