One of the main reasons to see the center of Sri Lanka is definitely the famous train ride from Ella to Kandy or vice versa, but Ella itself offers a lot as well.
Content:
Ella
A very famous town in the middle of Sri Lanka. It's in the "mountains", approximately 1050m above sea level. If you want to visit it, don't forget to bring long trousers and a jumper.
Food and drinks
A very famous restaurant is called Chill Café It has three floors and good food. Nothing is outstanding but you get all kinds of food of good quality. The atmosphere was very good and the waiters were very chill and friendly.
Another good spot is the Rainbow Café, which offers almost only vegan and vegetarian food. The price for the dish "Curry in Hurry" was unbelievable. For only 3$, you get a very big portion and can taste authentic traditional Sri Lankan food.
Accommodation
Even though you can't directly visit our Airbnb hosts, I need to mention them. We stayed at Welcome Inn. It's a bit outside of the town, approximately 15 minutes.
They were extremely friendly, cute, and helpful. Their breakfast was the best out of all breakfasts served by the hosts.
Things to do:
Discover the town and embrace the fresh air in the mountains. In general, it’s a refreshing change of environment, if you ever want to see something else than beach towns.
One of the must-dos is hiking on top of Little Adam's Peak for sunrise. It's one of the best spots to see the sunrise. It felt like somewhere similar to the planet Mars.
Ella is famous for its tea factory and you can do a walking tour through the tea factory. We hadn’t done it, because we’d seen some tea plantations during our hike to Little Adams Peak.
Another spot is the Nine Arch Bridge. It's around 20 minutes from Ella apart. Be aware of lots of tourists, it's a famous photo spot.
Also, it's located in the middle of the jungle, so definitely worth the walk for the touch of nature itself.
Last but not least, if you google Sri Lanka the famous train ride from Ella to Kandy is a must do. The scenery is indeed amazing but be aware of the very very long journey. It takes around 7 hours to get to Kandy.
Kandy
Is the second biggest city in Sri Lanka. Although not very worth seeing, if you do the train ride, you can stop for max. a night.
Food:
You can find many Sri Lankan restaurants and eat very cheaply here. We had two dishes and one bottle of water for 500 rupees - which is nothing for food in a restaurant.
If you're looking for something fancier the Hideout (yes, the same name as the restaurant in Unawatuna) is the place for you. It's one of the best restaurants in town, but a bit pricey.
Things to do:
I bet, that if you're very interested in cultural things like temples, buddhas and so on. You can find some gems here. The Secret Tooth Relict is one of them. We didn’t visit the relict due to Covid the line for it was way too long.
Comments