Ella

PLACES TO EXPLORE

Sri Lanka compresses an astonishing diversity of landscape and culture into a landmass smaller than Ireland. Within a few hours’ drive you can move from ancient kingdoms carved in stone to rainforests dripping with endemic birdlife, from surf towns to elephant corridors, from colonial forts to cloud-wrapped tea estates. Each region holds its own character, rhythm and reason to arrive slowly.

Ella’s geography is its drama – positioned at the edge of Sri Lanka’s central highlands, it drops away to the south in a series of ridges and valleys creating a visual panorama of startling scale. The Nine Arches Bridge, engineered without steel reinforcement during WWI from brick and concrete, sits embedded in jungle so completely that trains appear to emerge from vegetation rather than track.