Ella Peaks All-Inclusive Day Trip: Both Walks, the Bridge and Halpewatte

This is the full-length version of the Ella day, and the twelve hours are honest: it starts before dawn and runs into the evening, with pickup available from Haputale and Bandarawela as well as Ella itself.

Little Adam's Peak opens it at first light. Forty-five minutes up a mostly stepped path from the edge of town, and the view out through the Ella Gap towards the southern plain is why people come here. By nine it is a queue for the same photograph, which is the whole argument for the early start.

Halpewatte is the largest tea factory in the Uva region and one of the better ones to visit — the process from withering trough to grading table takes about forty-five minutes and ends on a terrace looking over the estates.

The Nine Arch Bridge follows: 91 metres of stone, 24 metres above a gorge, built during the First World War without steel because the steel went to Europe. Trains cross roughly every two hours and are late as a matter of routine, which is why a driver who knows the day's actual movements is worth having.

Ravana Falls and the Flying Ravana zipline over the valley close the afternoon.

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.