Sri Lanka’s Big Five Game

North to Minneriya, which covers about 8,900 hectares and sits on an elephant corridor. The herds come down to the reservoir to drink and feed, and in the dry months they arrive in numbers you will not see anywhere else on the island.

Twenty three mammal species live here along with more than 170 birds, so leopard, sloth bear, sambar and buffalo are all possible while you are watching the elephants.

Sigiriya in the morning. It is over a thousand steps past the fifth century frescoes and the lion paws to a citadel built on top of a rock, with the whole plain below it.

Then you drive up into the hills, stopping at a tea plantation and factory to see the leaf picked and processed. Nuwara Eliya at the top is a hill station the British built, cool enough in the evening to want a jacket, with a racecourse, a golf course and hedges.

You come down from the hills into the dry scrub at Yala, which takes half a day and changes the landscape completely.

The evening drive is the first of your two at Yala. Block 1 holds one of the highest leopard densities recorded anywhere, and elephant, sloth bear, sambar, buffalo and crocodile are all regular. No park guarantees a leopard on a single drive, which is why you have two.

The morning is at Bundala, a chain of lagoons, dunes and thorn scrub with 197 bird species and 32 mammals recorded. It is the better park for birds by a distance, and flamingo arrive in season.

In the evening you go back into Yala with your tracker, who will be working the alarm calls of the deer and langur rather than the map.

You cross west to Udawalawe, which holds somewhere between 600 and 700 elephants and shows them more reliably than any other park in the country. The terrain is open, so the sightings are long and close.

Leopard and bear are here too but hard to see in this landscape. Lunch, then the evening drive around the reservoir that feeds the whole district.

You start at the Elephant Transit Home, where orphaned and injured calves are raised and then released back into the wild. Feeding times are the moment to be there.

Then you drive to Sinharaja, the last large stretch of primary rainforest on the island and a World Heritage Site. Over half of the country's endemic mammals and butterflies live here, along with most of its endemic birds. You walk it twice, morning and evening, because the forest is a different place in each.

Out of the forest to the coast and Galle, the oldest living city in Sri Lanka. The fort is a Dutch walled town on Portuguese foundations, still lived in, with the ramparts, the lighthouse, the churches and the warehouses among the cafes and shops.

You walk it with your guide and keep the afternoon free. Late in the day the whole town comes out onto the wall.

An early boat out of Mirissa to look for whales. This is one of the few places in the world where blue whales and sperm whales are both seen, because the continental shelf runs close to shore here and the deep water is within reach.

Dolphins often travel with the boat on the way out. You are back on land by late morning, and the rest of the day is yours.

Your driver-guide takes you to the airport. From Mirissa it is about three hours on the expressway, and we set off with time in hand for the queues.