Sri Lanka Hill Country & the Train, 6 Nights

Met at Bandaranaike International and driven east up the Kandy road, through the rubber and rice of the lowlands and the first tea as the road climbs past Kadugannawa. Kandy was the last capital of the Sinhalese kings and sits around its lake at 500 metres. After check-in the evening is the Temple of the Tooth: the 6:30 puja, when the drummers play in the courtyard and the chamber holding the relic casket is opened to the line of worshippers. Dinner by the lake.

A full day without a suitcase. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya first, when they are cool: the avenue of royal palms, the giant Java fig, the orchid house and the fruit bats in the trees by the river. Then the loop west of the city to three temples of the Gampola period, each different: Gadaladeniya's stone shrine of 1344, Lankatilaka on its rock with its painted image house, and Embekke's wooden pillars, carved with dancers, wrestlers and a double-headed eagle. Back for lunch, a walk through the Kandy market and the lakeside, and a Kandyan dance show in the evening with the fire-walkers at the end.

The Kandy–Nanu Oya section of the railway is closed for repairs at the time of writing, so this climb is by road, and the road is the better way to see it: from Gampola the tea covers every slope, the Ramboda Falls drop beside the highway, and a working factory shows the withering lofts and the rollers with a tasting at the end. Nuwara Eliya, at nearly 1,900 metres, was built by the British as a hill station and still has the racecourse, the golf course, the red-brick post office and the fireplaces. Early dinner: tomorrow starts before dawn.

Away at five for the hour's drive to Horton Plains, a grassland plateau at 2,100 metres with sambar deer at the entrance. The nine-kilometre loop takes about three hours: Baker's Falls, then Little World's End and World's End, where the plateau drops 870 metres in one cliff; the mist rolls in around ten, which is why the walk starts when it does. Back to Nanu Oya station for the early-afternoon train. The chauffeur takes the luggage on by road; you take the reserved seats through the tea to Haputale, Bandarawela and the tunnels above Ella, arriving before dark.

Up for the forty-five-minute walk through the tea to Little Adam's Peak, whose ridge looks down the Ella Gap to the plains. Then the path to the Nine Arches Bridge, the brick viaduct of 1921 that curves through the jungle at Demodara; the trains cross a few times a day, and the chauffeur has the timetable. The afternoon is Ravana Falls, on the Wellawaya road, and then free: Ella is a village of cafés with a view, and anyone who wants the four-hour Ella Rock hike with a local guide can have it arranged for the morning instead.

The descent: out of the Ella Gap through Wellawaya, past the Buduruwagala rock carvings if there is time, and across the dry south to the coast and the Southern Expressway. Galle by mid-afternoon. The Dutch fort of 1663 is a walled town still lived in — lanes of colonnaded houses, the Dutch Reformed Church, the lighthouse and the mosque on the point — and the walk around the ramparts ends on the western bastions at sunset. The night is inside the walls.

Breakfast in the fort, a last walk on the walls, and the drive to the airport on the Southern and Katunayake expressways, which is about two hours door to door. With a later flight the car can stop at Colombo's Galle Face Green and the Pettah market on the way. Flights to Chennai, Kochi and Bengaluru are under two hours.