Kandy

PLACES TO EXPLORE

Sri Lanka compresses an astonishing diversity of landscape and culture into a landmass smaller than Ireland. Within a few hours’ drive you can move from ancient kingdoms carved in stone to rainforests dripping with endemic birdlife, from surf towns to elephant corridors, from colonial forts to cloud-wrapped tea estates. Each region holds its own character, rhythm and reason to arrive slowly.

Kandy sits in a natural bowl of green hills surrounding a lake that was artificially constructed in 1807 by the last Kandyan king – the city’s geography is itself a royal design decision. Beyond the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Kandy rewards wandering: brass-work lanes, spice market alleyways, botanical gardens of extraordinary scale and a lingering colonial-era architecture that blends seamlessly with highland hill-town life.