From Sigirya we travelled to Kandy and were delighted to arrive at our homestay Jungle Tide which was exactly as described – ‘a tranquil tea estate bungalow off the beaten track with mountain views, swimming pool, gardens and top quality home cooking.’ In fact it was so wonderful we only left to explore the local area and didn’t even make it into Kandy. We spent our time investigating the wildlife and had some interesting experiences including a monkey trying to steal our snacks and a leech attaching itself to Craig’s leg! After a jam-packed time in Sigirya we relished the down time.
From Kandy we took a train to Nanu Oya for Nuwara Eliya. Phoebe has written about this in her post ‘A Day in Our Travel Life’.
The train journey is considered to be one of the most beautiful in the world, through tea plantations and past waterfalls. Passengers famously hang out of the windows and doors for photo opportunities. What we didn’t realise was that opportunistic thieves are hiding in the bushes and Craig nearly lost his phone as you can see in his viral post here!
Nuwara Eliya is known as ‘Little England’ although Phoebe described as a theme park version of England! Unlike other towns on the backpacker trail (Sigiriya and Ella for example) it didn’t feel totally taken over by travellers here and we found Sri Lankan life in-between the touristy cafes. As usual we visited many bakeries and cafes and I have grown to become fond of ‘short eats’ that can be found for sale throughout the country, small parcels of spicy curry in rotis and samosas.
We visited the post office and sent some postcards home, enjoyed the Lion lager and ate lots of kottu (a dish made from chopped roti).
From Nuwara Eliya we took another train to Ella. We just spent one night in Ella as we felt that we had reached the girls limit of hiking through tea plantations and to waterfalls and we were keen to get to the coast for a beach adventure! Once we saw the town of Ella we felt like we had made the right decision as whilst the surroundings are beautiful, the town is dedicated to travellers and is full of tourist orientated bars and restaurants and far from the authentic Sri Lankan experience we prefer.
4 responses
All looks wonderful! You must be really enjoying everything about the trip especially with the girls seeing so much of differing countries and lifestyles. Carry on enjoying! Xx
Yes thank you it is amazing! Wish you were here!
Amazing!!
Thanks Grampy!