Taxi in Ratnapura, private transfers at a fixed price

Pick-up is at the hotel entrance or the nearest side lane, never on the main street: it is narrow, jammed from first light, and no car can stand on it. Several guesthouses sit on the ridges above town at the end of steep single-track lanes, so give us the name when you book and we will say whether a van can get up. Night departures are routine here. For the Palabaddala trailhead we usually leave around 22:00, because the estate road through Gilimale takes the best part of an hour; for Sinharaja at Kudawa, a 05:00 start puts you at the gate as it opens. After heavy rain the low streets along the Kalu Ganga flood, and your driver comes round by the far bank.

There is no railway. The Kelani Valley line ends at Avissawella, some forty-five kilometres short, so everything here arrives by road. From the airport we use the expressway ring around Colombo and then the A8 inland through Horana; the older A4 through Avissawella is a little shorter and slower by day. The A4 continues east through Pelmadulla to Balangoda and climbs into the hill country, which makes Ratnapura a sensible halfway stop between the south coast and Ella. One thing catches people out: Adam’s Peak stands over the town, but no road crosses it, and the Nallathanniya trailhead on the far side is a good four hours away by way of Avissawella and Ginigathena.

Expect rain — close to four metres a year, the south-west monsoon at full strength from May to September and the inter-monsoon on top of it in October and November. January and February are the least wet and still not dry. When it does come down the Kalu Ganga rises fast, the town has flooded repeatedly, and the road east towards Balangoda is landslide ground: Ratnapura district is the most slide-prone in the country, and the disaster of May 2003 is still the local benchmark. The Sri Pada season runs from the December full moon to the May full moon; outside it the Palabaddala path is unlit, the tea stalls are shut and the mountain is genuinely dangerous. On buying stones: treatment and synthetics are everywhere, a free mine visit ends in a showroom, and nothing is worth buying untested.

The gem trade is done in the open and in the morning: dealers stand along the pavements near the centre from about seven until midday, unfolding paper packets and turning stones to the daylight. Watching costs nothing. Working pits are scattered through the paddy land around town, timbered shafts sunk to the illam — the gem-bearing gravel — washed in conical baskets at the stream. The national museum in the old Ehelepola walawwa keeps the fossil hippopotamus, rhinoceros and lion that miners bring up out of those shafts. Maha Saman Devalaya, three kilometres out, is the shrine of the guardian deity of Sri Pada, and its Esala perahera in August or September is the great procession of the province. Bopath Ella near Kuruwita is a handsome bo-leaf waterfall of about thirty metres that drowns swimmers most years: look, do not bathe.