Trips &
Land Excursions

Dawn breaks over the dry zone, and the park begins to stir. The light, at this hour, is soft and grey, and every creature seems to move a little more carefully because of it. Here, in the scrubland and the still lagoons, water buffalo stand half-submerged, unhurried, as though time itself moves differently in water. A peacock drags its tail through the dust, in no particular rush to impress anyone.

Within the old fort walls, the sea has a way of making itself known — a breeze funnelled down every narrow street, salt in the air long before you catch sight of the water itself. The houses here are Dutch by ancestry, deep-verandaed and weathered by three centuries of monsoons, and the lighthouse at the point has stood its watch since the 1930s, largely unbothered by the passage of time.