Sri Lanka Hill Country - Ella and Nurawa Eliya
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We were uncertain about how long we should spend in the hill country and when to leave. This was beneficial for our daily negotiations with the taxi drivers around Nor Lanka -- who lowered their price each day. At first our plan was to have a taxi driver drop us off in Ella, a journey of four hours and then proceed to Kandy by train, stopping at various stations and staying a night or two on the way. In light of the animosity between the two candidates for the national election on the 26th January, there was speculation of violence and possible imposition of curfews, depending on the outcome. We decided to leave on Monday, 25th January and keep the car hire for five days. This decision turned out favourably since no one felt like working Monday because of the national election, Tuesday was a national holiday because of the election, and on Wednesday people didn’t go to work because they were stewing on the outcome of the national election (the incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa won). On these days, the streets were largely clear of traffic, making our journey much easier.
The trip to Ella took about four to five hours. We had an option for a detour through wild elephant country, but because the boys were acting up in the car, we decided to head there directly, as fast as possible. On the way, we passed through a very dry part of the country where the local specialty was curd served in a clay pot with coconut honey poured on top. Soon we reached the mountains and climbed slowly along windy roads to Ella, at about 3,000 feet. Our first choice hotel from TripAdvisor called Zion View, was a lovely place, but had no availability for us and no place for our driver to sleep or park the car. We ended up at Ambiente Hotel, which had a similar view and a very nice garden (see images).
We took a walk along a path through several tea plantations and on the way back ran into some school kids on their way home. Toby and I took a longer walk up the hill and ran into a middle aged Indian/British/E. African couple who lived in the UK, but spent several months a year touring India and Sri Lanka. They were avid yoga practitioners -- getting up at six every day, and had travelled very extensively throughout India – so much that they were able to pass off as locals to visit UNESCO and other cultural sites (a very difficult thing to do if you are an Indian living overseas). She had worked for the immigration office in Croydon, UK and kindly provided her email address in case we had any questions about the process for the boys this coming year.
At some point on our journey, our driver “Somay”, revealed that he had taken the band Duran Duran on a tour around Sri Lanka sometime around 1994. “Very nice gentleman – there were five of them”, he said much to our amazement. Our driver hadn’t slept very much the night before as he had picked someone up from the airport, got home at 3 a.m. and then picked us up at 7 a.m. He had then driven us about five hours with a few stops on the way, so was probably quite exhausted. At Ambiente Hotel they seemed to provide good accommodation for drivers so he was well rested the following morning. However when we arrived at Nurawa Eliya we ended up choosing a place called Alpine Hotel to stay, which had comfy beds, children’s television and internet access. Unfortunately, next morning we found out from the driver that they had given him nothing to eat or drink, and the building in which he slept had poor insulation so that it was like a refrigerator, and he slept very poorly. We ourselves had got very good service to the point that our waiter gave us his address and asked us to contact him if we wanted anything sent to us in the UK (I think he meant tea), but our driver hadn’t. I hadn’t considered how important the driver’s quarters and treatment is in choosing a hotel. Obviously if he didn’t sleep and/or eat well, his driving would be adversely affected and we could end up in an accident. I made a point to listen more to his recommendations on places to stay.
Next morning our driver took us to the Ella train station for the 9:30 a.m. train to Nanu-Oya, nr. Nurawa Eliya. The plan was for him to drive on to Nanu-Oya while we enjoyed the view from the train. We had not seen any trains since our arrival in Sri Lanka despite seeing numerous tracks. The reputation of trains in Sri Lanka was lateness is measured in quarter or half days. Our train was 45 minutes late and we waited with the other tourists outside the station or on the platform, stepping on to the tracks to take a picture of the station. At one point, Toby, Ethan and I went further down the track and thought we heard the train. We rushed back to tell Carmen, who came to the platform. The other 50 or so people waiting saw us getting ready and started preparing and moving themselves to get on the train, but it was another ten minutes before it finally appeared. We were in second class and rushed to claim a seat, but by the time we got on, the good seats were taken, so Carmen and I spent most of the journey standing up peering outside the open door of the train as it moved slowly through the hill country. The boys sat in their window seats peering around the pillar in the middle and asking us for snacks every ten minutes or so. The scenery from the train was spectacular and the three hours went by too quickly. We ascended into the mountains for about half of the trip and went through several tunnels which concentrated the diesel fumes from the locomotive inside the carriage. We had to stop at one station for about twenty minutes to wait for the train coming in the other direction, as the rail is primarily single track. This train journey was definitely one of the highlights of our trip to Sri Lanka.
Nurawa Eliya downtown turned out to be an excellent place to buy factory seconds for outdoor clothing, particularly Columbia and EMS clothing and we got some wind proof gear for our Adam’s Peak attempt. Other than that, we visited Victoria Park playground before heading on towards Kandy.
On the way to Kandy, we visited what an excellent tea plantation called Mackwoods , which in the UK is only available in Harrods unfortunately, as the tea and cake turned out to be the best we had. After a tour of the plantation in which we were shown the equipment and various types of tea produced, we sat down for a cup of broken orange pekoe (BOP). We bought some BOP tea bags but for some reason it doesn’t match the quality of tea we had there. We also got Ethan a small teddy bear there (since he lost his previous one on the sail boat last year) with three leaves sewn into his paw, and named him “Plucker”.