what to expect when you look out the window in Nuwara Eliya
A road, 12’o clock. Some umbrella-ed pedestrians. Peace. Quiet. Gentle drizzle.
A lone rickshaw.
A cloud, 9 o’clock. A very blue house.
Cloud rolls in.
the temple of Sita
Myth has it that Ravana held Sita captive in the highlands of Lanka. Sita (the heroine from the Indian epic Ramayana) meditated on a rock and cried a river of tears. Then she dropped lotus flowers into the water, in the hope that they would make their way to her husband Rama so he could come rescue her.
It is believed that the monkey-god Hanuman was instrumental in finding her and bringing her back.
This could be the only Sita temple in the world.
A walk to remember
After a few minutes of contemplation by the falls it was time we continued along our way. Climbing back up to the main trail felt like quite the accomplishment as my legs protested going against gravity.
Amu and Huz were now keen to get to the end, whereas I would have been happy to dawdle my way slowly back, one step at a time. It was a long walk, and saying we were tired out would have been the understatement of the year.
I do think we left a piece of our souls there, or perhaps the place seeped into our souls. It seemed we had already experienced the highlight of our trip on day 2….and nothing henceforth could beat this.
(All pictures have been taken using Huz’s phone camera as I was too tired to mess around with the Nikon. I think the results aren’t half bad!)
The descent to the Falls
The terrain hitherto was largely open and expansive. The wind was a consistent part of the hike, with varying intensity depending on the topography. Feeling like Frodo, I climbed a rocky, muddy incline, buffeted, until we entered a sheltered green tunnel. Soon, we reached a divergent path that led down to Bakers Falls.
It was a steep hop, skip, and several jumps for Huz and Amu, slower for trepidatious me, who proceeded with caution, for as you can see, the path was not only steep, it was quite wet and full of obstacles and puddles. As a result, they saw the Falls before I did. And Amu captured my slightly exaggerated reaction 🙂
It was considerably damper and cooler way down at the Fall level. We spent some time absorbing the scene, with the sound of gushing, splashing, roaring water filling our ears. After hours of listening to wind through trees and grass, this was a different auditory experience altogether.
Soaked and quite achy now, my poor legs quaked at the thought of climbing back up to the main trail. In the course of 9 kilometres, this part tired me out the most. So the home stretch, although it continued to be breathtaking, had us all counting the steps till we had come full circle
(Credit for half the pictures (and a lot of the best ones) on this hike go to my better half, Amu. As mentioned earlier, we fought over the camera a lot, and I (being wise and mature) allowed her to be the official photographer 😉 Some of the pictures (like closeups of foliage and the interesting roots and tree structures) have been taken using Huz’s phone camera (by me) and of course, all the pix that feature Amu mean I did sometimes manage to wrangle the Nikon from her hands)
Misty magic ~ 2
Sri Lanka, Horton Plains: (is it still only Day 2?)
So we walked on from World’s End, juggling three umbrellas, a backpack, a sling bag and a bulky camera bag between us. Wasn’t easy to take pictures AND keep the camera (and phone) dry, and Amu and I kept stopping to look around and look at things and capture it all through one lens or the other (we had three) while Huz was content to just focus on walking and enjoying being ‘present’.
There was a disembodied sense of floating in a cloud, where only the trail was in sharp focus and the rhododendrons all around. All else (streams, waterfalls, bridges) seemed to just…materialize…through the mist.
I’m glad we took as many pictures as we did. Really, it all seems like a dream now.
En route to World’s End
And so began a 9 km hike.
The wind made my hair dance.
Thataway.
Into the strange hush we trudge…
Except for a curious knocking sound made by an unseen bird, and the rustle of the wind through the grass…not a sound.
The trail was sandy at first…
Wet and surrounded by vegetation further on..
Just the gentle sound of light rain on the overhead leaves…
When the going got rocky…
And dream-like.
We reached World’s End, the lesser one. A misty, windswept precipice not as high as the actual World’s End, but the view was similar….if only we could have seen it. (It is a cloudforest after all.)
We walked on from there and soon….
We were halfway through our trek! Here stands a triumphant Amu, at the edge of a precipice that plunges dramatically for almost a kilometer down to the lowlands below.
This is what we saw.
An assortment of nationalities.
One of the local guides there warned us that if we had found the walk challenging thus far, it would get tougher henceforth, especially the detour to Baker’s Fall. We could turn around and go back the way we came….or continue to walk till the end.
It was a no-brainer. 🙂
Onwards!
Misty magic ~ 1
Day 2 in Sri Lanka.
It was arranged that a man with a jeep would pick us up reeeaaalllyyy early the next morning, and take us to Horton Plains, a plateau 2100-2300 metres above sea level.
It was cold, drizzly and foggy, and I began to get doubts about how warm our flimsy cotton hoodies would keep us…
The driver stopped at a bend in the road, where he thought we might spot white-bearded monkeys in the misty trees.
And we did 🙂
It was a longish drive, but our gazes were riveted to the landscape we were passing through, forests, rivers, lakes and farms with Fresian cows grazing on the slopes, all enveloped in cloud. The driver was friendly and eager to educate, so he shared titbits of information as he pointed out various noteworthy sights, some left behind by the British, like this forest of Australian eucalyptus, a non-endemic species, not to mention a thirsty bunch of trees.
And a sulky monkey.
I was amazed that the driver’s eyes were sharp enough to spot this poor badly injured female (whose name I forget, a species of lizard endemic to Sri Lanka as I was informed).
How did we know it was a female? Take a look at that egg…
Nothing much could be done, but to pick her up and deposit her in the foliage on the side of the road.
We drove on, and soon….
As we drove in after paying the fee, the sharp-eyed driver once again pointed out something I would surely have missed. A Sambar deer, sheltering near a rhododendron bush
We ate our packed breakfasts huddled in the relative warmth of a bare basic restaurant, where we drank some horrible but warming coffee before setting off on our hike, umbrellas in hand. I had half a mind to skip the whole thing altogether, as my hoodie and three t-shirts were doing nothing to keep the wind from chilling me to the bone. But then I figured walking would warm me up…..and it did.
I’m sure glad I didn’t chicken out, as what followed turned out to be a dream-like hike through surreal landscape, the undisputed highlight of our SrliLankan experience 🙂
Mun-zooms 