From Ella, we took the train up to Nuwara Eliya, at just under 2000m above sea level a mountain retreat for British colonials seeking relief from the heat. With daytime temperatures of around 20C, it falls to mid teens at night and blankets are provided on the beds.
We stayed at Trout Cabins, a cosy complex of 3 bedrooms opening onto a central lounge. Although the cheapest place we stayed, at just under $20 per night, it was also possibly the nicest. It had a rustic, hippy feel that reminded me of some of the accommodation places in our local south coast forests. It was also enhanced by Danu the young man in charge of looking after guests. He was a sweet, shy, helpful boy who always did his best to provide good advice and make your visit pleasurable. He lit the fire in the lounge at night, found us an electric kettle to make cups of tea and generally provide delightful service.
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| Trout Cabins |
At Nuwara Eliya we again took advantage of the cool to go walking. We walked through Victoria Park (an English style park) in the centre of town, around Lake Gregory, up to Lover's Leap waterfall above the Pedro Tea Factory, and we caught a bus up to Shanthipura, the highest village in Sri Lanka. The bus up the steep, winding road took about 40 minutes to cover the 5kms and it didn't take much longer to walk back down.
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| The road down from Shanthipura. |
As the lounge had plates and cups etc we also took to buying local fruit at the markets and having that for breakfast. At some of the other places we stayed, the provided breakfast included fresh fruits but in keeping with the Sri Lankan policy of preparing food well ahead of consumption, they usually had the appearance of having been cut up the night before, whereas we cut ours just as we were about to eat them and they were correspondingly more appetising.
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