Cool mountain air, emerald teaand a fire waiting for you at night.

High in the central mountains, nearly 1,900 metres above the sea, the air turns crisp and every hillside is combed into rows of tea. This is where Ceylon tea was born — and where our own highland sanctuary welcomes guests in Bogawantalawa and Hatton.

Nuwara Eliya grew up as a cool-climate retreat in colonial times, and it still wears its nickname, “Little England”, with charm: a red-brick post office, rose gardens, a racecourse and Gregory Lake, where you can drift across the water as mist settles over the hills.

All around, the tea estates roll on for miles. Spend a morning with the pluckers, learn how the leaf is withered, rolled and fired in a century-old factory, then sit down to a tasting of teas from the very slopes outside the window. Along the road up from Hatton, waterfalls pour off the cliffs beside the tea.

For the adventurous, Horton Plains National Park — part of the Central Highlands UNESCO World Heritage Site — offers a dawn walk across cloud forest and grassland to World’s End, where the plateau drops away and, on a clear morning, you can see all the way to the southern plains.