Wednesday 21st

Ella to Nuwara Elia

Alarm goes at 5.30 and we’re out the door by 6. We arrive at the station expecting to be the only ones there but there’s a queue into the station. We try to upgrade the tickets but it’s not possible so take our place on the platform for 3rd class expecting the worse. Actually it’s really civilised and much nicer than I expected. We have allocated seats and the train is much better than the previous train we caught when we left Sigiriya. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking, the train is packed but somehow the 3 hour journey is bearable. The hotel very kindly made us a takeaway breakfast. So all’s good, except I start listening to an audiobook about PTSD, bad idea but it does make me reflect… I switch to listening to the Saltburn soundtrack whilst enjoying the mountains and rice paddies and everything in between. Arrived into Nuwara Elia at around 9.30 and reach our hotel about 10am, it’s very nice and very much like a British country house. Mind you the locals refer to Nuwara Elia as ‘little England’. It was built by the British in the mid 1800’s as a mountainous escape from the heat of the lowlands. It really does feel chillier here and typically I threw on shorts and a vest top to travel on the train thinking that the train would be like a furnace. Anyway, we’ve now got a few days here to explore the highlands equivalent.

Arrived into Nuwara Eliya (nearest train station is Nanuoya which is a 15 min tuktuk ride away). Got to our hotel (Chimneys) by 10am and they were very happy for us to check in early. Crashed out for a bit in our lovely room after our very early start and then decided to walk into what we thought was Nuwara Eliya. We ended up walking to Lake Gregory, first impressions, you can see the attraction that the Brits had in the 20’s and 30’s, there are lots of old style colonial properties, some which have been lovingly restored, others are turning to ruin. The climate is so similar to the U.K., it feels like a mild to warm summers day. There’s land around the lake which is now being used to graze horses and cattle and is also a bit of a rubbish dump, swamy in places. We see a group of dogs attacking a young calf so we both wade in to scare the dogs off, talk about mad English men! We were running over this rubbishy swampland flapping our arms about and screaming at the dogs, locals must have thought us mad!! We eventually find the path to the lake and realise that foreigners have to pay to walk around the lake itself which is about 6km walk. It’s a really nice walk and again you can see glimpses of glamour amongst the decay! I keep seeing how it would have looked. We see a number of different birds and one of my favs, the kingfisher, which we follow for a bit. We also meet a group of university students who want to take our picture so we end up doing a selfie with them, they’re so lovely. We don’t feel like we’ve found the centre of Nuwara Eliya yet but by this time we’re flagging (having been up since 5am) and in need of some food so we walk back to the hotel, although on the way we spot a bar / open air restaurant called Themparadu. We pop in for a quick drink and then head back for a hot shower, put warmer clothes back on as it’s really cooled down and then head into the dining room. It feels a little unkind but the staff are like something out of Faulty Towers, dinner becomes quite comical. The front of house guy says yes to everything because his English isn’t great but somehow we get there in the end. The menu is a weird mix of English dishes, and some other quite random things, for example they have Cottage Pie, Toad in the Hole, Fish and Chips etc. J and I can’t stop laughing throughout the meal as the guys just seem to stare at us through the peephole in the kitchen door. Think we’ll eat out tomorrow… back to the room for an early night.