Chasing Ella - The End

Nine Arches Bridge

We climbed down from Little Adam's Peak pretty quickly, but we were still well past lunch time when we finally emerged onto the main road. We walked into the Flower Garden Cafe planning on lunching there - and were horrified at the prices. Ella is famous for having tons of pricey places with bad food, inadequate portions or cheap places with equally bad food. This place was no different. We were running out of time though, so we decided on lunching there.

After that, we started walking towards Nine Arches bridge. There are several ways to get to it, and we continued along the Passara road before turning off into a small by lane that led through tiny houses directly onto a hill side overlooking Nine Arches. It was quite a walk, and some of the adults in our party felt it hard.

Ella to Nine Arches Bridge via Google Maps

Then started the slip 'n slide. There was no proper path to the bride, just a teeny tiny gap in between plants and roots that people had carved for themselves as they came and went from this famous site. My mother and I wore out the seat of our trousers slipping on our asses down that slope. My phone was constantly in and out of my pocket as I either stopped to take pictures or slide down a bit more.

 And finally, we were there. So were a 100 other tourists, some of whom had obviously been there for a while. They were lying on picnic blankets and even playing cards. It soon dawned on me that everyone was waiting for a train to come because, well, it's the rules; if you come to Nine Arches, you gotta get a pic of a train.

We were lucky. A train came by pretty soon. Afterwards, we went to the little tea shop and did what Sri Lankans do best - have plain tea and හකුරු. Once we were relaxed, we started walking back towards Ella station on the railway tracks. We went through the famous Ella tunnel, and took the mandatory pics:

The walk back was so nice but we were glad to see the station. We had dinner that day at Burger Brew, another pretentious establishment whose cheese kottu had more parata than cheese.

Look at how gorgeous this station is

We woke up early the next morning, since the train to Colombo was due at 6.15 am. We picked up our breakfast of rotti and sambol from Vimala Fast Food store (it doesn't serve fast food) and boarded the train in good time. The train stopped in the middle track, away from the platform, so we all had to clamber down and then climb up the tree steel rungs of the train ladder to get in at the door. Thank goodness we were all wearing pants.

Sunrise from the station

That's it for my family trip to Ella folks. I haven't travelled since then so my blog's gonna be quiet for a while. Unless of course, I put up a video on YouTube.

*All pictures are subject to copyright © Asuka Randeniye 2017