The days here
Experience
Nothing is scheduled. Everything is arranged.
We keep no activity board. Tell the house what
kind of day you want, and it quietly happens.
The table
Dinner is whatever the garden gave up that morning.
One menu, read aloud. Jak curry, sprats, hoppers cooked over wood while you watch. Bowls are clay, thrown twenty minutes down the road.
Wood fireOne sitting, 7pm
The water
Your own pool, shaded until noon.
Six metres of dark stone at the edge of the garden. Nobody else uses it. A frangipani falls in most mornings and we leave it there.
PrivateOpen all hours
The hills
Mornings above the cloud line at Matale.
Walk out at six with a flask, through pepper vines and cardamom, and come back down when the mist burns off. A guide if you want one.
Guided or alone2 to 4 hours
The stillness
The verandah, most of the afternoon.
This is what people actually book. A daybed, a book you didn't finish last year, rain arriving somewhere over the trees.
Nothing requiredAll day
A day, roughly
6:20
Tea left outside your door. Nobody knocks.
8:00
Breakfast on the verandah: curd, kithul treacle, whatever fruit came in.
10:30
The garden walk, if you want it. Otherwise the pool.
13:00
A long lunch, then the part of the day nobody plans.
18:00
Lanterns lit in the pavilion. Arrack and ice.
19:30
Dinner, one sitting, cooked over wood.