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Heading inland from Negombo, not far from Colombo airport, the countryside is amazingly green – verdant rice paddy and coconut groves are interspersed with banana, mango and papaya trees, vegetable plots, waterholes, small lakes, tanks (reservoirs), and slow-flowing rivers. Lining the roads are villages, schools, Buddhist and Hindu temples, churches and mosques, while the fields are dotted with cows, water buffalo and huge quantities of birds – especially egret, ibis, spoonbill and, perching on the ubiquitous telephone wires, the beautiful white-breasted kingfisher.

At Yapahuwa not much remains of the thirteenth century citadel built on a 100m-high granite rock to repel invaders from South India. King Bhuvanekabahu kept Sri Lanka's sacred tooth relic (of the Buddha) here and used it as a capital until an invader captured the relic in 1284 and took it to India (it was recovered four years later). Yapahuwa's most distinctive feature is the almost intact stairway that rises steeply up the lower slopes, and one of the ornamental lions here is pictured on the ten rupee note. Near the entrance to the site is an exquisite cave temple, decorated with surprisingly vibrant thirteenth century frescos and some fine wood, stone and bronze Buddhas.

Further inland is Dambulla, home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site of five spectacular rock temples some 125m above the plain on a rocky protrusion, and containing hundreds of Buddha images, ceiling paintings and murals. Although there has been a Buddhist monastic settlement here since the third century BC, the walls and ceilings have probably been over-painted many times, and only fragments remain from the fifth and seventh centuries. Most surfaces were repainted in the eighteenth century in the style of the Kandyan School. The sculptures represent one of the most important collections of Sri Lankan art and many of them date from the fifth to eighth centuries. Close to Dambulla is the Kandalama Hotel. Designed by Sri Lanka's most famous architect, Geoffrey Bawa, and opened in 1993, the hotel was planned to blend in with the surrounding landscape – at which it succeeds brilliantly.