Sri Lanka

Some days Kandy’s skies seem perpetually bruised, with stubborn mist clinging to the hills surrounding the city’s beautiful centrepiece lake. Delicate hill-country breezes impel the mist to gently part, revealing colorful houses amid Kandy’s improbable forested halo. In the center of town, three-wheelers careen around slippery corners, raising a soft spray that threatens the silk saris worn by local women. Here’s a city that looks good even when it’s raining.

Sri Lanka har underbara stränder, men efter ett tag tröttnar man på solsvedda axlar och sand mellan tårna. Då är det dags att åka tåg, vandra uppför klippor, bo på kolonialhotell, meditera, leva hälsosamt och spana i det tropiska djurlivet.

Sri Lanka's Hill Country is the island at its most scenic, a mist-wrapped land of emerald peaks and stupendous views, of hillsides carpeted with tea plantations and graced by astonishing waterfalls. This is a place where you can wear a fleece in the daytime and cuddle up beside a log fire in the evening. Where you can enjoy a memorable meal in the eternal city of Kandy or at a roadside shack in lovely Ella. A region where you can walk to the end of the world, stand in the footsteps of the Buddha and be surrounded by a hundred wild elephants. Ride a train utterly bewitched by the vistas. Paddle a raft down a raging river. Enjoy the drumbeat of traditional dance and then savour the silence on a lonely mountaintop.

Protected from noisy Galle Rd by the sluggish sweep of the Bentota Ganga, the ribbon of golden sand that makes up Bentota Beach is a glorious holiday sun-and-fun playground. There's a good mix of uberluxe resorts and smaller boutique places catering to independent travellers. There are more such places bordering Aluthgama, a small town on the mouth of an inlet and straddling the main road between Beruwela and Bentota. The town of Aluthgama has a raucous fish market, local shops and the main train station in the area. Induruwa doesn’t really have a centre – it’s spread out along the coast.

Although it's unlikely it will reclaim its 19th-century moniker 'the garden city of the East', Colombo has nevertheless emerged as a must-see stop in Sri Lanka. No longer just the sprawling city you have to endure on your way to the beaches, it has become a worthy destination in its own right and makes an excellent start – or finish – to your Sri Lankan adventures.

With palm-lined beaches, turquoise waters and a good selection of guesthouses and restaurants, Unawatuna is very popular with travelers. The resort's location is superb, with the historic city of Galle just 6km away and a wooded headland to the west dotted with tiny coves.

Lovely Arugam Bay, a moon-shaped curl of soft sand, is home to a famed point break that many regard as the best surf spot in the country. It's a tiny place, with a population of a few hundred, and everything is dotted along a single road which parallels the coast. So in other words, the epitome of the laid-back beach scene that first drew surfers and sun-seekers to Sri Lanka.

Crumbling temples, lost cities and sacred Buddhist sites are the reason to head up country to the cultural heartland of Sri Lanka. It was here on the central plains that ancient Sinhalese dynasties set up their first capitals and supported massive artistic and architectural endeavors. Eventually these kingdoms fell, slowly to be reclaimed by the forest and jungles.

With towering, rainbow-colored Hindu temples and a spectacular coastline fringed with palmyra and coconut palms, the North is a different world. Here the climate is arid for most of the year and the fields sun-baked. The light is stronger: surreal and white-hot on salt flats in the Vanni, bright and lucid on coral islands and northern beaches, and soft and speckled in Jaffna’s leafy suburbs and busy center. Look for the shimmer of colors from the wild peacocks that seem to be everywhere.

Hikkaduwa has been a firm fixture on the Sri Lankan tourist map since the 1970s, and this long exposure to tourism has left it a little worse for wear. A kilometre-long strip of guesthouses, shops and restaurants lines the beach, which is quite badly eroded in its northern stretch. The busy Colombo–Galle Rd, with its crazy high-speed bus drivers, runs right through the middle of Hikkaduwa, which can make stepping outside of your guesthouse as deadly as a game of Russian roulette!