Blog Ella
Next stop on the Sri Lankan road trip, Ella! Ella is a gorgeous area, probably why it’s so popular with the tourists. The mountains to me look like a combination of Hawaii and the Blue Ridge in North Carolina (an incredible mix). Ella is also SUPER hipster. Like, if you’re a hipster who tries way to hard to be a hipster, this is your heaven. I’m sorry to be a super slacker and not have a picture of downtown, but imagine tons of bars, beer, and man-buns. There are some super cool open building bars, they remind me of the ‘ruined pubs’ in Hungary a bit. Okay so bottom line, if you want to go to Sri Lanka and be all hipster and trendy and whatnot this is the place for you.
The town of Ella had two major attraction points for us, the Ella bridge and Ella rock hike. There are a few more hikes in the area too if you stay for a few days. When we arrived to Ella, the weather wasn’t looking to promising to fit in the hike, so we went to the Ella Bridge. We tried to plan our visit around the train schedule, but the trains there are never on time. The one we were waiting for was delayed over an hour…
So on our way there we drove as much as we could and then got bombarded by tuk-tuks. They have a business going over there giving people rides to the bridge. Honestly, you don’t need them its not a bad walk at all. The one bad thing is that now people who wouldn’t do the walk to get to the bridge have access, so it’s pretty crowded. Also there was talk of leaches here, we didn’t see any, but its always better to be safe.
Anyways, not much going on here aside from the beautiful bridge and a lot of tourists. So maybe go early if you want to catch it not as crowded.
he next morning we set out early for Ella Rock. For a the Ella Rock hiking guide click here. We had hoped that the rain would clear up for the morning and it did! We were given clear skies, rather unexpected considering the weather we saw the day before. It’s a pretty short hike and if you’re lucky maybe you’ll come across a guide dog, we found one that led us up. Many of the locals will try to accompany you as a guide, you don’t need a guide. There are tons of paths up, I think we saw three leading to the view at the top. We happened to run into locals who pointed us in the right direction, but from my research many will try to lead you astray. It’s a popular hike though so coming down we saw a ton of hikers all helping each other out. I recommend doing it for sunrise! That view is probably phenomenal.
