After being kindly woken up by birds having their early morning chat in rhythm with each other’s tweet at 7am we had plenty of time to nosey around before being fed to the brim at breakfast with fruit, toast, eggs and coconut Sri Lankan pancakes.

We needed to get up and go to try and beat the weather forecast, apparently we are due rain at 11am so hiking feet on up to the nine arches bridge, hiking maybe not so much mountaineering more so trying to climb down to the railway without showing our knickers!
We missed the train passing but it was nice to see as it’s pretty famous I think just because it’s so picturesque, full of locals though I’m assuming because it’s the national bank holiday weekend because of the moon being full.

We walked over the bridge and found ourselves the wrong side to getting back onto the road we came in on so because we are so tight with paying for tuk tuks we ended up walking to our next destination through the back streets in amongst the farm land and mountains (still sunny and no sign of rain) it was gorgeous and very peaceful! Eventually we came to a cross roads, the road we needed to walk down was closed off to vehicles (not sure why it was a lovely newly laid road) we carried on walking it anyways again amongst the tea plantations until we realised why the road was actually closed... because they’re still laying the freshly new road! So only one thing to do, walk over the newly laid concrete that was still wet and they were still laying to try and make fairly flat and apologise to the workers, haha! They couldn’t quite believe their eyes I don’t think. ‘What the hell are these two white western girls doing walking in trainers and summer dresses down a road we have closed off and what we’ve been working on for so long to try and get flat’ our footsteps will forever leave a mark haha!
Another couple of kilometres up to the Demodara Junction, something I seen on things to do in Ella on google. Part of the train tracks it was built in a loop around a small mountain and it passes underneath each other, it’s quite cool. Couldn’t understand why there weren’t any westerners going the same way as us until the train arrived when we were leaving and it had people on it. Clearly they’re doing it the sensible way and taking the train ride - we aren’t sensible though are we... we like to walk miles and miles.
It was around lunchtime and we estimated that we would get back to ella with enough time before our cooking class for a beer (a well deserved one after the trek today) the walk was nice, seen so many tiny market stalls selling so many avacados!

Smashed the last part of the walk and got back to ella at 2.30pm (sweating our boobies off) because of the hills and the sun was still shining.
A solid 15.25km in the bag today, that’s a new PB with the with the kilometres and the steps at 25,000(ish).

Two beers and feeling pretty half cut we headed to the jade garden for a cooking lesson - excited!! Just the two of us she showed us how to cook different vegetable curries and Sri Lankan coconut rotti bread. They’re all sort of made the same with a few different spices in each curry. We made pumpkin, augerbine, okra (lady fingers), jack fruit and potato curry; absolutely deeee-licious! Can’t wait for Ellie to cook me some Sri Lankan food when we are back haha!

Afterwards we shared a 3for2 deal on a few beers and listened to some live music which was surprisingly good. A few of the people that were in the laughing leopard hostel have started to catch us up now we spotted them wandering around.

Could not wait for bed and to have a shower so another late night at 7.30pm to get ready for tomorrow’s hike up Ella’s Rock to try and beat the fog.

Gobsmacked as to how much our washing cost us - 1500rupees absolutely ripped off! £6 for 2kg of washing. Scandalous.

If I don’t sleep tonight I’m not going to be a happy bunny in the morning...