Knuckles Mountain Range
The Knuckles are a separate highland ecosystem east of Kandy – cloud forest above 1,500 metres, endemic wildlife, river crossings and trails ranging from gentle village paths to full-day ridge routes. Almost none of Sri Lanka’s standard itineraries include it. For travellers who want genuine wilderness rather than organised beauty, it is worth two days.
Horton Plains
At 2,100 metres, Horton Plains is the highest and flattest landscape in Sri Lanka. The nine-kilometre circuit trail passes through montane cloud forest to World’s End: a sheer escarpment where the plateau simply stops and the plains 900 metres below open up on a clear morning. Baker’s Falls on the return. The cloud window is […]
Nuwara Eliya
Nuwara Eliya was built by the British to feel like home, and the result is genuinely strange and wonderful – a Victorian post office, a racecourse, a hill club with a dress code and tea estates across every hillside. The cold air, the colonial buildings and the estate landscape combine into something unlike anywhere else […]
Ella
Ella works because several things coincide: a dramatic valley gap with a view forty kilometres south, tea estates within walking distance, the Nine Arch Bridge as the island’s most viewed structure, and a genuine independent café and food culture. At the right time of morning – early, mist still in the valley, no one else […]