Kandy is Sri Lanka’s second most populated city and was our first inland stop, located in the hills of central Sri Lanka which are known for tea production. We only had one day here which we used to walk around the city and explore the markets.
We then got the famous train from Kandy to Ella which is supposedly one of the most scenic routes in the world. We could understand how it got this reputation although it did take about eight hours to cover 150km and was full of other tourists taking it in turns to hang out the door for pictures which got a little tedious.
Ella was a much smaller town than Kandy and mostly existed as a hub for tourists to explore the surrounding area. It’s easy to spend days here going on hikes and tea plantation visits before enjoying the nice but cheap bars and resturants in the evening. Our time here was however made a little stressful due to our attempts to rearrange our travel and book new flights to Aus amid the Corona Virus outbreak despite not having WiFi at our accomodation.
Departing Ella and Sri Lanka was a little more difficult than we had anticipated with busses suddenly deciding not to pick up western looking travellers and Colombo Airport banning all inbound flights (which meant most outbound flights were also cancelled- including ours). Despite this we managed to book a few (slightly more expensive) flights while at the airport to sneek us into Australia a few hours before the border closures.
Haz & Rac Travels 