The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic sits on the Kandy lake, the holiest Buddhist site on the island. We timed it for the evening puja. Drummers in the inner courtyard, the queue filing past the gold reliquary, the smell of jasmine and oil lamps thick in the dark wooden halls.

The Peradeniya botanical gardens loop the Mahaweli river. An avenue of royal palms, a giant Javan fig whose canopy shades half a lawn, an orchid house, and fruit bats hanging in their hundreds from the tall trees, peeling off at dusk in long ragged ribbons.

The road up from Colombo climbs into the hills, the heat dropping with every bend, spice gardens and roadside stalls of cashews and pineapple. Kandy sits in a bowl around its lake, cooler and greener, the white temple reflected in the water as we arrived.

Back in Colombo the afternoon was for the markets. The Pettah lanes, the striped Red Mosque, a courtyard lunch in the old Dutch hospital. And a last evening on Galle Face Green with the kites and the food carts and the warm sea wind.