Slanting green eyes of a leopard, golden rays bouncing off the peacock's blue plumage, intricate stone carvings barely visible in the undergrowth, laughter mixing with the sound of the waterways … cameras, note books, ice boxes, tents and sleeping mats… family holidays that revolved around our father’s passion for this land, its wildness and its people. Photography, conservation and activism were the products of his endless travel and exploration in the backwoods of Sri Lanka. As for us, along with the love for this land we inherited a partiality towards a particular type of refuge ... places where we had the privacy of lounging on a deck chair,gazing at the stars listening to the night sounds of the jungle at the end of a long day, having the occasional frog looking solemnly at you over the basin tap ...where we spread our maps, books and photo equipment on the dinner table and discussed with the bungalow keepers the best way to approach the next day ... and their friendly greetings when we return again next season… All this and much more is what we decided to build upon for ourselves when we started ‘Back of Beyond’. And today it is open to you as well. Large secluded spaces, forests, wildlife and waterways, and ideally some evidence of our ancient history, are what we look for when picking the Back of Beyond sites. Converting these sites into eco-retreats has been as much fun as spending our vacations there. Each location has its own character and we built our retreats to reflect and enhance what each site naturally provided. When staffing our retreats we went back to our memories of friendly, obliging and knowledgeable guides, cooks and helpers that made up our holidays special… Back of Beyond staff are handpicked from by us for their personality as much as their skill. Our dream is to have a Back of Beyond retreat in the many different natural and historical settings our island has to offer. Remembering, always, that wildlife were the original inhabitants of our varied forests and waterways, and we are their guests.