Sri Lanka Honeymoon, 6 Nights: the Hills & Galle

Met at Bandaranaike International and driven up the Kandy road into the hills, with a stop for lunch on the way. Kandy is a lake with a town around it, and the afternoon is a slow walk along the water to the Temple of the Tooth for the 6:30 puja, when the drums start in the courtyard and the chamber holding the relic casket opens to the line of worshippers. Dinner by the lake, and an early night after the flight.

An hour in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya first, the avenue of royal palms and the orchid house, and then the road climbs out of Gampola into the tea. The Ramboda Falls drop beside the highway and the terraces cover every slope. Near Ramboda a working factory is visited privately: the withering lofts, the rollers and the firing, and a tasting of the grades at the end. Nuwara Eliya at nearly 1,900 metres is cold after dark, and the evening is a fireplace and a long dinner.

No alarm. A late breakfast, then a walk on an estate road through the tea with a picnic laid out on a terrace above the valley. The afternoon is Nuwara Eliya's odd Englishness: the Gregory Lake, Victoria Park, the racecourse and the red-brick post office, and high tea in the town. Couples who want the dawn walk to World's End at Horton Plains can have it arranged for this morning instead; it starts at five and is back by eleven, leaving the afternoon as it is.

The descent of nearly two thousand metres through Hatton and Kitulgala's rainforest to the lowlands and the Southern Expressway, and Galle by mid-afternoon. The Dutch fort of 1663 is a walled town on a headland, still lived in, with lanes of colonnaded houses, a lighthouse and a mosque on the point, and the hotel is inside the walls for three nights. The first evening is the walk around the ramparts as the sun goes into the sea, and dinner in the fort.

A morning at Unawatuna, the crescent of beach around the headland from the fort, or the short forest path over Rumassala hill to the smaller Jungle Beach. Lunch by the water. The afternoon is the couples' spa treatment at the hotel, and the evening is the candlelit dinner for two laid out on the ramparts, with the lighthouse beam turning above and the sea below the wall.

From November to April the day starts early: the drive to Mirissa harbour and the whale boat out to the edge of the shelf, where blue whales feed within an hour of shore, back by midday. Outside those months the morning is Koggala lake by boat, with its island temple and cinnamon gardens. The afternoon is Mirissa beach or the pool, and the last evening is yours: a bar on the ramparts, or a table in one of the fort's old houses.

Breakfast in the fort and the drive north on the Southern and Katunayake expressways to the airport, about two hours door to door. With a late flight the car can stop in Colombo for lunch and Galle Face Green. Flights to Chennai, Kochi and Bengaluru take under two hours, and Mumbai about two and a half.