Kandy held the Temple of the Tooth at the evening puja, drums echoing off the dark wood, and the Peradeniya gardens by day. The palm avenue, the great fig, the fruit bats. The hill capital felt older and slower than the coast, the lake misting over in the cool of the morning.

Nuwara Eliya sits at nearly two thousand metres, cool enough for a jumper, the hills striped with tea bushes and the pickers moving along the rows. We toured a factory, watched the leaf wither and roll and fire, and drank the first flush on a veranda in the mist.

The long drive from the hills to Bentota dropped us back into the heat, the tea giving way to paddy and palm. Bentota's beach was wide and warm after the cool of Nuwara Eliya, the river behind it good for a sunset boat among the mangroves.

Colombo was the coda. The Pettah markets, the old Dutch hospital courtyard, and a last evening on Galle Face Green with the kites and the fritter carts and the sea going pink. After the hills it felt loud and alive, the right note to end on.