Nuwara Eliya

Code:23
Type:district
Native name:Nuwara Eliya District
Area:1,741 km²
Capital:Nuwara Eliya

Introduction

At around one thousand nine hundred metres, this district is where Sri Lanka stops behaving tropically. Nights need a blanket and often a fire, the vegetation turns to eucalyptus and hedgerow, and the fields grow leeks, carrots and strawberries rather than rice. Above the town lies a high, cold plateau that ends abruptly at a cliff with an eight-hundred-metre drop, which is the district's outstanding sight and the reason to come even if tea does not interest you.

Overview

The town sits in a bowl of hills with a lake, a racecourse, a golf course and a stock of gabled, half-timbered and red-brick buildings that earned it an English nickname long ago and still make arriving faintly disorienting. It is a working highland town rather than a preserved one: the market is full of temperate vegetables, the surrounding slopes are the highest-grown tea estates on the island, and the streets are busy with buses. Its peculiar high season is April, when Colombo empties into it for the new year holidays, the racecourse runs, and prices and crowds both spike — a phenomenon almost entirely domestic and worth either seeking out or avoiding deliberately. The district's real prize is above the town: a plateau of montane grassland and cloud forest, protected as a national park, crossed by a walking circuit that ends at a precipice where the escarpment simply stops and the land falls away toward the lowlands. It has to be walked at dawn, because the cloud closes in by mid-morning and the view disappears for the day. Elsewhere in the district there are waterfalls in quantity, a botanical garden of temperate plantings, and the coldest, clearest air in the country. The hill-country railway and the tea industry that surrounds all of this are a large subject of their own.

Discover Nuwara Eliya

Horton Plains and the drop

The plateau above the town is unlike anywhere else in Sri Lanka: open montane grassland broken by patches of stunted cloud forest, at an altitude where frost forms on winter mornings and the vegetation is closer to a moor than a jungle. A circular walking track of about nine kilometres takes in two viewpoints and a waterfall, and its purpose is the escarpment edge, where the plateau ends in a sheer drop of several hundred metres with the lowlands laid out far below and, on the clearest mornings, a glimpse of the distant coast. The essential piece of planning is the hour: the view is reliably open at first light and reliably gone by around nine or ten, when cloud rolls up the escarpment and fills the gap completely. Everyone who arrives at eleven sees white. Start before dawn, take a warm layer that you will feel ridiculous carrying in Sri Lanka and grateful for at the top, and walk the loop in the direction that reaches the edge first.

A town that needs a fire

Nuwara Eliya's centre is a genuine oddity — gabled roofs, brick chimneys, a colonnaded post office, a racecourse and a golf course laid out around a small lake, in a style borrowed wholesale from a cooler country and now weathered into something entirely local. Older hotels still light fires in the evening and are right to. The market is the most obviously un-Sri Lankan thing about it, piled with leeks, carrots, cabbages, beetroot and strawberries grown on the surrounding slopes, and the town supplies much of the island's temperate produce. It is a place to spend a night rather than a week, and its pleasures are mild: a walk round the lake, a cold-weather dinner, and the strange experience of needing a jumper at six degrees north.

April, and the domestic season

The district has a high season that has nothing to do with foreign visitors. Around April, when the lowlands are at their hottest and the Sinhala and Tamil new year falls, Colombo decamps to the hills: the racecourse holds its meeting, the hotels fill, the town's population swells and rooms cost what rooms cost in a resort. It is a genuinely enjoyable spectacle if you want to see how Sri Lankans holiday, and a poor time to arrive expecting a quiet hill town. The rest of the year the town is workaday and cool, with the caveat that the two monsoons take turns delivering rain to the highlands, so a cloudy afternoon is normal in any month and the mornings are the reliable part of the day.

Waterfalls, gardens and the rest of the district

The escarpment edge means water, and the district has waterfalls in unusual concentration — several of them roadside, one of the country's highest a short distance away, and others requiring a walk through tea. A botanical garden below the town holds temperate plantings that grow nowhere else on the island, including roses and a rock garden, and is at its best in the cooler months. The surrounding slopes carry the highest-grown estates in Sri Lanka, whose light, brisk teas are the grades the island is best known for internationally — the industry itself, and what to look for on a factory tour, belong to the hill-country railway and tea guide.

Ways to Experience This Destination

Horton Plains at dawn

A nine-kilometre loop across high montane grassland to an escarpment edge with a several-hundred-metre drop — open at first light, closed by cloud by mid-morning.

The hill town

Gabled roofs and brick chimneys around a small lake, a racecourse and a golf course, evening fires in the older hotels, and a market piled with temperate vegetables.

The April season

The domestic high season, when Colombo moves to the hills for the new year holidays and the racecourse runs — worth seeking out or avoiding, but not stumbling into.

Waterfalls and gardens

An unusual concentration of falls along the escarpment, and a botanical garden of temperate plantings that grow nowhere else in the country.

Frequently asked questions

What is World's End, and when should you go?

The point where the high plateau above Nuwara Eliya ends in a sheer drop of several hundred metres, with the lowlands spread out below. Timing is everything: the view is reliably clear at first light and reliably gone by around nine or ten, when cloud fills the gap for the rest of the day. Start before dawn, walk the loop in the direction that reaches the edge first, and bring a warm layer you will feel silly carrying in Sri Lanka.

How cold does it actually get?

Cold enough for a fire in the evening and a blanket at night, with frost on the high plateau on winter mornings — this is around nineteen hundred metres, and the district is where Sri Lanka stops being tropical. Days are mild rather than cold. Visitors who packed only for the coast routinely end up buying a fleece in the market, which is itself a good souvenir.

Why is April so busy?

Because of domestic tourism rather than foreign. Around the Sinhala and Tamil new year, when the lowlands are at their hottest, Colombo decamps to the hills — the racecourse holds its meeting, hotels fill and prices rise. It is genuinely enjoyable if you want to see how Sri Lankans holiday, and a poor time to arrive hoping for a quiet hill town.

Is it worth visiting if tea does not interest you?

Yes, and Horton Plains is the reason. The high plateau, the walk and the escarpment drop have nothing to do with the tea industry and stand on their own as the best montane landscape in the country. The town's cold-weather oddity is a second reason, and the waterfalls a third. The tea itself, and what a factory tour actually shows you, are a separate subject from the district's landscape.

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