The following day, my ritual humiliation, which by now I was getting used to, involved being scrubbed down with dark brown welmadata paste then placed into a bath of boiled herbs. Both treatments, which also involved long, languid oil massages that made me drift in and out of sleep, are part of the wellness programme run by the small but cultishly popular Ayurvie Sigiriya retreat, set deep in Sri Lanka’s cultural triangle.