Nuwara Eliya: Sri Lanka's Most Unexpected Town

Nuwara Eliya sits at nearly 2000 metres in the central highlands and the British, who spent considerable energy trying to make Sri Lanka resemble England, did their most committed work here. Tudor-style buildings, a golf course, rose gardens, a racetrack, a post office that looks like it was lifted from a Home Counties village. The result is a town that is genuinely strange and genuinely charming in equal measure.

The temperature at Nuwara Eliya is the thing that surprises everyone most. After days on the coast or even in Kandy, the air here is genuinely cool. Evenings require a sweater. The mornings are misty and smells of woodsmoke from the guesthouses. You sleep under a blanket and wake to the sound of rain on tea bushes. This is not the Sri Lanka anyone expects and it is completely wonderful.

The town market is one of the best in the country. Nuwara Eliya's altitude makes it the vegetable growing capital of Sri Lanka and the produce available here is extraordinary: leeks, carrots, cabbages, strawberries, beans of every variety, enormous bundles of herbs. The market is primarily for locals and wholesale buyers but anyone can walk through and buy. Go in the morning when the day's stock is freshest.

The Grand Hotel and the Hill Club are the two colonial-era institutions that have been here since the British left and neither has changed quite as much as you might expect. The Hill Club serves dinner in a dining room of dark wood and hunting trophies and you must wear a jacket, which they will lend you if you did not bring one. Order the roast lamb. Drink something warm. There is no other restaurant like it on the island.