Diyaluma Falls Infinity Pools and Buduruwagala Rock Temple Day Trip from Ella

Diyaluma is 220 metres, the second-highest waterfall in Sri Lanka, and it drops off an escarpment about 45 minutes south of Ella. Most visitors photograph it from the road below and leave, which misses the reason to come.

The reason is the top. A steep path climbs about 45 minutes through rubber and scrub to a series of natural rock pools on the lip of the fall, where the water collects before it goes over. Sitting in one of them with the plain spread out 220 metres below is the single most photographed thing in the Uva highlands after the Nine Arch Bridge, and it is a genuine scramble rather than a stroll.

Buduruwagala, an hour further, is the counterweight. Seven figures carved into a rock face in the ninth or tenth century, the central Buddha standing sixteen metres, and traces of the original stucco and paint still visible. It belongs to the Mahayana tradition, which is unusual in Sri Lanka, and it sits in scrub with almost nobody there.

Ravana Falls near Ella closes the day on the way back.

Ella is a village at 1,040 metres in the southern hill country, reached by the train from Kandy that most people rate the finest railway journey in Asia, and its sights are all within a few kilometres: the Nine Arch Bridge, a brick viaduct of 1921 in a gorge of tea, which a train crosses several times a day; Little Adam's Peak, a 40-minute walk through tea to a ridge; Ella Rock, a harder three-hour climb; and Ravana Falls on the road down to Wellawaya. Mornings are clear and afternoons in the wet months bring cloud into the gap, so the walks are done early. Tuk-tuks are the transport, and every guesthouse can find one.