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Two hikes, one day: Ella surrounded by trails, vistas — and one rain-soaked railroad track

Rain shortened my attempt to climb Ella's Rock and I didn't even get off the beaten "track."

The trail winds up slowly through a small tea plantation before it wraps around a small hill with a fantastic view of Ella Rock, the seminal vista in Ella. I curiously saw a paved walkway in the middle of the plantation. I took it up and it zigzagged about 15 minutes straight up where I had a major-league panoramic view of central Sri Lanka. In front of me was Ella Rock, truly a rock standing about 7,000 feet with some riveting drop offs. I could see the top through the mist that drifted past it as the sun failed to break through. Behind me were tea plantations, forests and palm trees as far as I could see. I saw only two other people on the entire trail. I felt atop of Sri Lanka again, where tourism has failed to spoil and nature has continued to bless.
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Cricket is baseball on barbiturates but World Cup has Sri Lanka on edge of its lanais chairs

A pickup cricket game in Haputale with cattle on the playing field. Cricket is the national sport in Sri Lanka.

To tell you how big cricket is in Sri Lanka, seemingly half the ad posters around the country feature a national cricket player. If you judge cricket by the street scene, you’d think the entire national team is fueled by chocolate milk. Sri Lanka cricket jerseys are sold in souvenir stands just as predominantly as sarongs and tea. Like every small town in Latin America has a soccer field, every town in Sri Lanka has a cricket ground. If there’s no stadium, there is a scruffy vacant lot with sparse grass worn bare in a long strip between the bowler and the batsmen. I’ve seen pickup games with as much participation as I’ve seen pickup baseball games in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
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Ella is Sri Lanka’s Hill Country theme park but the beer is cold

The view from my balcony in the early morning mist.

I can tell Ella was once the idyllic Sri Lankan mountain town. Situated high in the hills surrounded by green mountains and terraced tea plantations, Ella (pop. 45,000) consists of just two narrow roads. Main Street (True. It’s called Main Street.) connects the cute-as-a-cat-calendar train station with the town center. Surely just a few years ago Main Street looked like Haputale with little roti shops and small retail stores and markets filled with huge barrels of different-colored grains and spices. Today, Ella’s Main Street is lined with bars and restaurants, all with such “Sinhala” names as The Curd Shop, Chill and Garden View Restaurant. I walked by and saw as many white people as Sri Lankans, all hunched over heaping plates of rice or tall brown bottles of Lion Lager. I’d hear a smattering of German, French, British English, some vague Eastern European tongues. It’s as if Ella was designated as “The Sri Lankan Hill Country Experience” and we all came to check it off our list.
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World’s End a mystical land of deer, chameleons and waterfalls high atop Sri Lanka

World's End in Horton Plains National Park has an 880-meter drop with no guardrail but the view circumvents the danger.

I had another remarkable walk in the Sri Lanka’s Hill Country yesterday. The Czech chicks (I know that sounds sexist but you can’t deny the cute alliteration) and I met at 5 a.m. and hiked to World’s End. It’s the high point of Horton Plains National Park, a vast, diverse landscape of looming mountains, vast plains, towering waterfalls, wild grasslands, thick forests, clear lakes and spectacular views. It’s only about 30 kilometers from Haputale but it took us an hour to reach by van which wound around precariously narrow, dark roads as it rose into the tea plantations. Horton Plains is known for its wildlife: deer, wild boar, a purple-faced langur monkey. Even some leopards have been seen around here. When we got dropped off in a space packed with vans and tuktuks, a huge sambar deer stood there, as steady as a parking lot attendant. It seemed to be waiting for us. It must’ve weighed 1,500 pounds with antlers the size of a hotel’s hat rack.
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Hike through Lipton’s tea plantation a cool climb into another cool culture

Lipton's tea plantation employs about 400 tea pickers, mostly Tamils originally from South India.

Sir Thomas Lipton, the Scottish tea baron who founded the most popular tea in the English-speaking world, owned this land from about 1890-1930. It covers some 2,500 acres, stretching up to over 5,500 feet into the clouds. Today, tea contributes $700 million into the Sri Lankan economy, the fourth largest producer in the world. Tea plantations cover 727 square miles, about 4 percent of Sri Lanka’s landmass.

The landmass I’m on is an absolute mountain, a green, undulating garden of tea. It also has some of the most breathtaking views in Sri Lanka. Inspired by Haputale’s cooler temperatures, not to mention my sloth-like existence through my first week on the beach, I needed to hike. I need to sweat somewhere besides an Internet cafe.
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Sri Lanka’s Hill Country is my cup of Lipton Tea

The town of Haputale is in the middle of tea plantations, including the Lipton empire.

We’re in Sri Lanka’s Hill Country, a boring but accurate name for its central region which is another world from the beach paradise I left behind. At least, it’s another elevation. Hapatule is at 1,341 meters, a short hike under a mile high. I’m writing this in the midst of a tea plantation that stretches as far as the eye can see. Undulated green lines of small tea plants go on forever, like strands in a very large green sweater. It’s a nice landing spot to catch my breath, wipe away the sweat and ease a sunburn that makes sleeping on my back a new adventure in pain.
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Giant green sea turtles laying eggs in Sri Lanka

Green turtles lay up to 1,000 eggs at a time -- and do it at the same nexting spot seven times during their lives.

REKAWA, Sri Lanka — I am normally a lousy target for street hustling. My street instincts are pretty accurate. Through 37 years of international travel, I can tell when a “special price” isn’t special, when a “tour” is short for “tourist trap.” The last time I trusted a cab driver was in 1997 in Rio […]

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Galle’s Fort a clean, crisp escape into Sri Lanka’s Dutch colonial past.

Despite being a historical relic, the Fort still functions today with its lighthouse and post office.

The Fort is huge. And it’s not just a log-cabin structure with a flag sticking out of the top. It’s like a city that still functions. The stone walls stand about 30 feet high and stretch along the odd-shaped peninsula sticking into the Indian Ocean. I walked through a huge gate that immediately separated me from the grime of South Asia and introduced me to clean, colonial 19th century Ceylon. Everything in the Fort is spotless. It’s like the Fort is Galle’s one gem and they polish it every day. Even the souvenir hawkers look cleaner. You could eat off the narrow roads that meander past the Dutch colonial-style buildings.
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Sri Lanka’s Goyambokka Beach still standing tall after 2004 tsunami

Goyambokka Beach on Sri Lanka's south coast lost only three people in the 2004 tsunami.

A narrow path leads from the dirt road outside my guesthouse down through the jungle for about 100 meters. At the end it opens up to a spectacular perfect half-moon bay, lined with palm trees facing a turquoise sea. Gentle waves ripple against sugary white sand without a pebble in sight. A few comfy, cushioned lanais chairs sit under umbrellas next two little beach bars on stilts. I grabbed one lounge chair and a friendly, pot-bellied man said hi.
“KEY-a-duh?” (“How much?” in Sinhala.) I said, pointing at the chair.
“You eat here lunch, it’s free,” he said.
Deal.
I spent the next six hours going from gorgeous sunshine to under the umbrella to a sea as warm as bath water.
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Road to paradise pockmarked with potholes of dying cell phones, Indian visas and chaotic Sri Lankan bus stations

My Goyambokka Guesthouse atop a hill above one of the prettiest beaches in Asia.

It took us one hour to get out of Colombo. I saw nothing appealing. Not one nice park, a pretty building, a nice restaurant. It’s like a city designed to sell electronics and cheap clothes. I haven’t seen a postcard. However, once we cleared city limits the country opened up like a flower. Giant green palm trees were everywhere. Entire forests enveloped small houses where people gathered and chatted on bicycles. Houses stood on stilts where people on their balconies could touch the palm trees that were nearly as big as their decks. Red clay roads snaked up into the jungle. I saw a sign reading, “DANGER: PEACOCKS AHEAD.”

On the coast road I saw the moon, full as a big wheel of cheese, shining above a relatively clean river as it flowed toward the sea. It screamed for a photograph. Instead, I screamed for a beer.
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Sri Lanka: The war is over but my war with technology has just begun as my iPhone is dying

This tea picker won my heart and about 12 cents.

As I embark on a dream month-long journey to Sri Lanka and India, Sri Lanka is six years removed from the longest war in Asian history. People are smiling again. The roads are safe again. India’s economy is booming and I am headed to Kerala, the sliver of a state that hugs India’s southwest corner and is the most educated, safest and least densely populated state in the country.

Yet I am faced with no Internet, no Facebook photos, no Whatsapp. The prospects are numbing. I have become so modernized, so chained to my iPhone, it’s like losing my backpack or passport. How will I survive?
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Tour of Teatro di Marcello, Jewish Ghetto, Tiberina Island covers 2,000 years of Roman history

Teatro di Marcello looks like the Colosseum but it was built nearly 100 years earlier.

I took a guided tour today of three of Rome’s oft-overlooked sites, all of which remain close to my heart: Teatro di Marcello, the Jewish Ghetto and Tiberina Island. Since I moved to the nearby Testaccio neighborhood a year ago, Teatro di Marcello has been my bus stop where I oft wait until the wee hours of the morning to be whisked along the Tiber River and home. I’d stand there with a collection of Bangladeshi kitchen help getting off work and tipsy teens and look into the darkened windows of the old theater. But not all of them are dark. The top floor is now apartments. Talk about a room with a view. Conducting the tour was Massimiliano Francia, the best guide in Rome, a man whose vast knowledge makes me wonder if he actually knew Nero personally.
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