Sinharaja: Inside Sri Lanka's Ancient Rainforest

Sinharaja is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Man and Biosphere Reserve and these designations, which can sometimes feel like bureaucratic labels on ordinary places, here feel entirely proportionate. The forest covers roughly 11,000 hectares of lowland tropical rainforest in the deep south, receives rain for over 150 days a year, and supports a density of endemic species that has no equivalent anywhere on the island.

The sound of Sinharaja is the first thing that registers: a dense, layered acoustic environment of insects, frogs, and birds so continuous and overlapping that it takes a few minutes of standing still before individual sounds begin to separate out. Then the blue magpie calls from the canopy. Then a group of endemic birds moves through in a mixed feeding flock, a phenomenon specific to Sri Lankan rainforests where multiple species travel together for mutual protection and foraging benefit.

Enter from the Kudawa entrance in the northwest and hire a local guide from the community guide programme. The guides here have been trained specifically in the forest's ecology and their knowledge of specific locations, species behaviour, and forest navigation is the difference between a walk in a green place and an experience of a living ecosystem. The paths are unmarked and the interior is dense. Do not attempt Sinharaja without a guide.

Stay in the village of Kudawa or at one of the small lodges near the entrance for at least two nights. The dawn and late afternoon are when the forest is most active. Go out twice a day and spend the middle hours watching the light change on the canopy from a comfortable chair with something cold to drink. Sinharaja asks for patience and rewards it in exact proportion.