Asia trip: Ella day 2

Plan for today is to visit the Lipton’s Seat. We stick to our plan and woke up again at 6 am to catch the first train from Ella to Haputale. This train goes to Kandy direction and it is known to be one of the most beautiful train journeys in the WORLD. We bought a 3rd class ticket and got on the train.

But it wasn’t the best decision. At least we discovered it before we headed to Kandy the next day. The third class was so crowded as all the locals were travelling in it to their jobs. They didn’t even let us get off the train 😀 we had to really fight for it. Finally, we arrived in Haputale. The weather forecast said that at 11 am a storm should come so we didn’t want to waste any time and hired a tuk-tuk from the train station to Lipton’s Seat entrance.

The guy was very nice and he stopped for us several times on the way to the top. Just the journey up to the hill was full of incredible views and worthed every penny. If you want to get to the very top of Lipton’s Seat, you have to pay extra for the vehicle and driver’s ticket. We decided rather get off and walk up on our own.

It was sunny and the scenery around us was just breathtaking. Ladies were picking up the tea everywhere. We found out from our tuk-tuk driver that their daily salary is only 700 rupees in general. How horrible is that. The tea plantations are wet all the time and full of leeches – trust me, I got one. They usually have to do also other tasks, like cooking, washing and 700 rupees per day is the only thing they get. Try to think about it next time you have your cup of tea in the morning. Paradoxically these people were the kindest people we have met in Sri Lanka. They were full of smiles and one lady – a lady who like I said earns only 3 pounds per day even tried to offer us her lunch. I don’t know why she thought we need it more than her haha 😀 but it was the sweetest thing ever. When we got to the top of Lipton’s Seat there had already been one visitor. A little monkey just enjoying a morning view. We have never seen more green shades in our lives.

On the way down we took little paths through plantations and halfway down the rain started. We were so lucky that the weather stayed great for the main part of the day. Especially when we saw so many tuk-tuks going up in the rain. Very heavy rain that made us hide in a local hospital. After 30 minutes it got a little bit better. We started to walk to the Haputale tea factory to catch the bus when the tuk-tuk driver approached us. He offered us a lift for 200 rupees to Haputale city – 18 kilometres away!! (normally it is at least 50 per kilometre) All the way down we were waiting for some catch, but no. He was just a nice guy wanting to help people from the bottom of his heart.

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