This trek keeps to the western side of the Knuckles, setting out from the Knuckles Conservation Centre at Deanston. The Dothalugala trail climbs into true cloud forest – stunted, moss-wrapped trees, tree ferns and orchids, and a stillness broken only by the calls of endemic birds. It is also home ground for the leaf-nosed lizard, Ceratophora tennentii, found in this forest and nowhere else on earth. Beyond the trees the route opens onto Pitawala Pathana, a wind-combed montane grassland of rock pools and wildflowers, and ends at Mini World’s End, a 1,192-metre escarpment where the land drops away towards the Matale valleys. Your naturalist tunes the distance to the group on the day.