An ancient Buddhist forest monastery built by ascetic monks in the 1st century BCE on a granite hillside deep in the dry zone interior – its stone pathways, meditation platforms, and bathing ponds now slowly reclaimed by one of Sri Lanka’s richest medicinal forest reserves. Ritigala takes effort to reach and rewards that effort with a sense of genuine discovery and an atmospheric antiquity that fully restored and managed heritage sites cannot replicate. Flight Ceylon Tours includes it specifically for guests who want to encounter Sri Lanka’s heritage in its most unmediated form.