Exploring Ella

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For a few days my explorations ground to a halt when my body decided that quite enough fun had been had and that it was now time to experience a few lively illnesses just to make sure I was ticking all boxes on the Traveller's Experiences checklist. After a quick jaunt to Jaffna, I developed heat exhaustion on the bus journey back, a horribly cramped affair during which I was squashed in amongst numerous people of varying levels of sweatiness for five hours with inadequate water supplies. I spent a day back in Uppuveli rehydrating but for some reason I still didn't feel right and then my headache worsened and spread its way to my joints.

Being a touch of a hypochondriac at times, I promptly decided that I must have the dreaded dengue fever and I was not at all thrilled with the prospect. Dengue fever has no vaccine or cure and the only prevention is to avoid being bitten by mosquitos whilst in endemic areas, of which Sri Lanka just happens to be. Despite my liberal splashing about of mosquito repellent, I had still managed to aquire more than my fair share of itchy mosquito bites so when, a few days in, I started to feel naseous and sore of limb, I could only assume that things were going to get rapidly worse. Dengue brings with it a whole array of lively and unpleasant symptoms such as haemorraging, extreme fever, and limb pain so severe that the disease has been fondly dubbed as "the bone breaking disease" so I was overjoyed with the prospect of these symptoms when the trademark behind-the-eyes headache and shoulder pain began. Luckily it didn't progress much further than that but I did have a few days of only having the energy to walk a hundred meters at a time (essentially between my room and the beach... and the beach and the sea... and the sea and the bar...) and I couldn't risk another dive just in case things got rapidly worse during it. Instead I went on a snorkelling trip to see the black tip reef sharks and sadly this was a disappointment. The reef just wasn't that great as it was too deep for snorkelling and the coral was limited. I did see a shark but unfortunately the man running the trip yanked me out of the water just as the shark came nice and close so that he could ask if I had seen the shark that he had tried to point out. By the time I shouted "yes, you fool, I'm going back in!" and stuck my head back under, the shark was nothing but a fin disappearing into the distance.

By now I had four days left of my trip and I was getting restless. By Tuesday I felt quite a lot better so I decided to make a break for Ella, a place in the highlands that I had heard wonderful things about. To save time (and avoid another bus journey after my Jaffna-Trinco experience), I booked a taxi which felt like a lavish overindulgence but which saved me a day's travel.

My taxi driver S was a lovely man who made the effort to explain everything we passed such as the history of the area, and the names of the animals that he kept spotting and pointing out to me (and thus I saw my first mongoose). He invited me to his house to meet his family as we were passing back through his hometown of Dambulla but unfortunately when he phoned his wife to tell her to expect a guest, she was not best pleased with the prospect, if the angry voice from the other side of the phone was anything to go by. He hung up sheepishly and explained that his wife was sick in bed and not really up to a visitor before he brightened and said that he could call his sister-in-law instead and perhaps we could visit her. In the end we didn't visit anyone but we did stop for tea and snacks in a little cafe in his home town and he pointed out his old school and a few of his friends.

We made it to Ella in good time and accidentally found the hostel whilst taking a shortcut through the backroads. The hostel was a bit strange, despite the glowing Hostelworld reviews, with no staff about except for teenaged boy who looked like he had woken up there by mistake and wasn't quite sure how he had got there (in fact, I am still not convinced that he actually worked there). Still, he found me a bed, introduced me to the dog (Bruno), and pointed me in the vague direction of Ella and off I went.

Ella is in the lush hill country of central Sri Lanka and the views were amazing. The road was steep and winding and took me through verdant tea fields and tree-covered mountains which I couldn't wait to climb. Every twist of the road brought me to a new spectacular view and I decided to stop taking pictures after the second corner otherwise I would never get anywhere. It was two kilometres of steep uphill walking to get to Ella town and in the end I was saved by a man in a tuktuk who offered me a ride free of charge. I found myself in the unsual situation of trying to haggle the price upwards but he insisted that he was heading that way anyway so off we went.

It was getting to evening time so I didn't try and get any hiking done and instead explored the lively backpacker area that is Ella town. I went to a bar/ cafe called Cafe Chill (where I later found out that everyone in the hostel was at, each independently and collectively hiding out from what seemed like an empty hostel) and had a nice cup of coffee whilst the sun set around me.

I returned to the hostel (less fun in the dark) and luckily the place had filled up a bit. I made friends with a nice Canadian man named Carter and we decided to attempt climbing Ella Rock the next day.

We had heard dubious things about the local guides in Ella being aggressive and mercenary- but I had taken this with a pinch of salt as I had not picked up this feeling from any of the Sri Lankan people I had met so far, even in the touristy areas. Unfortunately it turned out that in this case, the jaded German woman in the hostel had had a point as Carter and I were to find out.

We set off along the train tracks as directed by Google and soon came to a fork in the path. A hand-painted sign pointed us to the left in the "direction" of Ella Rock (on our way back we found out that we should have definitely stuck to the tracks). We had been warned about "fake signs" but we dumbly followed it anyway and ended up climbing up a very steep hill before getting to another fork in the road where a man was waiting, casually arranging bits of piping in what I later realised was an elaborate ruse of pretending-to-be-a-farmer.

We asked the man which way to go and he gestured for us to follow him, leading us back the way we had come and then cutting off sharply into the fields. After a few minutes we knew that we had got ourselves a guide whether we liked it or not. At this point we couldn't really argue as he had lead us on a winding path that we would never find our way from on our own and he was running on ahead, leaving a strategic distance so that we could not call him back and ask him to take us to the main path. Unfortunately the guide's path of choice was extremely steep and it was tough going, not least because I was still slightly ill from my mysterious illness. We made it to the top eventually but we hadn't really seen much of the view beyond that of our own scrabbling feet as we scurried after our guide on the rocky mountain path.

Still, the view from the top was worth it (as I told myself once my heart rate had returned to an approximation of normality) and Carter and I spent a happy few minutes wandering about enjoying the spectacular scenery before deciding we should tip our guide and let him know that we would find our own way back. We decided to each put in 1000Rp which seemed like quite a lot in local currency. The man glared at us and demanded 3000Rp. We were not pleased and explained that he hadn't told us this before, nor given us a chance to negotiate as he had run off before we had even asked him to guide us (which we never actually had anyway). In the end we paid up because we decided we may as well enjoy the view and it was difficult with the man seething next to us but it was an irritating experience.

The walk back was far more relaxing as it followed a gentle slope downwards through the hills allowing us to appreciate all the views as we walked, without having to constantly brace our legs against the steep incline. We soon made it back to the train tracks and set off confidently towards Ella- or so we thought. After forty-five minutes of marching along the tracks, an amusingly novel experience at first but one that soon gets wearisome due to the slightly awkward stride it requires to keep on the railway slats, not to mention the nervewracking experience of when a train comes along and you get to dive into the surrounding hedgerows as it chunters past mere inches from your quivering nose, we realised with a trill of gay laughter that we had gone in the wrong direction and had to walk all the way back again.

We eventually made it back into town and ended up back in Cafe Chill where we enjoyed giant bottles of Lion beer whilst reclining on the floor cushions and making friends with German backpackers.

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