Serendib in Style: Sri Lanka Five-Star, 6 Nights

A chauffeured SUV meets your flight and runs you to the Cultural Triangle, to a resort where the pool looks at Sigiriya across the treeline. The evening is a slow one by design — a spa hour, dinner under the trees, and an early call sheet for the rock.

Up the Lion Rock at first light with an archaeologist-trained guide who reads the mirror wall and the frescoes for you, ahead of the queues. Back for a long breakfast and a flat afternoon by the pool, then a private jeep — no shared benches — into Minneriya or Kaudulla for the elephant gathering, with sundowners packed in the cool box.

The gilded cave temples of Dambulla on the way south, then a spice-garden walk at Matale where cinnamon is peeled from the branch in front of you. Into Kandy by late afternoon for the drummed evening puja at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, with your guide steering you to the quiet upper floor most visitors never find.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya in the morning, then the long scenic run south-west to the coast — tea slopes giving way to rubber, then coconut, then the first flash of sea. Check in at a Bentota beach resort in time for a sunset walk on sand that runs unbroken for kilometres.

A private boat through the Madu River mangroves — tunnels of green, cinnamon islands, kingfishers — and the Kosgoda turtle hatchery on the way back. The rest of the day belongs to the resort: water sports at the river mouth if you want speed, the spa if you want none, dinner on the sand either way.

An early start south for a whale-watching cruise off Mirissa — blue whales pass this coast between December and April, and the boats hold a respectful distance. Lunch inside the Dutch ramparts of Galle Fort, stilt fishermen along the shore road, then the expressway to Colombo for high tea at a grand old seafront hotel and one last sunset over the Indian Ocean.

Breakfast without a schedule, a stop for estate tea and true cinnamon if the flight allows, and the half-hour run to the airport. Six nights that felt like twelve, which is the point of doing Sri Lanka this way.