Sunsets and Serenity of Sri Lanka

Kandy at your own pace. The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic holds the country's most important Buddhist relic, and visits are timed around the puja when the shrine is opened and the drummers play.

The rest is yours: the forest reserve above the town, the market streets, the lake path, and Upper Lake Drive for the view down over it. The Peradeniya botanical gardens are twenty minutes out and take as long as you let them.

You climb further into the mountains to Nuwara Eliya, with a tea plantation and factory on the way to see how the leaf is picked, withered, rolled and fired.

The town was built by the British as a hill station and still looks it, with hedges, a racecourse and a golf course. At this altitude the evenings are cold, which is a surprise to most people the first time.

An early start, before dawn, for Horton Plains. It is the highest plateau on the island at about 2,100 metres and a World Heritage Site, and the loop takes three to four hours on foot.

World's End is a sheer escarpment with a 900 metre drop, and on a clear morning you can see to the south coast. By nine the cloud usually fills it, which is why you leave in the dark. Baker's Falls is on the way back.

A late start and a short, scenic drive to Ella, round high passes with waterfalls and valleys on both sides.

Ravana falls is the stop on the way, one of the widest cascades in the country and right beside the road. You reach Ella in time to do nothing with the rest of the afternoon.

The Ella day. The Nine Arch Bridge is a stone viaduct built without steel and trains still cross it a few times a day. Demodara station below has the only spiral loop in the country, where the line passes under itself to lose height.

Little Adam's Peak is a steady climb rather than a scramble. In the afternoon you drive to Lipton's Seat above Haputale, the viewpoint the tea planter used to survey what he owned, and it is the better view of the two.

You come down from the mountains to the coast, which takes most of the day and changes the landscape completely, from tea to paddy to palms.

There is a stop for lunch by a river on the way. You reach Bentota in the afternoon with three nights ahead of you and nothing scheduled for the first of them.

South along the coast to Galle. The fort is a Dutch walled town on Portuguese foundations and people still live inside it, so the ramparts, the churches, the warehouses and the cafes all sit in the same few streets.

You walk it with your guide, then have the afternoon for the lanes, the galleries and the jewellers. Late afternoon on the wall is the hour worth staying for.

A day with nothing in it, unless you want something. Lunuganga is fifteen minutes away, the garden Geoffrey Bawa spent fifty years shaping, and lunch on the terrace there is the easiest good decision of the trip.

Otherwise there is a boat up the Madu river through the mangroves, water sports on the lagoon, or the beach and a book.

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