Nuwara Eliya and surrounds

It's funny how the winding roads don't seem wide enough for even a small car yet in Sri Lanka two large buses will be guaranteed to pass each other on these roads. When you're in a tiny tuk-tuk passing one of these it's pretty thrilling stuff. 

Day 11 (Tuesday 5th)

We left Diyatalawa early this morning to head to Horton Plains National Park. At Horton Plains we made the 3.5km hike via the Baker's Falls to World's End. World's End is the portion of the National Park that drops at a sharp cliff edge that literally seems like the end of the earth. Not so surprising to us anymore, the views here were insanely good. It's a shame that photos just can't to justice to the height and depth of the countryside you could see but we soaked it in with our own eyes over a long rest and some bikkies. As we climbed early we got a clear view of the south east provinces of the country but being renowned for it's cloud forest the mist was beginning to settle over the tops of the trees as we were leaving. Then the 3.5km hike to loop back around to the beginning passed the Little World's End (a smaller and lower cliff face) with a stop in the museum before we headed off. It was beautiful to see there were strict policies to avoid littering of the park lands and to prevent human impact on the environment. This did however mean the tracks were not well formed and we were skipping from rock to rock and avoiding tripping on tree roots for most of the journey. A challenging walk but totally worth it. 

I look like an oaf but it was cold and these
were my only warm clothes, don't judge too harshly.

We headed into Nuwara Eliya afterwards, first having lunch and a look around the shops in the main streets then heading for a paddle in a swan on Lake Gregory. From there we checked into our hotel "The Golf Green" which precisely as it might seem, backs straight on to the famous Nuwara Eliya golf course. We had a walk around all afternoon and are about to head back out for a bite to eat. Sri Lanka food is the bomb diggity if I hadn't mentioned in any previous posts. Much to my delight they have mangosteens here which I was told were rare outside the Colombo area. If roti is king, vegetable samosas are a humble queen served in recycled paper bags (newspapers, old math text books etc.).