You can read about my first three days in Sri Lanka by clicking here.
The next day, we visited Kandy’s sacred Temple of the Tooth; picked and tasted tea from a functioning tea factory in Katukitula and took the train from Nuwara Eliya to Ella, which has been dubbed as the best journey in the world.
Learning about how tea was processed and how it ends up in your cup at home was interesting, but I particularly enjoyed picking the tea leaves, although, I didn’t enjoy tasting the tea so much!
A trip to Sri Lanka wouldn’t be complete without experiencing the picturesque scenery from the train.
We had a free day the next day, but we opted to go on a hike to Sri Lanka’s second-highest waterfall – Diyalum Falls, which, in my opinion, was unfortunately quite underwhelming. This was the hardest of the four hikes we went on. I wish I’d have stayed in bed and enjoyed a long overdue lie in, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
If you google Sri Lanka, one of the first things that will come up is the Sri Lankan train passing through Nine Arch Bridge in Ella.
We got up incredibly early in order to get the perfect shot of the train passing over the bridge, before walking on the bridge itself.
After spending an hour at Nine Arches Bridge, we then hiked to the top of Little Adams Peak, which I thought was the easiest of the four hikes, as it only had 300 steps. By 09:00 AM we had already done our 10,000 steps for the day…
We then hit the road again and made our way to Udawalawe National Park where we were supposed to be doing another Elephant safari. However, because of the coronavirus this, and other activities later on in the tour were cancelled.
The next day, we headed to Mirissa – where our tour was later cut short by three days. In the afternoon we enjoyed some downtime at the hotel pool, before going to Coconut Tree Hill, which is a perfect Instagram hotspot.
Unfortunately, later that evening we were given the news by Kacee, our tour leader, that the remainder of the tour had been cancelled with immediate effect.
Emily and I, as well as Hannah and Paige, who had flown from Manchester, decided that it would be in our best interest to leave the country ASAP, as it was rumoured Sri Lanka was going into lockdown.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to say our goodbyes to everyone on the tour and we won’t be able to claim back any of the money from the Friday flight, but we felt it was crucially important that we got home.
Obviously we’re hoping to get back out on our travels ASAP, but for now, our health and safety comes first.