If you do a search online, you'll see there are quite a fair bit of debates on the cost of getting to Horton Plains NP and if it is worth it. Well, it is expensive and whether worth it or not, it really is up to one's own judgement but this is my favourite activity among all the ones we did. Despite my non fitness, I am more a mountain person than a sea person. Maybe because I can't swim to save myself. S is more a sea person, so this was my favourite and not ours. Grin.
Here are the cost incurred.
Tuk-tuk from Hill Safari - Horton Plains NP - Ohiya station LKR 2,200 / ~USD 15 / ~AUD 20 (for 2 pax)
Horton Plains NP entrance fee - LKR 2950 / ~USD 20 / ~AUD 27 pp
Total cost per person - LKR 4,050 / ~USD 27 / ~AUD 37
The plan is to Horton Plains as early as we could, so we could trek before it gets scorching hot and it was said that it could get foggy later in the day. Besides, we also have bought our train tickets for the 11(ish) am train to Ella. According to the Sri Lanka Railways website, this train will arrive at the Ohiya station at 10:36 am but will only depart at 11:04 am. However when we bought the ticket, we were told that it was a 10:36 am train. We asked the locals and was told that the train is always late. We reached Ohiya station at about 15 minutes past 11 (I think) and the train had not arrived at the station yet.
There was still a bit of a distance from the ticket office to the start of the trail and we saw an elk! I was staring at it and forgot to take a photo :P
There was a bag check just before you enter the trail and if you are carrying plastic bag, they will throw it away.
There are 2 ways around this trail, you could opt to start at mini World's End and end at Baker's Fall or vice versa. The owner of Hill Safari recommended that we do the mini World's End first. From memory, the left route. I think the idea is that you will see both the World's End in event that the fog started to cloud the view and you won't be able to see anything. It was fairly flat all the way, except the stretch of uphill to get to Baker's Fall.
After stopping at mini World's End, we made our way to World's End. It is call "World's End" because it is a sheer cliff, with a drop of about 870 m. From "World's End", one can look down at some 870 m in height and on a clear day one can see all the way to the sea.
We had our packed breakfast of sandwich at World's End and then resumed our walk to Baker's Fall. We were that if we want, Chula could also make us roti breakfast but I think it would be too cumbersome to carry roti plus dhal around, so sandwich it was.
The only harder ascending trek on the route we took was the stretch from World's End to Baker's Fall.
The night before we visited Horton Plains, the manager at Hill Safari told us about this Nelu plant.
Nelu flower blooming is a bit of an infrequent incident. The flowers are said to bloom only once in a Nelu plant's lifetime and the plant dies thereafter. It is said that Nelu flowers only bloom every 12 years and when this happens, a pink and purple blanket of flowers can be seen across Horton Plains.
We saw this flower but not too sure if we recognised the right flower. I'm pretty bad at gardening.
After that, we continued our walk to finish off the round.
Side note: What's the cheapest destination to fly to from Melbourne during the Christmas-New Year period?
What a view :O
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