Chasing Ella - and Little Adam's Peak

Ella Rock as seen from Little Adam's Peak. #feels

One week later, let me reassure you that I did take lunch. After spending all morning making Sri Lankan style fried rice with my mother, and packing them all up neatly, I wasn’t about to forget that.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, even anti-climactic really. If you follow me on Instagram, then you know that our journey was mostly through the rain. There was a lot of mist. Soon it became too dark to see outside and when we finally arrived in Ella, it was past 8PM.

We stayed at Ella Okreech Hotel, a lovely place with cottages made mostly of old railway sleepers. I was so fascinated that I left my poor mother trying to figure out the complicated hot water system to take picture after picture of all the places they’d used railway sleepers. None of them were very good btw – night lighting is sooo bad. It cost us LKR 6000 for 2 nights without food.

Stairway to heaven :)

Dinner was at ‘Fish and Chips,’ a humble place compared to the big names like Café Chill. But 6 of us dined on noodles, fried rice and sandwiches for less than LKR 2000, so I consider it a win. That was the only meal-related ‘win’ we had that whole trip. Ella is EXPENSIVE everyone. Beware if you are on a budget like me.

Next morning, we had breakfast at ‘Rotti Hut’, just a few doors below ‘Fish and Chips.’ The food wasn’t that great, but we were in a hurry and anyway, we’d been warned that Ella wouldn’t be cheap. We left by 7.30am or so and started walking towards Little Adam’s Peak along the Passara road. There’s about 2.5 km to the turning off point next to Flower Garden Resort (more on that later) and it’s an easy walk.

This doggo is sleeping inches away from a cliff. Inches!

The walk up was great too. There were already tons of people but we managed to go up pretty fast. There’s stairs most of the way, so if you’re scared of heights, you’re covered. The bad news begins when you get to the top. There are two summits: the normal, safe one and the dizzying one. We left our parents at the safe one, under the one lone tree and began the death-defying trek down (and up) the next one.

Our parents stayed at the tree at the end;we risked our lives a little more

Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. Just a bit. The 2 summits are connected by a thin spine of land and to get to that you have to scramble down the sheer face of the mountain you’re on (there’s no path, just rocks exposed by run-off water) and then climb up another 90⁰ slope to the top. Nope, I have no pics – my phone was safely jammed into my bag while I squealed and squeaked my way down on all fours.

Climbing up was easier and sooo worth it. If you are under 40, hell if you’re under 50 and up for it, I seriously recommend going for it. The view is fantastic. You can see all the way to Ravana Falls and you literally feel on top of the world and dwarfed by all the mountains at the same time.

I don't like putting up pics with my face on it, but this is the only pic I've got that shows how high up we were. Btw, I'm grinning through my fear here. Phones don't capture sweat beads :P

Going back was another nightmare but I did it. I survived. Can I talk about Nine Arches Bridge next week? If you can’t wait, go check out my blog on seeing it the first time round.

Have a great week guys! 

*All pictures are subject to copyright © Asuka Randeniye 2017