Sri Lanka

A 5th-century citadel built on a volcanic plug rising 200 metres from the surrounding forest, Sigiriya is the most extraordinary monument in Sri Lanka — a royal palace, pleasure garden, and water complex perched on a near-vertical rock face, with frescoed maidens painted in a sheltered gallery halfway up the ascent. The 360-degree view from the summit, across jungle and rice paddy to the horizon, is among the finest in Asia.

Sri Lanka's most sacred Buddhist site, the Temple of the Tooth (Sri Dalada Maligawa) houses a tooth relic of the historical Buddha, and the twice-daily puja ceremonies — accompanied by drums, trumpets, and fragrant incense — attract thousands of pilgrims. The annual Esala Perahera festival, held each August, is one of Asia's most spectacular events: ten days of elephant processions and fire acrobats around Kandy Lake after dark.

Sri Lanka's most visited wildlife destination, Yala has the highest leopard density in the world — an estimated one leopard per six square kilometres — and the chance of a sighting here is among the best of any wild cat destination on earth. The park's coastal setting adds scrub forest, lagoons, and beach to the wildlife experience, and elephants, sloth bears, and water buffalo are encountered daily.

A small village at 1,041 metres in the emerald green tea highlands of central Sri Lanka, Ella sits between two mountain gaps with extraordinary views of the southern plains. The nine-arch railway bridge nearby — brick-built by British engineers in 1921, surrounded by tea plantation — is one of the world's most photographed railway structures, and the hike to Little Adam's Peak provides a 180-degree panorama of terraced tea and cloud.

A Dutch colonial fortified city on the southwestern tip of Sri Lanka, Galle Fort's grid of colonial streets — churches, warehouses, and Dutch colonial mansions within massive ramparts — has been continuously inhabited and trading since 1640. The rampart walk at sunset, with the Indian Ocean on three sides and the town's historic skyline illuminated behind you, is one of Sri Lanka's finest experiences.

A small fishing village on the south coast, Mirissa is the finest place in the world to watch blue whales — the largest animals ever to have existed — in the Sri Lankan channel between November and April. Sperm whales, fin whales, and spinner dolphin pods of several hundred also regularly attend the morning whale-watching departures, which leave before dawn for the best conditions.