Want to see the real Sri Lanka? Explore by train

Trust a cat to trivialise your dreams. I’d longed to see a leopard for decades – picturing green eyes peering mysteriously through undergrowth, a flash of claw and maw, deer dragged up trees. And here he finally was – as fearsome as Bagpuss, legs in the air rolling and drooling on a flower-filled summer lawn like a big, spotted moggy basking in the warm sun. Contemptuously content and oblivious of my presence.

And I never imagined I’d see my first leopard in Sri Lanka; I thought it would be in the wilds of Namibia or Kruger National park. But Sri Lanka had defied my expectations since I’d arrived a week previously.

I’d imagined the country to be much like India: colourful, crowded chaos, spicy food, a scattering of temples and beaches busy with people who couldn’t quite afford the Maldives. How wrong I was. Sri Lanka was a revelation, teeming with wildlife unperturbed by humans, fringed with gorgeous beaches and dotted with lovely boutiquey hotels.

But it’s the people who are the real delight. It was thanks to a chance encounter on my first night in Colombo that my trip had been so wonderful. Fresh off the plane, with a beach hotel booked but no real plans, an Instagram post had brought me to Colombo’s newly opened Vertical Sky Bar, camera in hand and eager to catch the astonishing glass and steel bud and stem Lotus flower building in the post sunset light.

I was lost in the view of the skyscraper – glinting over bays and islands, churches and mosques, temples and stupas – when a group of locals who had gathered after work beckoned me to their table and drew me into a conversation. What did I think of Sri Lanka? What had I heard about it abroad? I mumbled something about beaches and buddhism, political upheaval and tsunamis. Saara, a young woman in a hijab, politely chuckled.

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“I think foreigners have a strange idea about our country,” she said, “I blame TV.”

“We are one of the oldest multicultural societies on the planet” added her friend Sewwandi, a Christian. “We’re descended from people from all over Asia, all over the world. And we’ve been living together for centuries.”

I told them I wanted to…