On this day the drive south is part of the story. At Ambalangoda, mask-carving families have shaped light kaduru wood for generations, and the Ariyapala workshop museum explains the three traditions: kolam masks for village theatre, raksha masks for processions, and the sanni masks – eighteen demon faces, each tied to an illness, once used in all-night healing rituals. A pause at Peraliya marks where the 2004 tsunami struck the Colombo-Galle train, a moment of quiet the coast still keeps. Then Galle: 52 hectares inside ramparts the Dutch strengthened after taking the fort from the Portuguese in 1640, and still a working town of schools, courts, mosques and family homes. Afternoon is for the lanes; evening is for the walls, as the sun drops behind the lighthouse.
