There is not much in the way of interesting sights in Nuwara Eliya, apart from Victoria Park, It is more of a base for trekking, walking and excursions. Today we take a three-and-a-half hour walk to the top of Single Tree Hill, 6050 ft above sea level, with guide Santha. Not that we had to make that ascent today as Nuwara Eliya town is 1889m above sea level. The climb up through the tea plantations and back through cool Eucalyptus woods is only, the latter brought here by the British to provide wood for railway sleepers. The climb up is relatively easy along winding roads and wooded paths with wonderful views of the neat orderly hillsides; houses and shacks sitting amongs neatly cultivated vegetable gardens and further up a of tea bushes.
Nuwara Eliya is a town of 26,000 sprawling across the valley floor and up into the hills. The housing isn’t dense by any means and most people appear to have some land on which to cultivate vegetables either commercially or for their own consumption. But the most of land here is given over to tea.
Higher up in Hill Country is cloud rain forest and Nuwara Eliya is often shrouded in mist and low cloud, which can sweep down from the hills very swiftly and disperse just as quickly.
Nuwara Eliya has a lingering Britishness; it’s not for nothing that it is dubbed ‘Little England’. From the architecture of some of it’s public buildings and historic hotels to the flora, the tradition of the gentlemen’s club still in evidence at the stone and mock tudor Hill Club to the immaculately formal gardens of the Grand Hotel and St Andrews Hotel, this in many ways is a throwback to a colonial past.
Today Nuwara Eliya is primarily a holiday and weekend retreat for wealthy and not-so-wealthy Sri Lankans who come to escape the heat, play golf and enjoy the racing. Away from the rather down-at-heel centre of town, Nuwara Eliya is picturesque and quaint as can be. The only thing to marr this peaceful idyll is the thick, black exhaust fumes that belch from every bus, lorry and van. Lack of effective emissions control is endemic in Sri Lanka, and the only saving grace is that there isn’s much traffic.