Kandyan Eco Village and Spice Trail Half-Day Tour from Kandy

The countryside around Kandy is smallholding country, and this trip is about how those holdings actually work rather than about a view of them.

Cinnamon is the centrepiece. Sri Lanka produces most of the world's true cinnamon and the process has not changed in centuries: the bark is cut, the outer layer scraped off, and the inner bark peeled in strips that curl as they dry. Watching a peeler work for ten minutes explains why real Ceylon cinnamon costs what it does, and why the cassia sold as cinnamon in most countries is a different plant entirely.

Toddy tapping is the other set piece. A tapper climbs a coconut palm, cuts the flower spathe and binds a pot to catch the sap, which ferments within hours into a mild palm wine. The ropes between the palm crowns that let tappers move from tree to tree without descending are worth seeing on their own.

The rest of the morning is spice plots — pepper vines, cardamom, turmeric, nutmeg — and the Ayurvedic plants that grow in every village garden and are used before anyone considers a pharmacy. There is paddy land here too, and depending on the season you can see planting or threshing under way.

Kandy was the last capital of the Sinhalese kings, holding out against the Portuguese and Dutch until the British took it in 1815, and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic on the lake is why it matters: the relic, believed to be a tooth of the Buddha, is the most sacred object on the island and its custody once legitimised the kingship. The relic chamber opens for puja three times a day, at about 5:30, 9:30 and 18:30, when the drumming starts and the queue moves past the casket. Dress covers shoulders and knees, shoes come off at the entrance, and the Esala Perahera in July or August parades the casket on an elephant through the city for ten nights.