Meemure Village Day Trip from Kandy with the Diyakarella Waterfall Hike

Meemure sits in a valley inside the Knuckles range, ringed by peaks, and until the 1990s the only way in was a footpath. It got mains electricity in 2016. That isolation is why it is worth the drive: the village still farms the way the valley has always been farmed, and the houses, the paddy terraces and the daily rhythm are not arranged for visitors.

The road in is the first part of the day — about three hours from Kandy, the last hour of it rough enough that the last stretch is usually done by jeep. It runs through the Knuckles conservation forest, a UNESCO-listed range of cloud forest and grassland that holds species found nowhere else.

In the village you walk: through the paddy terraces, past the school, and out to the Diyakarella waterfall, a couple of hours' round trip on a forest path with a pool at the bottom you can swim in. The walking is moderate rather than hard, but it is uneven and slippery in the wet.

Lunch is cooked in the village — rice and curry, on a wood fire, eaten where it was made. Then the long road back, reaching Kandy in the evening.

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.