All-Inclusive Sigiriya Rock and Dambulla Cave Temple Day Tour from Kandy

Sigiriya is the reason most people come north from Kandy, and it deserves the reputation. In the fifth century King Kashyapa, having taken the throne by walling his father up alive, moved the capital to the top of a 200-metre granite plug and built a palace there. The approach runs through symmetrical water gardens — among the oldest surviving landscaped gardens in the world, and still functioning — then up through the frescoes of the mirror wall, past the lion's paws that once framed an enormous gateway, to the summit terraces.

Dambulla is older and quieter. Five caves under a granite overhang, in use since the first century BC and painted and repainted for two thousand years, holding around 150 Buddha images. The largest cave is 52 metres wide with a ceiling that follows the rock, painted in an unbroken sheet.

This version is the comfortable one: air-conditioned transport for the two hours each way, a guide who explains what you are looking at rather than a driver who waits at the gate, and enough time at both sites to do them properly rather than at a run.

Sigiriya is a 200-metre column of rock rising out of the dry-zone plain, on which King Kasyapa built his palace in the fifth century after seizing the throne, and it has been a UNESCO site since 1982. The climb is about 1,200 steps on stairways and iron walkways, past the mirror wall with its thousand-year-old graffiti and the sheltered gallery of frescoes, to the lion's paws that give the rock its name and the palace foundations on the summit. It takes an hour and a half up and down for most people and is best started at 7:00, before the heat and the coaches; the ticket for foreign visitors is one of the most expensive in the country, and Pidurangala, the neighbouring rock, gives the classic view of Sigiriya for a fraction of it.