Ella Rock Hike and Tomorrowland Hostel

None of us got good sleep because of the deafening noise coming from outside our room. A load of drunk brits had decided they were going to carry on the party from their night in town back at the hostel...at 3am! We got up without our well needed rest and had our free breakfast at 07:30 with a few people from the hostel and then headed to climb Ella Rock, with Filipa joining. We jumped in the TukTuk, de-leeched it, and made our way to a point that looked as though we could park the TukTuk and walk up, we were correct. We parked the TukTuk in front of an old ladies house and begun the walk. The first 3 minutes we were joined by said old lady who owned the house, she was guiding us and it wasn’t until I said to her we were okay on our own she stopped walking and began to ask for money...we brutally just walked on saying “sorry, we have no money”... blatantly lying but oh well. We walked through tea plantations and a small forest on our way up, the walk was relatively easy and enjoyable...but Filipa started to consider turning back as her taxi driver text her (because that’s a thing in Sri Lanka) saying that she should leave about 09:30 from the hostel to get to the airport in time for her flight. Tom wanted to get to a nice viewpoint to say our goodbyes and get a picture. We eventually found a viewpoint, wasn’t the greatest view but we thought we would settle as Filipa really needed to head back. We said our goodbye got a “family pic” and she left us. Literally 1 minute of walking onwards we found an amazing viewpoint, typical! Tom tried to get in contact with her via different platforms - each of them not working so he sent her a message to turn back if she could and we decided to continue... 30 seconds had passed and Tom got a FaceTime call from her, fuzzy and we couldn’t really see her face or hear her as she was clearly running back to us... we reunited and enjoyed the view for a little while before saying our humorous goodbyes, again. As soon as she was out of sight I realised that I didn’t remind her to leave my charger that I lent her on my bag back at the hostel...I messaged her and Tom reminded me that there was nothing I could do about it if she forgot and if she did we would just get another one. It’s funny how little things can worry you when you’re travelling and actually have no worries in the world and this was one of those times, but hey we all have them.

We made it up Ella Rock, it was a beautiful view over the whole area and we a lot higher than Little Adams peak, where we were the morning previous. We found a spot where there were no people and sat down and enjoyed the view for a little while, where we realised it was Jennie birthday today! We thought we’d be cute and write her a Happy Birthday sign and get a picture at the top of Ella Rock. So we used the TukTuk rental booklet (as that was all we had) and made Jennie a make shift birthday card and sent it to her - we knew she’d love that! After enjoying the view for a little longer we made our way back to Greta, on the way we had a funny encounter with a Ukrainian guy(?) - “you’re never going to get there” to which he howled with laughter.

We got back to our hostel checked out and drove our TukTuk maybe 100m to the Kottu stall we had driven past a few times and ordered a veggie Kottu to takeaway. Whilst waiting for our Kottu we got to speaking to an older English couple who loved the fact we were driving a TukTuk round the country, they were even more impressed when we knew all about the different birds we had seen in Uduwalawe NP as they were bird spotters on their way to a bird watching tour. With our red hot Kottu in hand, we drove through the hills to Tomorrowland hostel, where we didn’t have a reservation but asked for a bed for this night...they didn’t have any beds but we could take a tent for 1,000 rupee each. The hostel was a stereotypical backpacker hostel...peace signs and motivational quotes about enjoying life and taking things slow were plastered over the walls with the stench of weed in the air, DJ decks and a chill out zone. It was a real mix of people, ordinary people like us, a white French guy with dreadlocks who smelt a little because he probably refuses to use deodorant or body wash and Natalie, a woman who left the UK 25 years ago had been living in Sri Lanka for the last 4 years and gives massages for a living nowadays. However, we quite liked the relaxed vibe here but we didn’t want to sit and do nothing all day so we ate our Kottu at the 360° view area and I found a route on maps.me that should have taken us full circle via local villages back to the hostel. Instead, we walked through local villages but were stopped in our tracks when we come across a dead-end and were also being howled at by a massive black dog in the house whose land we were clearly strayed into. We tried to find a way back to the hostel that didn’t take us back the same route and we then noticed that lots of leeches were on our flip flops and legs so we literally ran out of the leech zone back onto the main road.

On the walk back to our hostel we saw a hut on stilts perched on the hillside at the side of the road serving up food, we thought we’d check it out. We both fancied rice and curry but as we were seated they practically forced us into having fried rice as that was all they were cooking at the moment. The view was insane and all the local guys were coming here so it must be good, so we decided to have the fried rice. We watched the guy prepare the food, using the same plank of wood to do everything and then cook the rice in a huge wok that shook the hut as he mixed it all together. Over dinner we discovered that I was still on the same pair of boxers he I was wearing when I left the UK (albeit we’d had a week in swim shorts) and Tom was only on his second...disgusting! Full and satisfied we went back to the hostel chilled out for a bit longer and then got into our tent and fell asleep to a film hoping for a better nights sleep than the last.Read more