Ella Tea Country Rail

About this pack

A 6-day mid-range route through Sri Lanka's hill country around Ella.

Inside the Ella Tea Country Rail trip

The route is based around Ella, a small town in the Badulla District of Uva Province, roughly 200 kilometres east of Colombo and set at an elevation of 1,041 metres. The area is dense with flora and fauna, ringed by hills covered in cloud forest and tea plantations, and its elevation keeps the town noticeably cooler than the lowlands below, while the Ella Gap opens views across the southern plains of Sri Lanka. Ella sits on the Colombo-Badulla railway line and the A16 highway, and Ella railway station, the 75th on the Main Line and 271.03 kilometres from Colombo, has been open since July 1918.

East of the town, at Demodara, the line crosses the Nine Arch Bridge, a viaduct built to carry the railway around a nine-degree curve on a steep gradient. It was built entirely by local labour under British supervision and completed in 1919, using concrete cornice blocks for its arches and locally produced sand-cement blocks for the facing. The engineer in charge of that section was Harold Cuthbert Marwood, working under the Chief Construction Engineer of Railway Extensions, M. Cole Bowen, while D. J. Wimalasurendra served as chief designer and project manager for the wider Upcountry Railway Line project. Local folklore credits the Ceylonese builder P. K. Appuhami with the bridge's construction in consultation with the British engineers, though no documented evidence supports his involvement. Construction coincided with the outbreak of the First World War, and rumours at the time held that the steel allocated to the bridge had been diverted to war-related projects, forcing the builders to complete it in stone and cement without steel, aside from the rails themselves and the pins that secure them.

A short distance on stands Adisham Hall, a country house near Haputale that today houses the Adisham monastery of Saint Benedict and keeps a relic of St. Sylvester in its chapel. It was built in 1931 by the English aristocrat and planter Sir Thomas Villiers, a grandson of Lord John Russell, on 2.8 hectares awarded to him from the Tangamale Strict Nature Reserve by an act of the British parliament; the house was designed by R. Booth and F. Webster in the Tudor and Jacobean style. After Villiers's retirement, the property passed in 1950 to Don Charles Wijewardene and his daughter Rukmini, then in 1961 to an Italian Benedictine monk, who eventually donated the house and grounds to the Ampitiya Benedictine Monastery in 1963. It remains well preserved with its original period fittings and furniture, and is open to visitors.

Closer to Ella, the road drops to Ravana Ella, a waterfall roughly 25 metres high that cascades from an oval-shaped concave rock outcrop about 6 kilometres from Ella's railway station and forms part of the Ravana Ella Wildlife Sanctuary. It takes its name from the mythical king Ravana of the Ramayana: local legend holds that he hid the princess Sita in the caves behind the falls, now known as the Ravana Ella Cave, though the Ramayana and its account of Ravana are understood as mythology rather than verified history. The cave itself sits at 1,370 metres above sea level, and excavations there have uncovered evidence of human habitation dating back some 25,000 years.

The route finishes in Haputale, a town of the Badulla District set at 1,431 metres, higher again than Ella, with the same dense biodiversity, cloud-forested hills and tea plantations, and a Haputale pass that likewise looks out over the southern plains. Haputale railway station, the 69th on the Main Line, opened on 19 June 1893. Nearby, Adisham Bungalow — the same house visited earlier in the route — was modelled on Leeds Castle in Kent, England, and beyond it lies Lipton's Seat at Dambetenna, a lookout favoured by Sir Thomas Lipton with views across the Uva, Southern, Sabaragamuwa, Central and Eastern provinces.

• Nine Arch Bridge — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Adisham Hall — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Ravana Ella — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Haputale — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Ella, Sri Lanka — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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Ella Tea Country Rail, in frame

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