Given Sri Lanka’s remarkable facility for naturalising anything it takes a fancy to, counting its spices, is a sure way to stir debates about everything from guilt and history to life expectancy and truth. Hear some of this, as we lay out a jungle spice garden all of our own at The Flame Tree Estate in the mountains beyond Kandy. Field guide; saga; pharmacy; pantry - this memoir of the Spice Garden at The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy confirm

“A series of dreadful shrieks as if coming from a soul in great agony of torment,” wrote an anguished twitcher of the Sri Lankan Spot-bellied Eagle Owl. But is it alone sounding so fierce? What other owl howls might you encounter in Sri Lanka? This podcast is a search for Sri Lanka’s notorious Devil Bird, encountering on the way, all 12 of its distinguished owls. Once upon a time, uncountable centuries ago, a woman sat down to enjoy a curry supper with her husband. With

When sleeping rough in the jungle, keep a mongoose by your feet. Guarantors of safety, the little beast is the most overlooked contender for being Man’s Best Friend. But of the many that exist throughout the world, which ones will you find in Sri Lanka? Looking at animals from a purely Kandyan perspective, in the beginning were not early life form sponges, or even aardvarks – but mongooses. For it was, according to the best of legends, mongooses who were responsible for

Sri Lanka, like ancient Rome, has strict - albeit invisible - notions of caste and class. And class, not being exclusively human, is no less apparent within its smaller mammalian world – its rodents, and rodent-like cousins: its rats, shrews, mice, and squirrels. If the island’s tiny and elite mammalian senatorial class is represented by its elephants and leopards, its more capacious equestrian class comprises its monkeys, lorises, bears, mongooses, buffalo, anteaters, otte

Scientists - and most especially fastidious taxonomists – are giddily divided about quite how many of Sri Lanka's mammals are endemic: 19? 40? But as their arguments rumble on, what are these mammals that have caused so much consternation, and where are you most likely to see them? Good parallels are not always obvious - and for Sri Lanka’s endemic mammals, the best one to hand is the notorious Forth Bridge, a cantilevered railway bridge across the Firth of Forth in Scotla

Protected by a necklace of high mountains and surrounded by dense jungle ideal for guerrilla warfare, the Kandyan kingdom’s natural defences helped it withstand repeated invasions. But what was this long-forgotten mountain war, fought for almost 200 years? Hills are, of course, what Kandy is celebrated for - and its most famous city-centre mountain, Bahirawa Kanda, or Gnome Mountain, is home to one of the tallest statues of Lord Buddha. It was once, more memorably, home to

City though it is, Kandy - sequestered within high mountains and deep valleys – has numerous secretive wild pockets of utter bewitchment. But where will you find them – and what will you find when you get there? One of Kandy’s most fantastic secrets is its nature. The city sits in a valley surrounded by five central hills, up which, like an indulgent bubble bath, buildings of later regret have begun to creep. But one side of the city remains nicely protected - UdawaththaKe

Kandy is much more than its city. And in an arc of land that spreads to the north are five places that tell stories of the kingdom that are almost entirely forgotten. What are they, and why do they matter? This episode is dedicated to an arc of land that fans out to the north of Kandy, first connected to the ancient Anuradhapuran kings and their successors, before passing under the control of the Kandyan kingdom, whose own borders ebbed and flowed in response to European

The Vatican City of Sri Lanka, Kandy, is a place built on religion, money, politics, faith, power, morality - and some of the most striking temples anywhere in the world. But which ones should you visit? Kipling believed that to understand a country and its history, you had to smell it. Yet the past is documented in so many other ways - in books, in architecture, in music, or even in food. In Sri Lanka, it is the temples that best hold their story. Even so, their stories,