The Horton Plains, two hours away by jeep, is a huge national park, where Sri Lanka’s central mountain massif is sheared off into a huge plateau, dotted with rhododendrons and swathes of evergreen forest. At its best in the morning, as the sun burns a shrouded mist from the patna grasslands, this is a wonderland where deer, wild boar and giant squirrels form an ideal diet for the park’s elusive predators: leopard. The birdlife is superb and the views are spectacular, particularly at ‘World’s End’, where the plateau drops 700 metres to the surrounding plain.