After going up Little Adam’s Peak the previous Daly we decided to try Ella Rock next. This one is quite a bit further away and more difficult. The weather was similar overcast morning with heavy rain forecast. I found a blog post with instructions on how to do it. First you hike 40 minutes from Ella Railway station to the next station, then walk a bit to before turning onto the path up the mountain. The trail was confusing with lots of branches, not at all like the previous days trail. Luckily the instructions were really good with landmarks and everything and they also warned that some locals will give you false directions to make you lost so you will pay money for a guide.
We decided to take a tuk tuk to the next station instead to get started earlier and hopefully beat the rain. We started walking along the tracks and sure enough a woman told us it was the other way. We ignored her and pressed on. I found the correct side path, although the sign mentioned in the blog had been covered up.
The sign written under the bridge says turn right, but actually you want to turn left.
Nice walk through a tea plantation followed by some long grass, then we found a hut selling refreshments, so this must be the right path.
Then it started to get steeper.
We made it to the first observation point, but there was quite a bit left to climb as you can see behind me.
Finally we made it!
The above picture is of Little Adam’s Peak, where we were yesterday. Then we had to head back down, which wasn’t very easy either, since it was slippery from the rain the previous day.
Termite mound in the tea plantation.
Wo got to the train tracks and decided to walk all the way home. It was pretty fun.
Yanmei met an unfriendly cow.
As we were walking along we came to a restaurant that was only accessible by walking along the tracks, as far as we could see.
We decided to eat there because we were starving from the hike, and it was good timing because it poured rain while we were there, but cleared up fairly quickly.
A little shrine along the tracks. It is very nice walking along the tracks no tuk tuks or honking buses spewing black smoke.
Finally we got back to Ella Rail station.
We climbed up onto the platform and saw this.
Haha.
Very enjoyable day. I’m glad we were able to come here while we are still young enough to do stuff like this. Most people at the top looked like 20s or early 30s.
The afternoon we arrived in Ella I checked the forecast in my weather app. It literally said “torrential rain”. I’ve never seen that before, I’ve seen “heavy rain” or “thunderstorms”, but never “torrential rain”, that’s not good. Also major rain was forecast for the entire time we planned to be here. Oops, we should’ve checked the weather earlier.
The next morning at 8am it was overcast but not raining, with even a bit of blue sky peeking out here and there. We decided to hike up Little Adam’s Peak right after breakfast while the weather held. The trail started quite close to our hotel. There is an Adam’s Peak in another area of Sri Lanka, so this must be named after that one. Anyway it promised to give a nice scenic overview of the city and a good view of Ella Rock, which is the largest mountain here. Supposedly sunrises and sunsets are beautiful from the top. I had considered trying for sunrise, but when I woke up at 5am I could hear it raining, so I figured then sunrise wouldn’t be visible.
The trail is well established and paved for most of the way, and it was full of tourists. Part of it passes through a tea plantation where we could see workers having a break. Yanmei took a picture with some of them.
Ella rock.
Time lapse video of the climb. These don’t seem to turn out well because they are too shaky. At one point there was a guy launching a drone.
Finally we made it to the top.
By the time we came back down it was lunch time and we stopped at the same restaurant where we’d had dinner the previous night. It wasn’t as good, but the previous night we’d been starving from a 6.5 hour train trip with no lunch. While we were having lunch it started raining, although I’d call it moderate rain, not torrential rain. We got back to the hotel and had another surprise, no power. Apparently they have scheduled power outages periodically, and there was no power from 9:30am to 6pm. No power means no WiFi, so that sucked. That is one reason for two wordy blog posts yesterday, we had nothing to do but write since it was raining and there was no Internet.
Our next destination was Ella. Yanmei wanted to take a train, I wanted to hire a car. When we first arrived in Kandy on the train we tried to buy first class tickets to Ella, but they said they were completely sold out for the next 30 days. That made me want to take a car. The drive is also 3.5 hours versus 7 hours for the train. However the train ride is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. Finally I agreed to the train. Since 1st class was sold out we had to buy 2nd class, which has no reserved seating, is not air conditioned, and doesn’t sell out, which means they cram as many people on as buy tickets. From Colombo to Kandy 2nd class was half empty, so I was hopeful it would be like that. The tickets were 240 rupees each ($1.55), not bad!
Things didn’t look good at the platform for my half empty scenario.
A guy offered to “find” us seats for a 4000 rupee bribe. We did not accept. Yanmei especially hates corruption like this, and I felt we would probably screw someone else by taking this offer.
As an aside Yanmei has bought so much stuff on this trip that she was up to 4 carry-ons and her small roller. Also the airlines seem much stricter this trip compared to 2015, they make me check my backpack almost every flight and Yanmei’s roller too, even though they both easily fit in the overheads. The only time I had to check my backpack in 2015 was on one regional flight in Eqypt in a light jet. I think it might be a way for the airlines to earn more money since they all charge extra for checking bags now. So in Malaysia I bought a full-size roller suitcase. I hate traveling with big bags, but if we are checking stuff every flight anyway we might as well consolidate into less bags.
So now we’re standing on the crowded platform, and everyone has a backpack and I have a massive roller (and my backpack). Our plan was for Yanmei to quickly jump on with her carry-on and try to get us seats while I boarded and stowed the heavy luggage. That plan quickly fell apart when the train arrived. She rushed to the front of the car, while I boarded the back where I knew there was a shelf for big bags. Luckily there was enough space to fit the big bag there. Obviously there were no seats near me so I started pushing forward to where I saw Yanmei get on, thinking she might be saving a seat for me. Partway up the car too many people were pushing on from every direction and I got stuck and couldn’t move through the crowd. Worse, I hadn’t stowed my backpack which was heavy with a few 1.5 liter bottles of water, and now all the space was full. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Yanmei had seen me get on at the back and decided not to get on at the front and tried to follow me, but this caused her to get stuck behind many other people and thus she was one of the last to board. She couldn’t move either and got stuck in the space between two cars. When I was moving forward to find her I was actually moving away from her.
Now it was a SNAFU. We were separated with no seats on a crowded train, it was 9am and already getting hot, no air conditioning, I had all the water, and she had all the food. This was going to be a long 7 hours. We eventually got in contact with each other using text messages. She was able to rest a bit by sitting on her roller.
Some people near me sat on the floor, which really clogged things up, since people were still trying to move. There were food vendors and stuff pushing through. Once I got a somewhat comfortable place to stand I didn’t want to risk moving and ending up in a worse spot, and I knew Yanmei didn’t have a seat either.
After about an hour Yanmei squeezed her way forward to see me and use the toilet. She told me she met some Chinese tourists and they were watching her luggage. She soon headed back to her spot. After about an hour and a half a very nice local man offered me his seat. At first I refused, but he said he was getting off soon (the train was stopping every 15-20 minutes) so I agreed. I’m not sure why he picked me to offer his seat, there were lots of other white tourists around, but I was grateful. I then felt bad when he didn’t get off and stood for over an hour. I tried to text Yanmei that I got a seat if she wanted a turn sitting, but by then my phone had no service.
A while later she came pushing forward again and wanted food and water. I thought she had all the food but she said she couldn’t reach her bag anymore to get it. I remembered I had a couple of chocolate bars in my bag, so I gave those to her. She said she didn’t want to sit, so she headed back with a couple of Mars bars and a bottle of water. Later I found out her new Chinese friend was feeling faint so she wanted to take the chocolate back for her. A little while later when cell service was back she texted me she got a seat too. Phew. It was also cooling off outside which made it much more bearable inside with all the doors and windows open. So it didn’t turn out as bad as it could have.
Both she and I had seats on the same side which was the “bad” side for scenery. I was just happy to have a seat and it was still pretty nice. We passed numerous tea plantations as you can see from the video.
Finally made it to Ella by about 3:30pm. Although it was not the final stop, most people got off there. Was it the most beautiful train ride in the world? I would say no, although it was better than I expected with the mountain side views. There is a lot of stiff competition in the beautiful train ride category. My favorite that I’ve been on is probably Zurich to Geneva. Another contender is the Flåm in Norway which we wanted to try in 2015, but it was fulled booked.
Ella is a relatively small town, with about 45,000 people, but it has become a popular tourist destination since the civil war here ended in 2009. They didn’t have the infrastructure to handle the demand, so now it seems like everyone near the train station has converted their house into a restaurant, lodge or both. There were lots of signs for home stays and rooms along the road. We’d actually booked a hotel instead of an Airbnb. It was a newly constructed boutique hotel off the main strip a bit with about 8 rooms.
